Everyone slept in a bit this morning. The roosters didn’t crow until 4:14 – about ten minutes off schedule. The black Mastiff at the school gate started barking about 4:25. He is usually right in sync with the rooster but today a little off for some reason. Perhaps the front coming in has everyone a bit behind his and her normal routine. The dorm is quiet. I can hear occasional coughing or a toilet flush but for the most part it is deep quiet. It’s my favorite time of the day anywhere in the world and here especially. I wake up to the rooter alarm clock, make a welcome cup of tea, check the weather out my door, and write the blog. It’s a great way to transition from sleep, which for the most part has been fine. I’m in bed by 9; watch a little downloaded TV but am usually asleep before the plot thickens.
The comfort level in the rooms is fair. I have my own room. At the last minute my roommate from Bratislava fell and injured herself and had to cancel. It would have been great to know here but I’m also happy to have my own digs. The physical space is pretty large; about 450 square feet. There are 3 single beds, the other two I use for my stuff. As a storing surface they are great! As a sleeping surface on the other hand the bed is really hard, just a box spring. I snatched the extra pads off the unused beds and it helps a bit. Combined with my silk sleeping bag liner, the thin comforter gives adequate coziness. The only other furniture is a couple of night tables, a desk and a closet. There is no chair or décor. The bathroom is one big room; the Brits refer to it as a “wet bathroom”: one room for the do not flush an extra thing down toilet (my seat & lid are broken,), sink and shower. The shower is a very low quality detachable wand/head set up that hangs on a somewhat broken hook below the hot water tank. It just trickles water but the water is hot and this is a great boon. When I stayed at Chen Bing’s place before we had hot water once or twice the whole time. Over all the set up is dusty, odoriferous and fairly dirty by western standards. I cleaned a bit but it’s hard to keep that up. Besides, it really doesn’t matter. After all, we are not here to vacation are we?
The dorms have common balconies and our group is all on the same floor. We naturally gather there before we walk across the training commons for meals. It’s a wonderful group and I could not feel more grateful to be here with them. The demographic is 50-70 +/- a few years. Folks have been training from three to many years and there are a couple of other teachers aside from Davidine, David & myself. Even the beginners have excellent basics, as I would have suspected coming from David and Davidine. Our routine has settled into 30 minutes of standing, 30 minutes of Silk Reeling and 90 minutes of form, (a few movements each session), 2x per day. On our breaks we shop for shoes & training pants, walk around town and rest. We eat at 8 am, 12:45 pm, and 6:45 pm. We all have the intention to train more but our thighs have other ideas about that!
Last night just as I was about to put my rebel thighs under the trickle of hot water, Davidine knocked on my door. “Meet at the Gate in 10 minutes,” she said, “Chen Zi Quan is taking us for dinner in Wenxian.” Anyone who has followed my China adventures before knows that dinner in Wenxian is my favorite distraction. Usually it comes mid-training just when I cannot take the school meals one more time. Wenxian is the provincial capitol of about 400,000 people and it is a culinary Mecca as far as I’m concerned. In the past I have enjoyed the tastiest meals of meat, vegetables and “other.” Even though I didn’t recognize much of what I ate, my taste buds and salivary glands were not to argue the minutia! On our drive over I mentioned to Chen Zi Quan that I was allergic to peanuts and shellfish. He said no problem; we were going to a place that featured chicken that was cooked in a pot in the earth. Yah baby!
Well, I have to admit I was a bit unnerved as we walked in. The sanitation in rural China is a bit tough to take and this place would have not passed any health inspection by many miles. Additionally eating raw food washed in the water is not a good idea so my digestive nervous system went on high alert when we chose from the kitchen display our accompaniments of cherry tomatoes, cilantro, and unspecified jelly strips, among other green, yellow and red raw “others.” My tummy calmed down though when we were met with our earthen cook stove, one for each room. It was glorious! A deep, wide clay caldron filled with dark bubbling broth. A bag of spices swirled around dipping down and popping up to the top like a firecracker. Pieces of chicken bobbed up and down in the brew. Small pancake-like pieces fried bread lined the bowl. Red chili peppers glistened on top. I knew anything put in there would be killed immediately.
Our waitress instantly brought in our accompaniments. Some were fried and to be eaten on their own, others poured into the bubbling liquid. The trick to eating all this was dependent on how successfully one could reach in with chopsticks and get one’s chosen morsel out. It took me several tries, with Chen Zi Quan laughing at me dropping my piece over and over again. Finally I retrieved my chunk of chicken from the bubbling brew, successfully brought it up over the rim and plopped into my bowl. I was quite proud of myself until I began to recognize exactly what part of the chicken I acquired. If you are sensitive to these things you should stop reading now.
The crown is what gave it away. I could not quite make the morsel out until I recognized the sloping ridges lying sideways in my bowl. I turned it over, sat it up to where the eye was looking right at me. I looked up at my dinner companions and enthusiastically stated, “I got the head!” I knew this was considered the delicacy of the bowl and though for a moment I thought about throwing it back, I also knew my fate was sealed when Chen Zi Quan looked at me, gave me a thumbs up and said, “good!” And then, the table was quite. I know they were curious if I was seriously going to eat it. After all, no Westerner wants to eat the head of any animal because the thought of it is just too gross for our delicate sensitivities. But that logic is sort of ridiculous. If you really think about it, for chickens, what truly is the difference between eating a wing, a thigh, a foot or a head? In fact, the foot is actually more disgusting if you follow that logic but people eat feet all the time. So all this was flying through my head, talking me into bravely meeting my challenge, which I did of course with all the panache I could muster.
The crown itself is a texture that is a cross between silky-smooth and gelatinous. It slips off the head and into your mouth effortlessly. I thought perhaps I might gag but I actually really enjoyed it! It was fully of amazing flavor. We found out later it had been simmering in that fragrant brew, along with the rest of its body part companions, for several hours. Interestingly I found the head to be much more meaty than I expected. Chickens here are true farm chickens; there are no antibiotics or hormones. They scratch around and are scrawny by Western standards so the experience of eating one is quite bony. However, along the skull there were two nice chunks of meat! I was thrilled. Somewhere in that bite I mus have also gotten the eyes. And now, came the true test of my muster: the brains. The table informed me that there were all kinds of fantastic nutrients in the brain and it was really the best part of the chicken for this sort of thing. So, suck the brains out I did. What a high! I got some sort of blast of something (other than relief it was over) and felt just great. I beamed at my dining companions and got a hearty “Hun Hao!” (Very good!). The rest of the meal consisted of noodles, all hand pulled, and more layers of “other” tossed in. I slept quite well last night, belly full of another successful culinary adventure in Wenxian!
The roosters and I are both running late now. Time for up and at ‘em and day 3 of training! Salute!
Kim
When in Rome...I for one am proud of you for choosing such a culinary adventure. A memory to carry through the future. Even being a meatless eater, I found your post entertaining. Sponge on!!
Posted by: Cat Boyd | October 18, 2011 at 10:41 PM