True gems

Sorry for posting so many new entries at once. You see, the reason I haven't been writing much is not that nothing has happened, but that I can't access blogger.com from home and I haven't been frequenting my favorite cafe as often anymore. Too busy and I also like my home quite a bit these days...

But I had an amazing Sunday afternoon today and have to let you in on my story. Again, it is thanks to Liu Xing that this day was special and right now I am filled to the brim with warm and fuzzy feelings for the Chinese and I feel really privileged to be among such amazing, kind-hearted people. But first things first. I had mentioned to Liu Xing that I wanted to buy some Jade as souvenirs and she offered to take me to a store a friend knows the owner of. All the much better, we would also go for lunch together. So, we get to the store this Sunday and my jaw drops to the floor seeing the price tags. Holy shit, I knew jade was expensive, but this was more than I had expected. This must mean the earrings I bought last time in Beijing are fake :) Anyways, we agreed to meet her friend there, so we start browsing the shelves and I learn to appreciates the different shades of green and get an idea of what makes certain pieces more expensive than others (the intensity of the color, the translucency, the clarity of the stone, but also the craftsmenship in carving). Liu Xing's friend arrives and delivers some poisettas to the store. The price drops by 20%. Finally, her friend calls the boss. We wait for him. I get offered more pieces that they had been keeping in store. Just as we are being served hot water, the boss arrives. He is a Nanjing University graduate, probably in his 50s, looks more like an engineer to me than a jewellery store owner. After a little chatting, he's very pleased to hear I am studying Chinese and working at Nanda, the price drops to 50%. I am extremely happy, but also a bit embarrassed because I bought some of their cheapest stones. They are really pretty though, just not dark green but more white with a green tint. But honestly, you can easily leave 10k there for only one little green pendant.

So, it was time for lunch, and the boss suggested a noodle place nearby. I thought we were just taking Liu Xing's friend, but the boss also joined us. The noodle place turned out to be a Shanxi (a province in north-central China) restaurant. Wen they said "noodle" I imagined everyone of us to get a bowl of noodle soup, but the boss is friends with the owner of that place, so we got the chef's recommendation. And, well, there were noodles, three different kinds actually - long, rather thick egg noodles in a soup with peppers and beans, short irregular shaped egg-noodles fried with carrots and bacon (a bit like "Spaetzle") and some buckwheat noodles, that looked like short cannelloni and came standing upright in a steamer together with a sauce for dipping. Everything was drowned in garlic :) But that wasn't all! No, there were spicy wood-ear mushrooms and fried sausage as starters, garlic greens with chicken stir-fry, cabbage and the best - lamb chops with cumin. Wow, that was good lamb. Not the old mutton one gets most places, but really young and tender, delicate flavour lamb. We also got a corn-chowder as a side (could have used some salt for my taste, but I followed the others in spooning sugar into it). I had never had Shanxi food before, so that was definitely an interesting experience. And I could tell from Liu Xing's grin that she was just as happy as me to be treated to a nice, expertly chosen lunch. Because it turned out - the boss paid! I tried my best to take over the bill, thanking him profoundly for coming over to the store and giving me a discount, but he didn't want to hear about it. So, at the end of the day the lunch bill wasn't quite as high as what I had paid in his store, but he cannot have made much of a profit from me. I am really deeply embarrassed now for having stolen the time of three people to buy a little souvenir, but none of them seemed to mind terribly. That's what I mean when I say I feel really privileged to be among these people. I feel like I'm no longer just a 老外 Laowai (foreigner).