Herd on a Hill

At the back of Zu Qiu Park is a garden space where J's father has a small plot for vegetables. Of course it's winter so there's nothing growing there now, but we took a look at the fence he'd built up around the space. It was by far the most impressive of the other plots in the area, of which there were at least 20 others. I told him his was "very nice" (hen hao) and he said thank you (xie xie).

Then we headed past the garden plots and started up a slope through a forested area. It leads up to the top of a river dam, which was actually built by the Japanese during the war. The area J lives in is known as the Western Mountain Dam (Xi Shang Shui Ku), and it has some stunning views from up top. We actually climbed a considerable slope which leads up past the dam, so you can see to the west of Dalian and the river below. I'm not sure how many meters the climb is, but my guess is about 300 or so. It is a pretty steady incline, so nothing too difficult, and longer than it is high/steep. We also saw a number of other hikers on the way, as well as--and this was a bit surprising, but imaginable after some thought--a woman tending a herd of goats. I counted about 20 head of goats, some large and some fairly young. They were all milling about the side of one slope amongst the trees. W spoke to the woman watching over them, and then started digging through the leaves. Soon I realized he was scooping up acorns, and he passed a few to me. W called one over by saying "yang, yang, yang", which I later learned means goat (or sheep, depending on if it's a shan yang/goat or a mian yang/sheep). We started feeding the goats, who nibbled the acorns from our gloved hands quite happily. After that, we continued up the hill and made it to the top about 10 minutes later.

On the way down, the herd seemed to have moved to another area. We had picked up a few more acorns on our way down, so I put a few in my pocket and we threw the others back on the ground for future herds to find. Walking back through the park we saw two old men flying a kite (feng zheng) high up in the sky. They were sitting at the edge of the park chatting, seeming rather nonchalant about it. Further down the path, we saw a soccer team had emerged; about 20 junior high school aged boys were practicing dribbling and passing the ball up and down the field. There was also a young guy playing basketball by himself, and the soccer ball we'd kicked over the fence was no longer on the courts. 

Soccer Park

After dinner the other night, I took a walk with J's dad over to "Soccer Park" (Zu-Qiu Gong-Yuen). The night air was crisp, and I quickly put up my hood to keep warm. The park is just a 5 minute walk or so from their place, and it was nice to get some exercise after a very large dinner.

We had made a massive amount of food to eat over the new year holidays coming up, which I'd helped to make. It was fun to see how they make everything, and also to try and communicate with J's parents on my own (J was in the other room working on her computer). Her dad, W, showed me how to make a mixture of radish and pork, with some spices and flour mixed in, which I then scooped up in a spoon and dropped into frying oil to make a small fried ball of the mixture, called wanzi. We also made a dish a fried-fish (zha yu). W showed me how to make sure the fish didn't stick together after putting them in the oil, and also to lift the fried fish out of the oil once for a few moments with a wide laddle, then drop them back in for a minute, and then scoop them out one last time. It was a lot of fun, and made it all taste that much better knowing that I'd helped to make it.

The next day we had a large lunch, including the dishes above, as well as steamed buns (man tou) and corn porridge (yu mi zhou). Actually, I wish I could name ALL the different dishes we've had, but I'm sure I'll get to them, little by little--I'm a perpetual foodie blogger. Again, W and I strolled over to Zu-Qiu Park for some exercise. This time when we got there, I saw a forgotten soccer ball in the field. I ran out and gave it a kick toward the goal. W soon got the idea and joined me, so we passed it back and forth a bit, and then took turns as goalie. After a few minutes, one of the park staff came out and joined us too. He was a young guy and spoke a bit of English. I think he said he was a teacher, so I think he was a sports coach of some sort. Anyway, after about 20-30 minutes, we managed to kick the ball out of bounds and over a fence into the basketball courts. It wasn't a problem, but the end of our game, so we said farewell to the coach and W and I continued our stroll.

Welcome to Dalian

For the next month, J and I will be in Dalian visiting with her parents.
Also, I hope in the meantime to get a better handle on the Mandarin I've
been studying on-and-off for the last year or so. I started listening to
an audio series by Pimsleur, which has it's benefits, especially for
someone with an ear for music. However, at the end of the day, I need to
have something visual as well, and it's best to study a language from a
number of different aspects. So a while back I decided to invest in a
set of software by the company Fluenz, which is a more interactive
method of self-study, similar to the more well-known Rosetta Stone
series. Fluenz has gotten me a pretty good basis for sentence structure
and some vocabulary, and J has been practicing with me here and there.
Now that we're in Dalian, this is my best chance for immersion in the
language, so I'm planning to not only continue with the Fluenz program
(reviewing it a few times to really get down the vocabulary it covers),
but also attend a school for a couple of weeks.
Of course, that is a practical reason to be in China for now. The other
reason is to celebrate the Chinese New Year with family here, and also
as an intermediate launching stage for our next move, which will be to
Chicago. More on that later, but I wanted to try out a blog post from
here, where I can record this trip and keep people up on what we're doing.