Last week one of friends (English name Larry; Chinese name Zhang Min) invited me to his parent's house for dinner. He goes to FJUT but, unlike most students, he is originally from Fuzhou. His parents went all out with a fancy traditional Chinese meal.

At a Chinese dinner, there are several dishes, and no one gets their own plate. You are supposed to just eat out of the serving dish. They rotate the dishes reguarly, so that everyone gets a taste of everything.

This dinner featured steamed crab, large crawdads, pork dumplings, sweet potato puree, meatball soup, boiled yams, chinese cabbage in garlic, fish, fish ball soup, and fish head. I accidentally sampled the fish head without realizing what it was (it must have come from a very large fish and it was well disguised by the decor). As I chewed, I thought "yuck, this fish tastes awful and it hasn't been cooked very well." Then they told me what it was, and I realized I was chewing on fish brain. I almost threw up but I managed to convince my hosts that it was just something caught in my throat. Not to fear - most of the food was delicious beyond words. I ate til I was stuffed and had to protest against their entreaties to eat more and more.

Larry's mom is at the end of the table here. Dad corner left. The rest are cousins and friends. Larry is out of frame, but you can see his arm in the middle there.

Larry and Jessica (one of the cousins) also took me sight-seeing in an old part of Fuzhou. Fuzhou is an ancient city (like all Chinese cities, I suppose). Each generation just builds on top of the old one. Here's a picture of me at what, for centuries, was the "wealthy" part of town. It's been restored to look as it did in the 1700-1800s. One piece of remaining wall was from 1000 AD. I tried to take a picture of that too, but it didn't turn out very well.