Earlier this morning, we all piled into a 'Miànbāo qìchē,' literally 'bread car' - an apt name as it describes the vehicle's shape, weight, and apparent structural integrity. After about 20 minutes of driving, we arrived at the Chengdu Panda Base. It was pretty touristy, I'll admit, but I'm a sucker for pandas: They loll around all day, sleeping, munching on bamboo, occasionally doing kung fu as needed - Pandas and I, we get each other.
After that, we went to a hot pot restaurant for lunch. Nobody, not even my mom who ordered, was really sure what to expect. "I don't really know what I ordered," she said. No big deal; I'll eat just about anything. In fact, when we eat fish, my sister and I often fight over who gets to eat the lone eyeball (when two optical orbs are present in the fish though, all's well in the Lee home). However, when the waitress brought a container full of about 20 live squirming fish and dumped the lot into a vat of boiling soup in front of us (but not before one of the fish could escape and jump onto our table), my sister screamed and jumped backwards about two feet.
Things only got worse for her when the fishes' stomachs began expanding, floating on the surface on the soup like translucent buoys, only to eventually pop and sink back into the broth with a sickly fizzle. She ate mostly rice for the remainder of the meal.
Speaking of delicious delicacies, last night our hostel hosted a dumpling making party/contest. Calling upon my extensive duct tape rose-making training, I made a rose (or lotus, as the hostel staff called it) dumpling and won a free drink in the contest! I'd just like to make it known that I beat both my sister AND mom in this contest, both of whom have been mocking my dumpling-folding skills for years. It took a trip to China for my art to finally be appreciated by the experts.
the last one looks like audrey 2
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