Ting Bu Dong

So the other day I presented a list of some things that needed to be fixed in my apartment to the Foreign Affairs Office here at school, namely that the tank of my toilet is overflowing and flooding onto the floor. For some reason, unknown to me, it miraculously fixed itself. Well, this morning, shortly after breakfast, there was a very loud knock on my door. I couldn't think of who might be knocking so loudly and impatiently that early in the morning. I opened the door and there stood a nice worker speaking to me and all I could say was, "I don't understand." He continued speaking to me because it is a universal fact that if the person you are trying to communicate with doesn't understand you, just speak slower and louder. After a few more "I don't understands." and continuously staring at him blankly he pointed to the bathroom and let himself in to the apartment. I then remembered the request that I had made to have the toilet fixed. I briefly considered telling him that it was working fine now, but then decided what was the point? He was going to find out quickly. He flushed the toilet a couple of times, looking at the toilet intently and then left. He turned to leave and said some more things that I didn't understand. Finally, he realized that I had no clue what he was saying! He said, "Ting bu dong," and laughed. (Ting bu dong means don't understand here.)

Seeing as how it is Saturday and classes haven't started yet, I had a pretty relaxing day. More pwalking campus as has become my daily habit and watching some CCTV9.

I have started to get my appetite back a little and decided to have a snack. My friends graciously gave me some apples and grapes. Many of you know the rule here about food as I have mentioned it often or perhaps from your own personal international travel. Anyway, the rule for food here is if you can't peel it, you can't eat it. The second rule is only eat hot food. Now, you may be thinking, "Erin, you can't peel grapes nor do you eat them hot." You are right, sort of. There is a pretty cool trick here that I have learned about "peeling" grapes. First, though, you must listen to the whole story as the trick does not come until the end.

Grapes here are a little different. They are very aromatic. They have a rather strong, kind of sickly sweet smell. At least the green ones do. Not being particularly fond of grapes back home, I'm no grape aficionado, but I know enough to know that green grapes tend to be on the sour side. That's why I prefer black (purple) grapes. Anyway, the process of eating the grapes here can be rather labor intensive. First, you must wash the grapes with the fruit and vegetable wash. Just in case you were wondering, yes, grapes are difficult to wash. I put them in a bowl of soapy water, swish it around, rub the grapes down gently, and pour into a strainer to rinse. The reason that you must wash the food here is not because they are all health conscious about pesticides, but because they don't always have the luxury of modern day fertilizer - that means they use poop! You may be thinking, "Erin, we use cow manure here in America." Yes, I know this fact well having spent some of my childhood out in the rural places of the South (i.e. the SUBurbs of Charlotte on my Papa's farm) and that large, smelly yellow bag of it that was in our garage for a long time after my dad decided to get serious about the grass in our yard, or maybe it was the year we grew our own garden. There are some great stories in these memories...perhaps I'll share them with you sometime. Anyway, I digress! If you are lucky, the country farmers who grow your fruit and vegetables may have a family cow, ox, or water buffalo to provide them with manure, but if not, it is the farmers themselves who provide the manure. I feel pretty confident that this is a fairly extreme case more common in the rural places here and not so much of a concern in the city, like where I am. But still, IF YOU CAN'T PEEL IT, DON'T EAT IT! Having thoroughly washed and rinsed the grapes, they are now ready for consumption. So, the grape bunch goes back in the bowl, bring another bowl with you and sit down in front of CCTV9! Now, here's the trick. Instead of peeling the grape by hand, which would really be labor intensive and almost not worth the effort, you gently squeeze the grape to burst the skin and suck out the pulp. Be sure to spit out the seeds because they haven't heard of seedless grapes here yet, and toss the skin away. Hence, the second bowl for discarding seeds and skins. Enjoy! Oh yeah, the green grapes here have a kind of sweet and sour taste...not too bad. Grapes are growing on me. Especially after eating half of the bunch in one sitting.

I also put my cooking lesson to good use for dinner tonight and made myself some boiled jiao zi. Boiled jiao zi is definitely not my favorite mode of preparing it, it comes out a little slimy and can be difficult to pick up with the chopsticks. Oh well.