Quiet Day, Pebble Mosaics, Noodles

Yesterday was such a quiet day that I almost don't have entry to write today. I didn't take any photos, so I am decorating it with pebble mosaics from the Forbidden City.

I stayed home most of the morning doing work. I am working on four things:

1) Reading LL's book on bamboo and silk texts and their influence on Chinese academia. Reading books in Chinese is slow, but if I work at it I can make reasonable progress. (LL is the professor of the Laozi Daodejing class, and I am hoping if I read his book I'll have more of a clue what's going on with the class.)

2) Very slowly going through Han Feizi's "Explanations of Laozi." Han Feizi is famous for being the Chinese Machiavelli, and so it's interesting that the text associated with his name contains a sort of commentary on the Laozi, which we tend to think of as not really so Machiavellian. But (mainstay of survey Chinese culture courses) maybe it's more Machiavellian than we all thought. Anyway, the commentary is really dense and hard going, though the words are simple. The only way I can really make sense of it is to make a rough translation as I go, so I can realize exactly which simple words are actually problematic.

3) Reading YZ's book on literature. YZ is the professor of the fun Tuesday night literature class that I think I will continue going to despite being unwelcomed by some!

4) Reading some of the works YZ recommended we look at for the course. I already mentioned "Mumu," and now I'm having a look at Oedipus the King. Hamlet was also on the list, but I know that one pretty well. The fourth work I didn't know at all, Stefan Zweig's "Twenty-four hours in the life of a woman." (In fact, at first I thought Zi Weige was a Chinese author.) The library here has it in the original German, but not in English, so I'm stuck for now on that one. That's okay, Oedipus is enough to keep me busy.

5) Reading and punctuating the first chapter of Shiji for the "Myth and History" class.

What with this and keeping up with my blog and the online news, I easily whiled away most of the morning, and some of the afternoon too. Eventually I bestirred myself to go out and do a couple errands--I made the discovery that printing and copying are very extremely easy and cheap on campus, the only downside being that everything comes out on A4 size paper! While out, I also had a super-tasty mung-bean popsicle and bought a couple of useful-looking books I happened to see.

On the way home, I stopped by the food-court to give some business to my favorite noodle chef. The food court was pretty deserted, and the noodle chef wasn't in evidence. One of the counter girls was out crying the wares, though, and on a whim I selected knife-cut noodles instead of pulled noodles. I'd never had knife-cut noodles and I was curious about their taste. After I had paid for it and gone to sit down, the girl knocked politely on the back door and the noodle chef came out. I heard the two of them talking in low voices, and then the girl said, "YOU ask her." I looked up. The noodle chef was busy with his dough. The girl said, "Miss, you DID say knife-cut noodles and not pulled noodles?" Then I felt very sheepish and went over to explain that although the making of pulled noodles was very much more fun to watch, I wanted to try and see how the knife-cut noodles tasted. The noodle chef accepted this philosophically, but I felt a little bad deviating from routine when I had only just established it!

When my noodles were ready, the girl said in a teasing voice, "Don't you have noodles where you come from?" "We DO," I said, "but they come in a package already made. I never saw anyone make noodles before. Also,"Ｉadded, "these are better tasting than the ones at home." "Lao pengyou" (old friend), the noodle chef said grinningly, "do you want cilantro on that?" I did. The knife-cut noodles were much more substantial and heavier than the pulled noodles. I liked them, and would have eaten every last bite even if I hadn't, but I think I will have pulled noodles in the future.

Now I like the noodle chef and the girl very much, but it is hard to know how to like them except go to their stand only and not to the others (not much of a loss there). One wishes one actually could be friends with the noodle chef, but it's hard to know how one would.