First off, I'd like to share the most entertaining bag of Lay's potato chips I think I've ever sampled:
ANYWAYS, moving on.
I just moved back into my dorm at Qingdao University, and overall don't feel too awfully starved or scarred from my home stay. Actually, the family turned out to be sweet in a pleasantly Chinese way. The coolest part of the homestay definitely took place Friday afternoon. Guan Shushu knows a lot of professors and folk in the QU Art department, and so he took me and two classmates Erin and Ashleigh to observe a real Chinese painting (国画）artist at work
It was amazing how much detail this guy could add to a monochrome watercolor painting using just some water, black paint, and an assortment of brushes and techniques. A whole painting was done in less than 10 minutes! The greatest part about the excursion, however, came at the end of the painting demonstration. Motioning toward his collection of paintings hanging on the wall, Artist Duan told us to pick which one we wanted to take a picture with. We happily obliged.
Afterwards, the artist Duan let each of us American girls pick our favorite painting to take home as a gift. So amazing. I'm sure that these paintings are priceless by any other measure.
Friday evening also presented another wild Chinese food encounter. When I got back to my Chinese family's seaside apartment, Liu Ayi, my Chinese mom, was darting around the living room in a frenzy, excitedly sputtering:
"Liang fenr! Liang fenr! Zhou Peng made some liang fenr and he's giving it to us! He'll be here any second!"
I had no idea what liang fenr was or why it would make Liu Ayi so darn excited, but I figured it must be something either horridly bizarre or very tasty. Hoping for tasty, I asked:
Me: "Liu Ayi, what's liang fenr?"
Liu: "You don't have liang fenr in America?"
Me: "Well, I'm not sure. I don't know what liang fenr is or looks like."
Liu: "Ooh! Liang fenr is a Chinese specialty. It's very good. Zhou Peng made it himself!"
Not very useful. I didn't know what at all to expect when Liu Ayi answered a timid knock on the apartment door.
Zhou Peng's homemade specialty, it turns out, was a plastic shopping bag filled to the brim with a brown, transparent, gelatin-like substance called liang fenr. Come dinnertime, Liu Ayi proceeded to completely fill a small rice bowl with the stuff and place it squarely in front of me. "Eat more! This is liang fenr, very good!"
Liang fenr has the flavor of salted gasoline and the consistency of pickled Jell-O. I did eat a reasonable amount in attempts to be polite, which resulted in Guan Shushu happily re-filling my little bowl. Sad, sad day. All the while, I couldn't help but miss America and solid, yummy Southern food.
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