Our second visit was in another district of the city.\u00a0 Our former student came to the city from the place she now lives, and arranged accommodations for herself and us in the home of one of her cousins.\u00a0 We arrived by taxi, accompanied by the first student.\u00a0 After introductions and settling in, we got on a bus and went to another cousin’s home for the rest of the day.\u00a0 The women of the group prepared a feast.\u00a0 We were much welcomed, but no one besides our student spoke any English, and she did not interpret much.\u00a0 I wanted to watch and participate in the kitchen, but I saw that they weren’t comfortable with that.\u00a0 I have learned that there are two answers for questions about vegetables:\u00a0 “green vegetable” and “I don’t know the English name.”\u00a0 Everything in China is cooked, including lettuces of all kinds.<\/p>\n
Our student referred to her cousins as “sisters” and their husbands as “brothers” even though we explained the standard English usage to her.\u00a0 It’s common in China to use these English terms regardless of their meaning. These young women, daughters of three sisters, provided well for us.\u00a0 In the afternoon, we went to a sort of amusement park, and the following day to Chongqing Garden Expo.\u00a0 On that day we were joined by a younger cousin.\u00a0 It was fun to see “the girls” enjoy themselves.<\/p>\n
Of the twenty three districts in Chongqing city, we probably saw at least fifteen, ranging from poverty through extreme wealth.\u00a0 Our hosts lived in the middle ranges. In the street markets we saw something new to us and asked what it was.\u00a0 It looked like it might be stacks of very thin flat noodles, was it food?\u00a0 It also looked like paper accordion pleated and bound in stacks, was it a game of some sort?\u00a0 No, it was spirit money.\u00a0 On the second day of the new year, people visit the graves of their ancestors and, among other rituals, burn this money so that the ancestors “have money to spend in hell,” as our student put it.<\/p>\n
On the third day, our student accompanied us on the two hour bus journey to another city to meet our final host.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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Our second visit was in another district of the city.\u00a0 Our former student came to the city from the place she now lives, and arranged accommodations for herself and us in the home of one of her cousins.\u00a0 We arrived by taxi, accompanied by the first student.\u00a0 After introductions and settling in, we got on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/talkingwithjulia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/talkingwithjulia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/talkingwithjulia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talkingwithjulia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talkingwithjulia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=154"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/talkingwithjulia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":155,"href":"https:\/\/talkingwithjulia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154\/revisions\/155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/talkingwithjulia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talkingwithjulia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talkingwithjulia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}