Mindblowing Pork

I have not abandoned my pursuit of learning how to cook Chinese food, but definitely slowed down. I also found my few favorite dishes and make those over and over.

One of them is this pork, 鱼香肉丝 yú xiāng ròu sī, which means fish-flavored pork. There isn't any fish in it; fish-fragrant flavor is a Sichuan combination of salty, sweet, sour and spicy, or so I am learning. I am also a huge fan of fish-flavored eggplant, but have yet to recreate it to my satisfaction in our kitchen.

I found the pork recipe here via Chowhound, another Fuchsia Dunlop gem.

Here is my version, minus the bamboo shoots because I usually forget to buy them, and with whatever fresh brown mushroom I find in the market that week.

We usually have to fight Milan for the pork, he eats it up faster than we can. We're trying to eat as much Chinese food as possible in the next couple weeks before we go back to the States and gorge ourselves on hamburgers and Mexican food.

End of School Bike Ride

Only two more weeks of school left! This is the mad season of end-of-school musical and drama productions (both of which Tim was heavily involved in), last gatherings with so many friends who will be moving to other schools next year, and a recent notice that we need to move into a new apartment in the building next door before we go back to the States at the end of June. But today we forgot all that and went on an ambitious adventure. Our fearless leader, Ms. D. of Great Wall Half Marathon fame, led 8 teachers on a bike ride to a distant mountain which can be seen from our apartment building on a clear day: a mountain-top observatory affectionately know as Knob Hill.

It's a good thing we had a fearless leader because I was lost after the first two turns. We rode through some beautiful villages and enjoyed the clear and almost-cool weather morning.



After about an hour of riding we came to the base of the hill and began the uphill ride. Mostly it turned out to be a 2-hour uphill bike-push for us, since riding with Milan in the bike seat made the hills extra challenging.

The beginning of the uphill

Taking a break on the hill

Our goal in sight!

We all made it! Ms. D on the right is pointing to Beilun, where we started

We couldn't take a picture from the top of the mountain because it is a military zone and no pictures allowed. So this is a nice view on way down the hill. That downhill ride felt sooooooooo good!

We Came, We Ran, We Climbed!

The Great Wall Half-Marathon was this past weekend, and I am happy to say that now, three days later, the ache in my legs has lessened to the point where I don't have to wince, groan, or yelp every time I go up or down stairs.

But I get ahead of myself. In was a fantastic trip and both Tim and I finished the race! Yipee!

We were at the Huangyaguan section of the Great Wall a few hours outside of Beijing. We stayed at a small hotel in the village at the race site to avoid the early-morning bus ride to the Wall. Instead, we woke up and walked a few minutes to the start of the race while Milan stayed back in the hotel room with our friend and Milan's fabulous playmate, Ms. D.

The BEFORE shot: The race started around 7:30, but we hung back to join the second heat a little later.

The first section of the race was a gradual uphill climb for about 4km.

Then we reached the bottom of the Wall where we all climbed up to a breathtaking view.

Luckily, there was no pretense of running on the Wall. Maybe they tried to run in the first heat with all of the serious marathon runners, but we took the stairs carefully. The steps were irregular in size, shape and angle, so if you tried to go fast you risked falling on your head anyway.

Big steps, little steps

It did occur to me, as it may have already occurred to you, that it is a bit strange that this is our first time to see the Great Wall and we chose to run or walk as fast as we can through the place. I guess we'll have to go back and spent a little bit more time enjoying the scenery. Mostly I enjoyed a view of the step in front of me and watched my toes so I wouldn't fall.

Official count is 2582 steps for the half-marathoners. That's me in the lower left corner.

There were a few spots on the Wall that were single-file down a treacherous slope. We had a couple human traffic jams and got to hang out and chat with our fellow racers. We met other teachers at international schools in China, tourists from South Africa, and one 14-year old Canadian who is working to become the world's youngest female ever to run half marathons on every continent. As a side note, there was another runner doing the marathon who was running 52 marathons in 52 weeks! All kinds of amazing people and records being broken right there on the Wall.

We were on the Wall for about 4km. After that we ran on the road and through a village. Tim and I split up on the road and stopped taking pictures, except for this one, just to document the village section of the race.

The never-ending village maze

We trained on busy roads in China, so that part was no big deal. We also ran through villages during our training, but this one was predominately rock and dirt roads. The race course took us up rocky slopes and through fields with many many twists and turns. By this point the sun was beating down and it was dry and dusty. Not our favorite part of the race. I walked much of the village section so I could save my running for the road on the way back to the finish line.

The AFTER shot: We did it! 3 hours 10 minutes for Tim; 3 hours 23 minutes for Sarah

How can I have an entire blog post without a picture of the little man? I guess he ran around quite a bit while we were running around too.

Walking back to the hotel with Ms. D.

We are so glad we decided to do this race and are equally glad that it is over! We'll keep running, but plan for our next race to be on flat ground.

