Baked potatoes, stir-fry and arranged marriages

The weeks seem to be going by rather quickly - which I'm happy about. I'm ready to move on to life where I'm not stuck in a dorm with 30 University students and no kitchen!! Also looking forward to a visit home over the Christmas holidays. I miss wine, beer, food and mostly friends and family. Luckily I had a small taste of home this past week when I received a small package from my parents containing a bottle of Three Floyd's Alpha King beer which never tasted so good, and who knew you could send beer through the mail!!
Other than dreaming about home-cooked meals I've been continuing my studies in Chinese in a snowy, icy Haerbin. Yesterday I woke up to fresh sheets of ice covering the streets and the sidewalks and the realization that while the Chinese are a bit too eager to put an extra helping of salt on their stir-fry there seems to be a shortage for preventing hospitalizing slips and falls. Or maybe they just have a good sense of humor - as I walked... or skid rather, to class I was amused at the hundreds of students, some wearing high heels slowly making their way through the icy terrain all wearing a look of concentration and fear! Later-on I found that not all walkways were left untouched. Outside of our dormitory I found our small Ayi scraping ice off of the sidewalks with a small ice-pick.... And on other sidewalks there were signs of efforts to scrape the ice away - small scratches at the ice surface that looked like dug into the side walk leaving small animal looking hieroglyphics.
So it has been cold here but apparently not as cold as recent years. Haerbin receieves cold winds from the Siberia and has an average winter temperature of -18 degrees celsius which is about 0 degrees Fahrenheit. But it's probably only about 0 Celsius right now (32 Fahrenheit).
The food hasn't been bad here but I am looking forward to some good home cooking. Lately I've been eating a lot of baked sweet potatoes for breakfast or lunch and for dinner finding small stir-fry stations who usually cook something up using fresh vegetables and a simple homemade sauce. There's a small potato bake near my school so every morning I visit the two women who run the stall and pick from a batch of piping hot fat sweet potatoes! They've come to expect my visit and are now concerned if I don't show up at my normal time. The trick is to show up right when they're pulling the potatoes out but before a crowd rushes down to consume them all! Which is often difficult in a country with 1.5 billion people!
The stir-fry stations are also quite amazing. There is one that makes stir-fried noodles - whole made noodles with vegetables and a stewed beef. As a chinese roadside chef there is little time to rest. Throughout the day it is one dish after another and the speed at which two or three men/women can make a dish is quit amazing. One cutting vegetables and preparing small oils or sauces to be used in the dish when ready, another kneading the dough, then pounding it into a long strip, pulling at it to make a arms length rope, folding it and pulling again so that it is now two long ropes, folding and pulling again until there is a pile of noodle that in under a minute were transformed from a blob of dough! I wonder if the italians have any sort of methods like that when they make their noodles? I always thought they rolled the dough flat to cut strips. Actually the proper name of the above chinese noodles is lamian meaning pulled (la) noodles (mian). The young chef that I like the most does this process with extreme vigour and excitement (he must love his job). After pulling the dough to his wingspan length he slabs the rope of dough down on to the table giving it and those around him a shock! He quickly then makes the noodles tosses them in the already blazing wok and engages in a fiery battle of producing the meal. The fire envelops the whole wok at certain points in the process as he waves his wand like metal ladle! It's almost like Harry Potter, and reminds me of when Tom used to carry around a ladle that he claimed was his wand or weapon of some sort. In the end it's a pretty decent meal, fun to watch simple but good. When I went this past week he had been replaced by a grumpy looking large boned lady. I inquired after him and found that he had taken a 3 day train back to his hometown in the South of China. His parents had arranged a meeting for a perspective wife. If they like each other he may never come back! Hopefully he will make her happy with some good cooking!
Arranged marriages are still very common in rural areas although nearly unheard of in the cities. While many city-dwellers were once from the country-side there is a huge gap not only in material wealth between urban and rural but also a gap in cultural ideas and practices. The rural poor have never had proper land rights that would allow them to organize cooperatives or lease land for the more efficient production that could then be used to enter food markets. Because of this many are tied to the land and if there is low production many farmers seek jobs in the burgeoning construction or manufacturing industry often leaving families back in the countryside. China recently changed land rights so that farmers can now lease, subcontract or trade their land that the government has partitioned for them. Not sure if this will change things but if may lead to larger profits in the rural areas but could also lead to pooling of money and land into fewer and fewer hands... And perhaps the end of the rural culture, heritage and way of life. I'll have to get out there before it does!