Dry season
Y'know, if we were hunter-gatherers, we'd be packin' up and following the herd. It's getting to be that a soul can't find anything to eat around here.We've developed a routine here, as far as our dining habits are concerned. In the morning, everybody grabs what they want for breakfast, as we have no set wake-up time. We usually make up some oatmeal, grab a hunk of bread or, if we have it, pour out a bowl of cold cereal. Since my in-laws' visit, we've also started patronizing some of the food vendors set up just outside of campus. From them we can get a pancake, hash browns or a flat pork dumpling for about 12 US cents. For lunch, we'll eat up leftovers or, more likely, head over to the cafeteria. Then finally, we make a nice dinner for ourselves in the evening. ("We" being defined as usually Yau Neih.)
Unfortunately, this whole Spring Festival thing has been threatening our livelihood. Or at least our routine. First off, we're running out of pig bread. Okay, that really can't be blamed on the Spring Festival. But for some unknown reason, the bakery on campus, who had baked up our most recent batch, has closed its doors. I suppose they could just be taking a long vacation while the students are gone, but there's newspaper taped over all the windows. That seems like a somewhat permanent condition to me. We tried to go to our second most recent bread supplier, but they said they were too busy to bake us some bread. "Maybe in March," they said.
Now the bread thing isn't so bad, breakfast-wise, if you can go out and get yourself a nice, inexpensive meal from the International Cart of Pancakes. The problem is, the day before yesterday, when I wanted to get Ga Dai a buckwheat cake, the pancake lady wasn't there. In fact, a couple of vendors seemed to have been missing from the college "food court". Then this morning, as we went out shopping late in the morning, the pork and taters cart was missing as well. This puts a serious damper on my morning.
But the worst blow came at lunch time. We ventured over to the cafeteria, lunch pails in hand, and found the place closed up with the chairs on the tables and a big sign on the door saying... Okay, I don't know what it was saying, I can't read Chinese. But whether it said "Aw, to heck with it, we're going on holiday, too," or "All our employees have keeled over dead with bird flu," it means that we need to scrounge for leftovers.
Actually, I shouldn't whine too loudly. We've got plenty of pre-packaged foodstuffs from the States for Christmas, so we have no need to go hungry. Plus we can always do more cooking at home. Or, if we're really determined to eat someone else's cooking, we can emulate the hunter-gatherers and travel a bit afield for our hit of Yunnan cuisine. I suppose I should be thankful for the excuse to get out and about.
posted by John @ 6:52 AM
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