BUT, this is only the first week!!
After lunch, we attended a Chinese class, conducted by 康老师. She told us many things about Tianjin, including Tianjin’s history, Tianjin’s cuisine, Tianjin’s dialect and some of the food etiquette. From the lesson, I knew that Tianjin was promoted to a prefecture by Qing Dynasty at 1725A.D.Year 1978 was a very meaningful and important year for Tianjin. Besides that, I have learnt the different type of cuisine in Tianjin, breakfast, lunch and dinner. In china, they said the people in north area love to eat noodles while people in south area love to eat rice. Throughout the class, I knew that Tianjin breakfast are normally 果子（guo zi）,煎饼果子 （ jian bing guo zi）and锅巴菜 （guo ba cai）. One of the famous foods in Tianjin is the 狗不理包子 (gou bu li bao zi). At year 1858, at Xian Feng,(Qing Dynasty), “gou bu li” is the nickname for the owner. The teacher told us this is because when the owner is making bao, he will be very concentrating in doing that and totally ignore the surrounding around him. I felt that is very interesting to know, because normally we only know about the cuisine in a place, but not including its history.
(Photos of Tianjin cuisine)
康老师also showed us some places in Tianjin, for example, The Food Street, The Jue Wu Society Museum, The Eye of Tianjin, The old residence of Feng Guozhang and etc. Since we will be doing the food and etiquette in Tianjin, I hope we got the chance to go to the food street to take some photos of the real food. She also taught us traditions and taboos in China. For example, they normally leave a bowl of rice at New Year’s Eve. This is a different tradition from ours, we normally won’t do that. China people are also very particular in the order of seats (坐次). For example, she mentioned that during a dinner event, the hosts must be seated facing the door and the most important guest is seated on the high hand side. Sitting opposite the host would be his/her secretary who would cheer on the guest to enjoy and drink more. I realized that the Chinese culture over here and back in Singapore has some differences even though we are also Chinese.
At the end of the day, I have learnt more about the China Chinese culture. Almost everyone of them is brought up in a way where respect and ranking are important factors to consider no matter what. I felt that these kinds of manners are those we need to learn from them.
Tomorrow will be another new and challenging day in Tianjin! (:
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