Jun. 29th, 2005 04:26 pm
Qing xie yizhang shouju...
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muckefuckMonday night, we celebrated the end of the term with dinner at Lao Sichuan. As language practice goes, it wasn't a zit on the bum of the previous dinner, where we did a fair job of speaking only Chinese. With all the background noise, my comprehension was shot to hell. Our special guest, Liu Laoshi's sister, gamely tried to chat with each of us about our Chinese names, but eventually capitulated to the inevitable--though she did teach me to say, "Please give us a receipt in the amount of $20" [the portion paid for by the CMAA]. Too bad the waitress almost immediately turned to Liu Laoshi for clarification.
She was outraged by our insistence on treating her (her sister assured us she's always been like that), so we let her buy us all bubble tea at a Vietnamese place closer to the centre of the mall. (My young coconut shake was probably the best Asian fruit drink I've had anywhere.) We sat on the tower steps to drink them and chat about this and that, such as Mozhu's spider research. (According to one of her colleagues, "You're never more than three feet from a spider.") I saw some kids down below playing the slap game and springboarded from that to a discussion of what games the sisters played when they were little. Liu Laoshi ended up teaching me a simple, Schuhplattlen-like dance for two (which I did very gingerly, lest my steel-tipped boots send an 80 year-old woman tumbling down a flight of concrete steps).
It occurs to me I should say something about the dishes. The tea duck was okay, as were the Chinese-style edamame, but the excellent boiled pork in chili sauce was too spicy for me to eat very much of. Liu Laoshi was disappointed that the mussels were freshwater; they had no texture. The standout dish, as far as I'm concerned, was the salt-and-pepper smelt. They were cooked and served with an equal number of chili peppers, so the dish actually had some zip to it (although without taking the top of your head off).
She was outraged by our insistence on treating her (her sister assured us she's always been like that), so we let her buy us all bubble tea at a Vietnamese place closer to the centre of the mall. (My young coconut shake was probably the best Asian fruit drink I've had anywhere.) We sat on the tower steps to drink them and chat about this and that, such as Mozhu's spider research. (According to one of her colleagues, "You're never more than three feet from a spider.") I saw some kids down below playing the slap game and springboarded from that to a discussion of what games the sisters played when they were little. Liu Laoshi ended up teaching me a simple, Schuhplattlen-like dance for two (which I did very gingerly, lest my steel-tipped boots send an 80 year-old woman tumbling down a flight of concrete steps).
It occurs to me I should say something about the dishes. The tea duck was okay, as were the Chinese-style edamame, but the excellent boiled pork in chili sauce was too spicy for me to eat very much of. Liu Laoshi was disappointed that the mussels were freshwater; they had no texture. The standout dish, as far as I'm concerned, was the salt-and-pepper smelt. They were cooked and served with an equal number of chili peppers, so the dish actually had some zip to it (although without taking the top of your head off).
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