so irresistible

I'm always grateful to find a helpful menu. Whoever made these translations wasn't intimidated by the English language. Here are a few things to choose from... "paragraph meat big slide," "sauerkraut monolithic", or the so irresistible "nausea sauce pork." Which one would you like? Monday, February 15, chu er, the second day of the Chinese New Year. I asked the kids if they'd rather go out exploring or watch movies and do nothing. An enthusiastic majority responded watch movies and do nothing. We convinced Sam and the girls, William and Grant to drive in to Beijing to check out a temple fair. The rest of Beijing arrived just as we did. We found no parking, but it was fun to observe the families enjoying their traditional walk to the temple fair as we drove by. I saw a group of women whom I thought must have been four generations laughing together on a crowded street corner. We determined that we had set out too late and headed to another part of the city for lunch.

Tired of The Greasy Chopstick, we made the trek to Dongbei Ren, for lunch, and to bring extras home for our dinner. Sam gave us a stern talking to about the injustice of being fed Chinese food twice in one day, especially since we had Chinese food on our New year's eve, last December too,

but I think he enjoyed their variety of interesting breads and the spicy lamb sticks.

Monday evening, the event we'd been waiting for, wincing for, not sure how to anticipate, the Beijing Television Spring Festival Global Gala. We invited the Sevys to come and watch with us. Only in China would we be waiting to see ourselves perform Do-Re-Mi in a variety show on television. The practices were tiring, the driving was long, and going on the big stage was scary for the kids, so I'm proud of them, and grateful to them for doing what they agreed to do. Let's see if this works...here's a link to a video recording of our performance.

http://tv.btv.com.cn/v/09zt/hqcw/content/2010-02/16/content_664178.htm

Back to the dinner...Rob hunted these down for me. They're called baocui. Gangling used to make loads of these for us at Chinese New Year in Guangzhou. Some people are repulsed by their greasiness, and others (like me) get addicted to their oily, sesame flavored crunch.

The braised eggplant, jiaozi, meat pies, and layered bread. Rob was disappointed that the pork sauce (not the nausea sauce) didn't come with his tofu.

Sam made us a delicious apple crumble for desert. Miss Bri and her boys brought us two plates of Valentine cookies to congratulate us on our television appearance. We're grateful for their support.