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| Fuzhou |
We flew out after class on September 30 (Thursday) and took a little over an hour flight to Fuzhou. Maggie’s uncle picked us up and took us to their apartment in Changle (the city where they live in the province Fuzhou), where I met her aunt, grandparents, and 3 year-old cousin. We ate and then went to bed so we would be ready for our first day in Fuzhou. We caught up on some much-needed sleep and then the next morning her aunt took us out to eat a breakfast that Changle is known for: peanut noodles and dumpling soup. It was delicious and a lot more food than I am used to eating for breakfast, but I ate it all so I didn’t seem rude. Then we went to meet a different aunt and uncle at the photo shop they own. When we mentioned that we wanted to go hiking, they decided to take the rest of the day off and go with us. I got to ride on the back of a motorcycle up to this beautiful mountain with a waterfall. It was a lot of fun!
Aside from the first day, the rest of the trip all kind of blurs together. I don’t mean this in a bad way; it’s just that I can’t really remember exactly what we did every single day. Most days included going to markets and shops, and eating tons of food. I’ll try to break it down in the most logical way I can think of though…
Food: I can’t even begin to describe how much food was consumed during our trip. I never thought I would be able to gain an appreciation for the feeling of hunger, but since going to Fuzhou, I have a new-found love for not being full to the brim. A typical day’s food went something like this: Huge breakfast of noodles, seafood, meat, and whatever else. Midmorning snack—usually noodles or some street food and a milk tea. Lunch of seafood, meat, rice, noodles, soup. Snacks all afternoon long. Giant dinner. More street food. Milk tea.
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| My Birthday Dinner |
By Sunday (my birthday!) I realized I wasn’t going to be able to keep up with my Chinese hosts anymore. I silently gave up on trying to eat as much food as they wanted me to. Every time we ate, her entire family would tell me to eat more, more, more! and I did because I didn’t want to come off as rude or unappreciative. I started feeling unwell though, and even threw up twice because I was so sick to my stomach. After telling Maggie that my stomach couldn’t handle so much food she assured me that it would be alright for me to say no, which I started doing immediately. My stomach recovered by Monday night, so I was able to enjoy myself much more.
Also probably contributing to my temporary illness was the amount of new foods I was being exposed to. In Shanghai, I didn’t have trouble adjusting to the food at all. (This is probably partly because I was in control of how much I ate, when I ate, what I ate, etc.) However, in Fuzhou, their diet consists mostly of seafood. They eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Some of the things I ate: octopus, duck feet, fish soup, mini lobster things (don’t really know the English equivalent… sort of like crayfish), shrimp with their heads on, jellyfish, and so many other things. I liked everything I had except for the duck feet and the jellyfish. After trying the duck feet I couldn’t get the smell out of my head the entire time I was in Fuzhou… ick!
Shopping: There isn’t much to do in Fuzhou so we spent most of our time just wandering the streets and going to markets. Everything there is much cheaper than it is in Shanghai so anything I knew I needed I got in Fuzhou. I bought a pair of sneakers and a pair of heels, but wasn’t really able to buy many clothes.
As you probably know, Chinese people are tiny, so it is generally a bit hard for American people to find clothes here. In Shanghai it is not so bad because there are so many foreigners, and there are lots of Western shops. However, in Fuzhou, many of the people haven’t even seen a white person before! It was still fun going shopping though, because I was able to find the occasional top or dress, and I also got tons of attention. Everyone was tripping over themselves to help me, as well as telling me how beautiful I am (who wouldn’t love it????) haha. A lot of times Maggie would pretend she didn’t speak Fuzhounese and would listen to what the people said and tell me. It was always pretty entertaining because they were so amazed by me. One man even asked Maggie “Is she real???” Shopping was fun more for the experience than for actually buying things.
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| Maggie's Village |
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| Man carrying human manure |
We also went to her aunt’s home village, which was a little more modern than Maggie’s, but that isn’t saying much. There were many more shops there than in Maggie’s, and her village was located very close to the beach. After seeing her village, we headed over to the beach and walked along it for a little while. It was no Holden Beach, but I loved it just for the fact that I was able to be on a beach.
This post is already much longer than I wanted it to be, so I’m going to cut myself off now. Fuzhou was a really beautiful place and a great experience, and I would gladly go back. Her family was so friendly and was very patient with me since my Chinese is not exactly at their level. I’ve also included a PowerPoint I made for Chinese class… we had to give a presentation about our holiday, so you can look at it if you want. It obviously is in Chinese, but there are a lot of pictures so you’ll get the hint. :) Here it is:
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