Author Archives: Jack

Dong Bei Cai (Food of the Northeast)

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We have a dongbei restaurant on Wenchang Lu, just south of the Zhong Shan Dong Lu street. The food is the closest thing to good old British meat and potatoes that I’ve seen in China.  It’s not British food, but it duplicates the beef stew concept and adds the Chinese characteristics. CAUTION: Don’t view this post if you are really hungry.  I got the whole menu digitally captured.

The last couple photos are at Wenchang Gu, an old castle with a tea house.  Olivia’s cheesecake welcomes her to China and Guiyang.  I’m with a Brit, two Americans, and two Koreans.

The trouble with rats.

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I live in an old house with places for rats to get in. This is common in older homes, but not the new ones. I’ve been live trapping them and returning them to wild after several hours of detention.  I just wanted to be kind. I would keep them outside in the cage where the many cats of the neighborhood could come and discuss their trespass with them and convince them not to come back. The rats were perfectly safe inside the cage, but appropriately terrified.

Unfortunately, I saw one cross my living room, and previously they were limited to the kitchen, where the food is.  I used to catch one a week or so.  Well that has all changed.  About the same time I saw the living room rat I was trying to release another one from the live trap.  The little ****er wouldn’t let go of the inside of the cage. Finally I just dropped the cage and rat into a bucket of water, and that settled the defiance. I’m still after that living room rat. This is war . . .

PS: My Chinese friends think this is ridiculous. I should have been killing them all along.

 

Miao

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In 2004 I was teaching at Guizhou Normal University and the Waiban (Foreign Affairs Director) sponsored a trip to a Miao village outside of Kaili in the southeast of Guizhou.  We were forced to drink the wine (a sweet, rice based wine), listen to singers, watch dancers, look at the fantastic scenery, and so on.  If you tried to resist the wine, they made you drink another cup.  A fine time was had by all.

Back to the old routine

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I am falling back into my old routine with a new semester coming up.  I am sorry that I couldn’t meet with so many of my old friends in Traverse City, but I just didn’t have time.  I spent five weeks in Traverse City, but when I landed, I found that my old appraisal business was still generating work and I ended up doing five appraisals while I was there.

I am happy to be out of appraisal and back in China.  The rules in appraisals have changed drastically since I was active three years ago.  Also, I tried new software, which had a learning curve.  Finally I bought a new laptop with Windows 8 on it.  I hate Windows 8.  I am still looking for the Start Key.

Anyway, appraising took four of the five weeks and I had to get a few golf games in.  This left very little time for catching up with old friends.  I spent one evening with my sister in Detroit and one evening with my step-brother in Manistee. Stay tuned for my Manistee Hummies video, which will be online soon.

 

I am back safely.

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After five weeks in the USA I am back to my home in Guiyang.  It’s still here and it looks like things are good for the coming year.  I immediately turned on the English CCTV News upon my return.  I was relieved to discover that everything is good still in China.  There are no scandals of significance and although there are problems, there seems to be nothing that the government isn’t up to handling. The news is very different than in the US.

My plants have prospered in my absence. The weather is about 64 degrees.  The taxi driver said that the weather was in the middle 70’s earlier today.  In Shanghai it was about 96 or 97.Even though we are much further south, the mountains and prevailing winds help Guiyang stay comfortable in the summer.