This past weekend we got a good dose of Chinese culture... and loved every minute of it! On Saturday we went to see our friends Allison and Alex again. Allison is Chinese. Alex is Romanian. They are getting married next year. Allison has become one of our best Chinese tutors.
The agenda for Saturday night included learning how to make dumplings and learning how to play mah-jong. The dumplings were a lot of fun. Allison showed us how to best fold the dough wrappers so that they don't fall apart when you cook them. The best part of the dumplings was getting to eat them! They were delicious. We made so many that Allison sent us home with a plate of dumplings and instructions on how to cook them.
Mah-jong was an adventure. The rules resemble rummy, so I caught on quick enough. I just still don't understand some of the strategy of the game. The different tiles have different catagories, like a deck of cards. One of the categories had the Chinese character for the numbers 1-9. Luckily, I've learned these, so I was able to play okay. Brian and I were on a team. We lost consistently, but we had a great time. Some of Allison and Alex's friends from work joined us. Around the table were three Americans (two of those were us), two Romanians and three Chinese. It was a lot of fun listening as people switched between languages. Brian and I are slowly starting to pick up some of the Chinese.
Sunday night we continued our Chinese culture weekend by watching "The House of Flying Daggers." We watched it in Chinese with English subtitles, so we could test what we knew and learn a few new words. "The House of Flying Daggers" is a Chinese film by the popular Chinese director, Zhang YiMou. The epic story takes place in ancient China. There was a lot of kung fu action as two men battle evil empires, each other and the beautiful kung fu warrior, Mei. Kung fu martial arts are very much a part of Chinese culture and history. A friend once told me that there are stories from hundreds of years ago of kung fu masters who were so well developed that they could fly and run through the trees. This is why you often see this in kung fu fights in the Chinese movies. Brian hates this. During a scene in the movie where all the warriors were running through the tops of bamboo trees Brian said, "I just don't like this stupid crap." To which I replied, "It's not crap, it's culture!" We've learned that in a marriage we both don't always have to like all the same things.
