Well, I'm not in China, yet. But I am eating Chinese food! Even being in America one can learn so much about Chinese habits (习惯), viewpoints (看法), customs, and traditions (习俗). In the dining hall one evening I was waiting in line to cook my own food in the conveniently supplied cooking pot (锅) when a Chinese teacher commented on how very strange American food is. Pointing at the raw vegetables she was about to stir fry, she said that in China what we Americans eat as a meal is really just "ingredients" to the Chinese! Raw veggies? Never! It's not a dish until it's flavored with a little of this spice, a little of that oil, some soy sauce, and a healthy dose of garlic (or at least from what I've seen of the garlic-loving Chinese teachers at our 中文学校 this summer).
Thankfully, however, I'm not just learning about Chinese food from observing the teachers who take a few ingredients over to the cooking pots in the dining hall, hoping to improve their meal (although my personal fried rice has improved tremendously because of it). I also go to cooking class once a week! We don't "cook" so much as "prepare" the food, which, in my opinion, is the best part anyway. We've "包饺子", stuffed dumplings, "炒饭" fried rice, and this evening we “包馄饨” or "stuffed wontons". Not quite as round-bellied as dumplings, the wontons that we stuffed this evening are meant to go in a soup. With just a few cut onions and other greens, a little soy sauce, some hot sauce that, if used too liberally, will make you gasp for breath and sweat all the soup out of your pores, and tiny shrimp the soup is complete! Unfortunately, I have no photo of the finished product. However, when I went into the kitchen to wash my hands I stumbled across a strainer full of hundreds of little black eyes staring up at me. I must say, they were excellent in the soup...