Blogging
From Abroad

Earlier this week, someone told me that my posts were chock full of foodstuffs. And it’s true. I am so incredibly taken by Chinese cuisine, which is different from anything to be experienced outside of Asia, that I am chronicling it like food is going out of style.

Of course, this habit can also be explained by my heavy predilection towards all things culinary. My absolute favorite way to relax is to cook and I routinely helm large dinners for family and friends. There’s something so energizing about the creativity and rhythms of food preparation for me that almost every night finds me in my kitchen for an hour or so.

Preparing and sharing food is a strong bond between people, nowhere more so than in China. Eating is serious business here and people treat it accordingly. There are strong views on the best way to prepare and showcase special ingredients and it seems almost everyone is familiar with the various regional specialty foodstuffs. Whenever you enter a location-specific gift shop in China (of which there are more than plenty), the first thing you generally see are the regional delicacies stacked like gifts on the shelves. Giving gifts of food are standard etiquette, as is fighting over the right to pick up the check for the rest of the dinner party. Thanks and respect are extended alongside a dinner invitation. When I asked the Chinese students in my ESL class what they most missed about China, every single one answered food.

Now, I have been accused on more than one occasion of showing love through food, a crime for which I find no fault. It was something special for me to be able to make my grandmother’s pie crusts for my grandfather long after she was no longer with us. It was special to be able to let my brothers know what my favorite Japanese food tasted like days after returning from my high school study abroad by serving it to them. It’s a special sign of regard and affection that my boyfriend’s great-grandmother’s pierogi recipe is now sitting in a card box in my kitchen, presented to me by his grandmother with the utmost of ceremony late one night in her kitchen. There is more being shared in these encounters than simple nourishment.

My wonderful language teacher (Li Laoshi) and I have traded several of our respective ancestral recipes and have exchanged mailing addresses to continue to do the same. On the day I gave her my grandmother’s treasured pie crust recipe, she brought a selection of traditional baked and boiled sweet edibles to me, which were gratefully and happily passed around the classroom. On a boat in Guilin, my seatmate and I couldn’t have been more different. I speak limited Chinese, she spoke no English. She was a 60-something Chinese housewife, I was a 20-something American student. After 5 minutes of conversation we had run out of things to say to each other. But, after sharing my melon seeds with her, reciprocated on her part with some smoked meat, we found ourselves laughing together on top of the boat as she told me in very slow and careful Chinese about “apple rock” and how her mother had taken her here years before as a small child. I seem to have similar stories from everywhere I have visited in China. A handful of shared peanuts lets me know the person beside me wants to start a conversation. Gifts of maple candies from home are treasured so much and given such attention that my new friend forgets her umbrella on the bus. Culture-shock induced tiffs are smoothed over by a bowl of spicy fish dumplings. My “buddy” Natalie expresses her concern for my allergic reaction to Suzhou dustbunnies by bringing me breakfast of fresh baozi and pineapple juice in bed days after we first connect over melting honeydew ice cream on a sunny canal bridge. A friend goes completely above and beyond the call of duty one day in helping me organize my stay to China; in fact, acquiring and paying for train tickets on my behalf. When I try to pay her back, she refuses. “Just take me to dinner one night,” she says. And I will.

Part of why we exchange students have been asked to blog about our experiences is to share them with those who are curious about what visiting another country is like, perhaps even this country in particular. And while I can bring you the sights of China, I cannot share the sounds, the scents, the physicality of this experience in any way other than the visual and the verbal. Perhaps through including, as I am about to from this moment on, special recipes in some of my posts, you can travel alongside me in another, more tangible way through the realms of your senses. Perhaps we can bridge the gap of location and experience through the sharing of these things.