The End of the World

That's right folks, this picture you see before you represents the end of the world. Sure the uninitiated among you may say, but wait what's so scary about that picture. Some may look and laugh thinking that it only resembles some sort of Chinese food, but don't be fooled. Don't let this seemingly innocent picture lull you into a false sense of complacency. Don't be tricked by the appearance of everyday things in this picture. Don't, I repeat don't, let your guard down for even a moment, for friends the unthinkable has happened. That which was never thought possible, that which seems so outlandish that even having experienced it, seems not real. Even as I right these words I doubt my own memory about what has transpired, but there it is looking back at me with it's indubitable certainty. I, Daniel Bruno Davis, acting of my own free will chose to eat a dinner tonight consisting of only vegetables and rice, and I liked it.

I've told my students that my favorite food here so far is qié zi, which is pronounced like "chea zu," which is funny for a couple of reasons. First, qié zi is the Chinese equivalent of cheese in that it's what people say when taking a picture. Second, it just doesn't fit in to their picture of Americans. We eat, McDonalds, KFC, and Pizza Hut only as far as their concerned. I think they actually don't understand the variety of food choice we have. While they have a good bit of variety also imagine if you could only pick on ethnicity food to eat forever. You could have pasta but never a burrito, a burrito but never a hamburger, a hamburger but never a spring roll. They just don't really do multi-ethnic food in China so they sort of assume we don't either. But qié zi just doesn't fit in. Qié zi, as those of you who speak some Chinese have already figured out, is eggplant. Not exactly the worlds most sought after dish, and not exactly my favorite back home either, but here they do something to it which is out of this world. I've had it at various banquets before but I figured out that the restaurant out front can do it also. So tonight after a long conversation in broken Chinese and English, Chinglish, I was able to order the eggplant and rice you see at the top of this post. Maybe, I'm just becoming more Chinese, maybe I'm trying to eat heather, maybe I've just gotten caught up in all this "change" talk, I don't know, but I ate eggplant today and I liked it. Yes I can.