All who are hungry

I can tell we're adapting to life here because we're eating well.

We eat rice and noodles with some vegetables, beans, and fish. We also eat a lot of fruit. We have two electric burners and a microwave in the apartment: no oven. We don't know if Chinese don't have ovens in general or if just this apartment doesn't. With Pesach, we'll supplement our diet with matzah. The produce is excellent, bred for flavor rather than appearance and longevity, as in the US. The only drawback to that is that we need to eat what we buy within a few days. There is very little fat in a traditional Chinese diet, but we supplement with Western exports such as Oreos and Dove chocolate, as do the Chinese. I guess the Chinese also get their fat from meat, especially pork, the main meat.

Today I went to the food store at the housewives' hour, while Blanca was in school. I'm sure my bruises from being pushed and shoved by grandmothers as we fought over the apples and carrots will heal quickly. The concepts of personal space or waiting in line just don't exist here. Thank God this store doesn't have shopping carts, or I could have sustained some serious injuries. I don't really have to go to the main store, except for specialty items such as milk--dairy sections are laughably small. I could buy pretty much anything from the backs of bikes, large wheelbarrows, people carrying baskets on their shoulders, and large tricycles. There's a meat vendor at the corner of the street where Blanca's school is. He sells raw meat from his large tricycle under a tree, in the heat and humidity. Don't worry about sanitation, though; he uses his handheld scales to keep most of the flies off.

Fish are sold live. A friend of mine who hunts and I have discussed the hypocrisy of being willing to eat meat but not kill it. I am a hypocrite; I send Zack for the fish. He's working on learning to fillet it, because they don't do that for you. Zack also cuts off their heads.

I have also been sampling street vendors' and small restaurants' wares. Each one specializes in one item. For lunch I usually buy rice and vegetables with fish, eggs, or beans, from the small rice and vegetable restaurants. If I want noodles, I go to a noodle stand. For scallion pancakes, I go to the scallion pancake place. The other day my stay in China became completely worth it when I found a dumpling place with "vegetable" dumplings down a small alley. There are also fried things, sweet things, cake things, and stuffed buns. I know what very little of this is called. I just point and eat.