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Published: April 27th 2014
Now that the year is dying down, we have had the chance to explore a lot more of Xi'an and we don't plan to stop until we go home. We don't have a whole lot of time left, and school isn't the most interesting (to put it lightly) so we have decided to just explore whenever the opportunity presents itself! We will now have a series of shorter blogs with more pictures to show all the places we are going.
A couple weeks ago our school took us out on a trip to a village about two hours away from the city. They never say much - communication isn't as easy between the Chinese - so we weren't quite sure what to expect, but I sure am glad they took us! We had a blast! I'm definitely not a city girl, especially in a growing city of over 8 million people, so these little towns are really the places I am going to miss when we return to America. They are bursting at the seams with culture.
Before going into the main streets of the village, there is a broad street with hotels and restaurants all connected on the
Lunch
Besides the alcoholic rice, we had yummy spicy noodles and special bread dipped in spice.sides. We wanted to work our way down the street so we went inside the first doors. That place was a restaurant on the bottom and a hotel on the top. The adorable old man who owned it showed us all the rooms in hopes that we would stay. Given the Chinese standard of a hotel room, they were actually pretty decent! We went back down and had the intention of leaving but the man really wanted us to stay for tea and talk. We didn't want to give up an opportunity to get to know him so we agreed... and so did our wallet. We only wanted a small snack, as we figured everyone would do this kind of thing, but he really wanted us to get more, of course. This is a normal occurrence. We were done ordering bread and noodles and he begged us to get one last thing. Apparently it is a specialty of Xi'an and we had to have it before we left. Now, this is when Chinese characters are extremely frustrating: The dish he ordered for us used the word
zao which we know as part of another word,
zaogao, which means terrible. Another
character was the one for rice. So we ordered terrible rice? We just figured it was one of their weird Chinese ways of titling food that makes no sense to us. Well they finally brought out the rice dish and it turns out that same exact
zao has another meaning: pickled in wine. We did not find this out until after we both took big bites of the rice and it was absolutely terrible. It was cold and swimming in alcohol. The poor guy came over, told us that it takes four months to make that rice, and asked how we liked it. In any other country we would take this as a missionary opportunity, but here not drinking alcohol doesn't translate quite the same. The man ordered us more delicious spicy noodles and we went on our way. It really was a delicious lunch otherwise!
Walking down the alley of the village there are shops after shops of specialty foods. People come from all over Xi'an to buy the handmade goods sold in this village. The ladies working in the shops all wear colorful plaid bandanas over their heads. Many of them are quite old and their daughters
Wall of Noodles
They put these noodles out to dry in the sun all day. We bought a pack and they are the most delicious noodles we've bought here! Once we are out, we are going back to buy more. work with them. There are noodles, sugary bread, sesame balls, yogurt, popcorn, and more being sold all through the village. Almost every place had things you could taste, so we got to taste most everything. We were a little iffy about the homemade yogurt as dairy products aren't reliable at all in China, but we were astonished that it was some of the best yogurt we have ever had. And it was cold! Very rare here. We also stopped by the man selling scorpions, as you can see, and you can't go to China without eating a scorpion! It was only a few kuai for four fried scorpions in a cup. I have eaten them before, but they were on a stick when I ate them last so I didn't have to touch them. This time you had to choose your scorpion and look it in the eye before chomping off it's little head. Sorry little guy, but the man says you are delicious so I am going to eat you. Mmmm mmm! He tasted like popcorn. Seriously! Not a bad snack. You just have to avoid the massive bucket of live scorpions in front of the seller if you
want to gain the courage to eat a fried one.
Everything about the village was wonderful. The people, the food, the culture, the atmosphere. We will be making one more trip back there before we leave!
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