Sunday, June 3rd, 2018
Today was everyone's first full day with our host families, and we had the day off to spend some time with them. My host family has five people: Belle, the mom, her two parents, and her two children, Michelle and Rocky (Belle's husband frequently travels to Mongolia and is not home this week). They live in Lushan International Community, an upscale neighborhood in Chengdu with multiple high-rise apartments and streets designed to be reminiscent of cobbled European boulevards. Many of our host families are upper middle class or higher, and it is interesting to compare their ways of living with those of the people whom we have met on the other end of the income spectrum, like the two migrant worker families at Dandelion.
I began my day with a homemade breakfast cooked by my host grandparents: yellow rice porridge, tossed cucumber salad, spicy tofu, raisin bread buns, and roasted chickpeas. One of the gifts I brought Michelle and Rocky was a map of the United States, so we also spent breakfast time talking about where I live, where different colleges are, and the differences in weather (Rocky also loved that there was a mountain range named after him). After breakfast, Belle, Michelle, Rocky, and I walked around their neighborhood, which also has a movie theater, an exhibition hall, a hotel, and a Starbucks. Built only ten years ago, the neighborhood has many families whose children attend an international school, so it's not uncommon for children to use their English names more than their Chinese names.
For lunch, Belle and I met up with Cedric and his host family, a mom, dad, and little 4-year old named Jerry. We went to a restaurant similar to the hot pot restaurant of a couple days ago, but instead of boiling in a large pot of peppers, the meat simply boiled in a pot of water (then you dipped the meat into whatever sauces you wanted). The parents spoke with each other in Chinese, but would slow down to ask us questions or explain what we were eating.
I was completely full after lunch (I don't think I've been even close to being hungry since meeting my host family), and afterward we went to the Jinsha Museum. The Jinsha Museum is an archeological site where a number of artifacts from the Shu people (who lived over three thousand years ago during the Shang Dynasty). First, we went to see the physical site where the artifacts were dug, a large gridded section of earth that still showed the flow patterns of old rivers and the bones of sacrificial wild boars. Next, we moved to the Exhibition Halls, where we saw replicas of how the Shu people lived in the Chengdu valley, as well as the pottery, gold jewelry, and religious icons they built. Perhaps the most famous of the artifacts at the museum is a gold medallion that has become the symbol of Chengdu; it has twelve rays cut out of the center surrounded by four birds (the twelve months and the four seasons).
When I got home, my host grandparents had prepared a meal of 木耳 (mu'er, an edible fungus), pork and onions, three different types of homemade sausage, and a chicken potato soup. They taught me how to say the names of all the dishes in Sichuan Dialect, and I tried to answer the questions they had in Chinese.
After dinner, I worked on structuring my final research project and my oral history report. Looking forward to tomorrow!
- Francesca G.
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