Wednesday, November 10, 2004

Silent dancers

Sunday my room mate NieTingFeng woke me up and said he would have some guest coming over and asked if I wanted to join them to eat hotpot. I sure wanted and got up, got dressed, and washed my face in about 5 minutes while his Beida (girl-?)friend was waiting outside. We went to receive his guest at the bus-stop and it showed out that they were three very slender, pretty and deaf-and-dumb girls. Being NieTingFeng, he didn't proper introduce them and left me wondering who they were, why they where here, and where they came from. This happens quite often to me here in China by the way. We showed them around the QingHua University for a long time and it was already 2.30pm when we got back. Then my room mate started cutting vegetables and cooking, while I was left to entertain the starving girls in our room. I don't think they had had any breakfast or lunch either.

With a pen, some paper, and my poor written Chinese I figured out that they were from a dance academy here in Beijing. They often go abroad to do performances. They asked me the usual "Do you like China", "Do you like Chinese food?", and so on, and then the little less usual "Do you prefer bread or rice?". I answered that rather odd question with "rice", and to that they commented that they often saw people eat bread in foreign countries and that they were really fat, making gestures showing how really fat they these foreign people were.
The hotpot was quite a disaster. NieTingFeng had bought enough food for an army and poured it all in a huge put that were boiling. The chunks of vegetables and meat were huge and really not suitable for 3 petite girls. Well it wasn't very suitable for anyone I guess. My room mate, being Sichuanese, didn't really ask if we all liked spicy food. And it was really spicy. Spicier than the volcanic hotpot we had back home in Sweden last summer. NieTingFeng's (girl-?)friend looked increasingly unhappy and went back early, claiming that she had homework to do. He tried to rescue the situation as much as he could and kept pleading to her "don't give me such a sad face". After the hotpot the dancers also decided to go home. My poor room mate.

Me, being absolutely full, had another dinner appointment 1,5 hours later.

Maybe they will invite me to their next performance. Let's hope so.

Hot hotpot

The not entirely successful hotpot with the three dancing ladies.

2 comments:

sp said...

just stumbled onto your page...must be fun studying abroad..

Johan said...

Yep. Pretty fun! Wouldn't want to be anywhere else! Not sure though that anyone would be where I am though. Let's say that life is pretty basic where I live.