Just arrived after 12 hours of travel... cheers! (Mi jiu - home brewed glutinous rice sprits)
Arrival breakfast!
Boiled sweet cabbage, chili sauce fatty pork, rubbery intestines with chili and
pickled onion.
Dried sweetcorn traditionally stored for the people during the winter, but now used for feeding Dad's pet pigeons (who I am assured will not become part of the food category).
During our stay we ate about 10 chickens. Apparently there is a tradition that you should save up all the heads of the chickens in an ongoing soup and only eat them at the end of the new year week... luckily we didn't follow that one.
When inviting guests to your house for lunch or supper it seems to be a competitive /pride aspect to see how early you can invite them. Lunch at 1030 or supper at 5pm. This picture is an early lunch - with obligatory hot mi jiu.
Spicy chicken's feet at the top left
Here we go! Certain brain death for the rest of the day.
Where the food comes from - all local, all fresh!
Don't ask where the fertiliser is from.
Every house has its own ferocious brew.
I probably just said something ridiculous like "Only one glass!"
Breakfast noodles. Ultra oily, ultra spicy, poached egg thrown in, served at 120 degrees centrigrade.
Every time at Applefield when Jenny has looked listless at breakfast time... this is what she wanted!
Classic new year spread.
Top row: steamed carp with ginger and chili; pig stomach with spiced tofu; spicy pig's trotter
Middle row: egg and glutinous rice pork meatballs; braised fatty pork hock; local sweet spinach
Bottom row: smoked bacon with spicy vegetables; sweetcorn chicken soup; chili stuffed tofu bunsThe small bottle is the throat-burning jing jiu, a sort of cross between dry sherry, becherovka, petrol, and fermented grass. It is considered medicinal, to be drunk when you are not drinking due to illness. It is only 37% alcohol.
Xiao Yezi has a penchant for super spicy dried tofu. I tried one piece and it made me cry. She just sits and munches through a whole bowl.
After food is cleared away, or whenever you visit someone's house, snack food spreads like this appear. Several different types of baked and sweetened/salted pumpkin and melon seeds, all sorts of nuts including local chestnuts, dried beans, mini cakes that taste like moist ash, dried fruit (tastes like car tyre), fresh fruit (which seems to be just ornamental), lychees and grapes (the exception, people eat them, possibly because they are small and don't imply that you are actually hungry), and always a small quantity of shop-bought tartrazine-enhanced gummi bear type candies ... soon to be polished off by me!
Plucking a duck
When you have lots of guests, the lesser family/guests get to sit at the big table in the hallway, and the senior Men sit at the inner table in the dining room.
Spicy fried prawns - a rarity in the countryside - are always laid on for my benefit.
Aunties lured out of the kitchen to receive credit for huge supper
The same Auntie taking two cows to town. I am putting this in the Food page rather than the Work page because she didn't have the cows with her when she came back.
Lunch of dumplings in soup with Granny on the way back through Zhuzhou
Whatever you do, carry your own food to Changsha airport and avoid their terrible, rude, overpriced, dirty restaurants!
Next: Work