“Contentment Brings Happiness” (Chinese: 知足常乐; Pinyin: zhīzú cháng lè)

The Sky Over Langfang

April has been fairly uneventful, that is until the very end of the month.  Whereby, I’ve been swamped with activates and visits from friends.  It’s been great.  One misfortune that struck was a bout with the flu.  I got sick around the middle of the month and spent three days curled up in my bed in my apartment.  It wasn’t pretty.  However, I came through to the other side and now I’m feeling much better.  I’m still working on a food blog that describes how to cook my favorite Chinese recipes, but it’s been delayed for at least another week.  Today’s blog is just a retelling of the past two weeks and all the great things that happened.

English Club

I’m the only foreign teacher at NCIAE and it’s my duty to serve the students to the best of my ability.  Unfortunately, I’m limited to what only one man can do.  Another problem is that the school has yet to give me a meeting room for English Club.  Part of my agreement with NCIAE is that I meet with the students at least once a month for English Club.  It’s basically just a meet and greet where the students can have fun and practice their English.  Since I don’t have a meeting room, the English club has relocated to my apartment.  I don’t mind.  I rather enjoy opening up my home to students and their friends.  Although, it is rather limiting as I only have so much room.  But, we make do with what we have.  We will play an assortment of games for English Club.  Sometimes we will play cards games like UNO.  Or we might play Pictionary or gestures.  Other times we might have a singing competition, a dance competition, watch a movie, or just simply talk.  There are no real rules or structure to the meetings.  It’s just a fun place to hangout.  Sometimes we will even cook dinner together.

Italian Style Dinner

About two weeks ago, my freshmen approached me and asked if I could cook Italian style food.  One of my freshmen, Liu Lin, had recently watched a movie where the main character was enjoying some spaghetti.  She then wanted to know if I could cook spaghetti.  I told her that I could and then I invited Liu Lin, and others, to come learn how to cook spaghetti.  Thus English Club transformed for one night into an Italian Style Cooking Club.  The nearby Walmart had all the ingredients I needed and we stocked up to cook three different dishes: spaghetti, salad, and garlic bread.  The recipes are incredibly easy.  For the spaghetti: we boiled the noodles and heated a premade jar of sauce in an open skillet on low heat.  We added sautéed onions to the sauce and let it simmer while stirring constantly.  The salad was fresh cut cucumbers and carrots with premade creamy Caesar dressing.  Lastly, for the garlic bread, we took slices of whole-wheat bread, spread butter over the top and then added a sprinkling of garlic powder and salt.  We then cooked the bread in a toaster oven.  I had a meal for eight done in twenty minutes.  The students loved the cultural experience of being able to try Italian Style food for the first time in their lives.

Dinner with Friends

My students aren’t the only ones who get to enjoy dinners with me.  Recently I’ve made friends with some engineers that work in the north of the city.  We’ve been hanging out more and recently they asked if they could come to my home and cook a Chinese style meal.  I agreed and my friends came over to prepare a real feast.  They cooked: 1) squash and eggs, 2) cold cuts of pork and beef, 3) lotus root salad, 4) cabbage and kale salad, 5) cucumber and garlic salad, 6) fired chicken, 7) cooked beans and pork bits, 8) and rice.  I cooked an American style dish for the crew which was pork, mushrooms and onions in a cream of mushroom sauce.  We ended up cooked far more than we could eat and there were a lot of leftovers.  However, in the Chinese culture it’s a sign of hospitality to have food left over.  I’m never one to let food go to waste so I sent care packages home with my friends.

 

The Surprise Birthday Dinner

I’m beginning to see that this blog is largely about eating.  It’s no wonder I can’t lose any weight this semester.  The next dinner I want to talk about is the surprise birthday dinner that I was given by two of my students and their friend.  Jia Jia and Cara are two of my freshmen students.  They are fairly shy and quite.  However, they are incredibly kind, very creative, and are incredible cooks.  Jia Jia sent me a message on April 29^th saying that she wanted to cook dinner for my birthday.  My birthday wasn’t until the 3^rd of May, however, May 1st-3rd is the Chinese Labor day holiday and the students would be traveling home during that time.  So, Jia Jia and Cara wanted to give me a birthday dinner before they left.  They showed up at my apartment with two big bags full of ingredients.  Then the shooed me out of the kitchen and told me not to come back in while they were cooking.  So I made my way into my room and spent the time talking with my brother over Skype.  An hour later, the girls called me into the living room for dinner.  What followed was an amazing surprise.  I can only describe what they cook as a delicious gourmet feast of dishes that had both a delightful taste and beautiful presentation.  I felt like royalty.  I even had a cardboard.  The meal included: 1) White carrot, pork and corn soup, 2) Oysters over starch noodles, 3) Potato, mushroom and chicken stir-fry, 4) Shrimp and Chinese okra, 5) Fish, 6) Squid and peppers, and 7) Birthday cake.  It was wonderful! 

Sports Day

Now for some stories that don’t correspond with food:

This past week was the NCIAE sports day.  NCIAE doesn’t have as big of a sports stadium as Langfang Teacher’s College, so they spread their sports day over a period of days.  Several of my freshmen girls were taking place in a cheer competition and I went to cheer them on.  There were two teams of 40 cheerleaders.  Both teams did a synchronized dance.  They danced to Toni Basil’s song “Hey Mickey.”  It was great.  None of my others students were competing in the competition this year so I ended up leaving after the dance and I didn’t stay for any of the other games. 

Turing 29

This past weekend I turned 29-years-old with mixed emotions.  Sadly, for my mother, her third son has now reached her proclaimed age.  Somehow the aging process stops for most ladies and any smart individual doesn’t ask how.  Personally I’m feeling a sense of maturity accompanied by apathy that’s causing me to regard the words of overly negative critics as entirely inconsequential.  There is, however, one comment I seem to be getting a lot of recently and it seems to be coming from a common source.  Several older ladies and young female students have been asked me about when I’m planning to get married.  One older lady went as far as to even say, “When are you going to fix your life.”  (Fix meaning marriage, naturally.)  This is becoming an increasingly difficult and irritating question to answer.  My first reaction is to say, “None of your business.”  However, this seems fairly rude.  There is also the reality that I don’t even have the prerequisite for marital bliss, i.e. a girlfriend.  I don’t really have an answer for this comment so if anyone has any good ideas for comebacks then please let me know in the comments below.  I do want to point out that these comments don’t come from my good friends.  My good friends have been nothing but nice and they have been treating me very well during this yearly transition.  They took me out to the park, to go on bike rides, and even to play pool.  My life may not be “fixed,” as that one lady has suggested, but it is truly rich indeed.  I have a good life that is full of meaning and purpose in China.  As the old Chinese idiom goes, “Contentment brings happiness” (Chinese: 知足常乐; Pinyin: zhīzú cháng lè).

“Happy Birthday” (Chinese: 生日快乐; Pinyin; shengrì kuàilè)

“How old are you?” (Chinese: 你多大了？; Pinyin: nǐ duōdàle?)

“I am 29-years-old.” (Chinese: 我今年二十九岁; wǒ jīn nián èr shí jiǔ suì)

“Contentment brings happiness” (Chinese: 知足常乐; Pinyin: zhīzú cháng lè).