More pictures up on Flickr.

Dentistry and other Ningbo sightings

Yesterday we made a trip to the dentist in Ningbo to have some cavities filled. Just for the record, one for me, three for Tim (actually replacement of three of his old fillings, but still involved drilling). We had been there two weeks ago for a cleaning and it is a really nice dentist office, and there is even little play room for Milan. He was actually excited to go to the dentist with us again to play with the toys.

One of the games in the play room was this:


It is just like the old Operation game you used to play, but with teeth in an open mouth instead of body parts. Both versions are a little strange, when you think about it, but this seemed especially inappropriate in a dentist office.

Lucky for us, our dentist had a very steady hand and there was no screaming involved.

Next we headed to Starbucks, conveniently located next door. Since neither of us needed Novocaine for the drilling, we were able to sip our coffee without dribbling. I am betting that this is not a new summer flavor at the Starbucks State-side.

Black Sesame Green Tea Frappuccino. You can also order black sesame green tea jelly-roll to go with it

To complete the day, we headed over to Lao Waitan, a fancy neighborhood of restaurants and a Catholic Church.

We took note of the mass times for your visit C. and J.!

So far this is the only place I know of where fireworks are not allowed. Everywhere else is fair game.

We had a quick lunch at the Indian restaurant, which would have been much more enjoyable if Milan wasn't melting down as naptime approached. But even a slightly cranky little boy couldn't ruin good chicken tikka and samosas.

Hope you all had a nice weekend and Happy Mother's Day!

Factory Week

You hear so much in the news about China, the land of factories. We are living in a middle of one-such area in China, where you can hardly take a bike ride without passing a little factory making one machined part or an entire machine. Last week there were two school field trips to local factories.

First, Tim took his Chemistry students to see some cool Chemistry at a magnet factory that manufactures very strong and very tiny magnets for Nokia cell phones. They also went to see electroplating at another factory that makes the last 10 cm of German cars like Audi and BMW: the chrome-plated tail pipe.

Here is Tim to describe the fine details of his field trip:

The students had a great time learning about magnets. They were most impressed by the free magnets they were given before the lecture. They couldn't stop playing with these fascinating little nickel-plated toys. Some of them even got some much larger ones that were extremely hard to take apart, and a little dangerous when they snapped together again. The large magnets are so powerful you can place one on top of your wrist and one on the bottom and they are still attracted.

These magnets are attracted to the coins in the student's wallet

It was also shocking to the students that so much work went into just one little part of a cell phone.

These are tens of thousands of little tiny magnets that must be checked, counted and sorted by hand.

These even smaller magnets are zinc-coated because they are exposed to the outside of the phone. They are sorted by hand, 100 to a square card.

The tailpipe factory was a huge production all for the last 2 inches of high-end cars. They even make the pipe for the Lamborghini. The students got to tour the whole factory line from R&D to the packing of the final product. However, the purpose of the trip was to see the electroplating. The pipes up to seven different layers of nickel, copper and chromium. The electroplating process uses electrical current that changes metals into ions (these dissolve into water) and then the ions change back into metal again, but onto the pipes. This involves large vats of warm, bubbly, colorful chemicals...oh, and it smelled bad too.

Chromium vat

Final product: shiny tailpipes

Despite what you might think about China's environmental record, the general manager of the factory said that there are very strict environmental regulations and their waste-water is closely monitored by the local government before it leaves the plant. They also recycle/sell the leftover metal sludge.

So there is your Chemistry lesson for the day.
Sarah back now to tell you about the less-technical, climb-on-trucks First Grade field trip.

Let me make myself perfectly clear: the tractors and other farm machinery made here at the John Deere factory are made for domestic China farms and some other Asian markets. John Deere for the U.S. are made in Iowa. At this factory they are building machinery to mechanize rice planting and harvesting for smaller-scale farms.

Honorary First Grader. It helps that his best friend's father is the factory general manager

After a slide show of big trucks and tractors, we had a fascinating tour of the factory line. At one end of the building we saw the engine being assembled, at the other end a tractor drove out the door.

And then we got to climb on some trucks.

One big wheel and one little boy

Climbing on tractors - can't get much better than that.

More Pie

Here are the berries I bought at the market last week. I didn't know they were going to cost me 130 yuan ($20) until after I had picked them out to be weighed.

杨梅 yángméi berries, Chinese Red Bayberries that are cultivated in our province, Zhejiang

Here is the little boy with the runny nose who loves to eat the berries.


Here is the pie I made while berry-eater was napping so I could take it to my book club that night.

Not the first-ever yáng méi pie, since I found the recipe on the internet. It is, however, my first lattice top pie!

Here is the friend who loves the berries and the pie.

She is the one who told me about these Chinese berries, so she gets the first piece of pie

I'm looking forward to more (and cheaper) yáng méi since the season doesn't officially start until June!