Home Sweet (hotpot) Home

It's nice how unexpected little surprises can pop up. Friday was a long and quiet day at work and I actually wasn't feeling too well stomach-wise, maybe too much caffeine and too many butter cookies (lovely western diet). Right before the end of the work day, our finance office Zhao Min invited me home to have dinner with her family. She thought it would be nice for me to see how a Chinese family lives - how right she is.

Probably because she heard me talk about hotpot, she thought that would be a nice dinner to make, though not the spicy variety I'd had before. In her snow-dirty car (where else in the world can snow make your car dirty), we drove to her apartment, stopping first at a small vegetable market were I amused the locals by taking a picture of mushrooms, then driving through the campus of one of the two largest universities in BJ - the current head of China is a graduate. Apparently, graduates from this Univ. go to work in the government, and graduates from the other Univ. go overseas.

Making up the rest of Zhao Min's family is her husband, an accountant, her 9 year old daughter and their very excitable golden retriever Lucky. Their apartment is tiny with two bedrooms, one bath, one very small living space and a small kitchen. The family had spent four years living/working in Botswana so Zhao Min and both her husband, and especially her daughter, speak very good English. It was a nice dinner where we cooked meat, fried tofu, fish balls, and leafy greens in boiling water and then dipped them in a sauce of sesame paste and some sort of pickled (?) tofu. They also had me try a spicy beef ligament side dish (too chewy) and a hot drink made from rice alcohol and "nutritious ingredients" boiled with dried seasoned plums. It was sweet and salty. They also had me try a medicinal alcohol from Russia which was much sweeter like a port. As Zhao Min's husband described it, eating around a hotpot is a very warm, relaxing and friendly way to eat with friends and family. I'd have to agree.