Ni Hao! After the better part of 2 days to kind of turn my Circadian Rhythms around, I think I’m here “for real”.

I definitely have one more Chinese word in my vocabulary. Besides “Ni hao” and “xie xie” (yeah, I misspelled it in the previous title), I have added one that sounds like “pee-jo” … which means BEER. OMG! We were getting served beer at almost every lunch and supper (it runs anywhere from 2% to 3.8% in China, depending on the region and the brewer). We consistently experienced three brands: Tsingtao, Snow, and Yanjing, all of them rice-based (compared to the wheat-based brews we are used to). Much lighter in flavor, still very good.

This time around, we also got to experience some very different foods. When you go to China, you must keep an open mind about food, that is for sure!! One supper, my “food buddy” Joe (the piano soloist and equally adventurous as I am in trying new foods) & I wondered what a particular item was. I mean, each of these smallish items looked like it had a slightly bulbous “head” with two “tentacle”-like things, so we decided that that plateful was of baby squids or baby octopi that perhaps had been sectioned somehow…. we each enjoyed several (I think we were the only two at our table that were eating them). After the meal was over, we learned from the conductor’s wife that those were DUCK TONGUES. Well, I guess that explains a few things…

Another food adventure: a dishful of pale, white “things”. Took one, tried nibbling it - pretty rubbery, but nice hot-spicy/pickled flavor. Yup, it was a pickled chicken foot. Nope, not much to really get out of it besides burning lips.

Then there were the several versions of *that* chicken dish that literally has the entire chicken in it, from head to feet. Pieced, of course.

Some of the best? In Inner Mongolia, the restaurant roasted a lamb over an open fire for us. Each table was first served a plateful of the seasoned lamb skin (crispy, well-seasoned, very nummy!), followed then by a plateful of the meat (also very tasty). Then, the following night we went to the shows at the Beijing National Theater (some to the opera “Rigoletto”, others to the Danish Male Chorus), we were served Beijing (Peking) Duck, along with other excellent dishes - absolutely wonderful! We got “tree ears” (pronounced something like “moo-er” in Chinese) in a number of dishes - in most of the cities we visited! Those are delightful, curly mushroom/lichen-type additions to any dish!!

Some of the odder dishes were in Wenzhou - the city is very seafood-oriented. Yes, we were presented with all sorts of seafood critters. Some of which were - according to American tastes - rather inedible (uhhhh, the dish full of a slimey-looking “fish” went universally untouched). We did sample the various jellyfish dishes and soups and other dishes (for the most part), and for many were unable to ID the components….

Next blog entry will cover another aspect of the Tour…. till then, “xie xie”!!