Dinner for 7 at 4-5-6

First off, mad props to bunj for going out of his way to ferry me back to the North Side last night. Thanks to you, Chief, I scored! You truly are All-Time MVB.

I met up with him, luckymarty, o_nut, lifeandstuff, prilicla, and lhn* at Moon Palace for a yummy Chinese feast. We started with pot stickers, onion pancakes, and something I never even knew existed--sticky-rice shiu mai! I don't know who exactly to blame for the surfeit of chicken--white-cooked chicken, cashew chicken and shrimp, General Tso's chicken--( Aside #1 )

--because prilicla and I ordered Sichuan fish and "sukiyaki seafood", respectively,( Aside #2 )

and steer-friendly lhn ordered sesame beef. bunj chose the dish with best presentation, a tasty sizzling beef served on a steaming hotplate.

They had all been to see the Qianlong exhibit at the Field Museum and come away with questions they hoped I could answer.( Aside #3 )

First of all, there were the ubiquitous bats. Of course, everyone knows that 蝠 "bat" is a homophone (fu2) for 福 "good luck". But why are they always upside down? Because, I suspect, 倒 "upside-down" is a homophone (dao4) for 到 "arrive". Thus, "upside-down bat" = "luck which has arrived". I was stuck on the fish, though. luckymarty reported the captions saying they connoted "abundance", but why? I should know this because we researched it for New Year's last year, but the pun is 餘 "surplus".

Not that the captions should be trusted too much, though. lhn found particularly amusing the description of Qianlong's "long peaceful reign" in one place and the reference to the increased availability of jade after the "pacification of the West" in another. They were all confused by a reference to the "Buddha" Mañjuśrī, who is actually a bodhisattva.( Aside #4 )

He is sometimes found flanking the Maitreya Buddha, but also the Amita Buddha. (As one might expect, Buddhist iconography is every bit as complex as Christian and proper identification of a divinity can depend on a detail as simple as whether the bowl in his hand is covered or not.)

*(Note: Names not given in proper Confucian hiaerarchical order.)

Spielender Eisbär!, or, Sunday in the park with Clare

My Saturday naps paid off and I found myself not terribly tired on Sunday. Around midmorning, I roused niemandsrose and we made plans to do the Lincoln Park Zoo and Conservatory. Then I puttered a bit, went back to bed, and got up just in time to hop a bus southward.

She got held in Brown Line construction madness, so I hopped out at the north end of the park and took a stroll around the east side of North Pond. A sorry substitute for the forest outing kmon organised for Saturday morning, to be sure, but it wasn't without its rewards, including a group (family?) of six turtles sunbathing on a dead tree. They were entirely motionless with the exception of the smallest, who was also the furthest forward on the log, and the largest, who occupied the strategic position where the main trunk sank into the water. The little guy was slowly scrabbling forward, but came to a stop as I approached and then just swayed his head slightly; the big one very slowly and deliberately surveyed the scene, as if scanning for hidden dangers on a sunny spring day.

( They weren't the only beasts out. )