Risking my Life

There are many ways to risk your life in China. Just riding in a taxi involves all sorts of risks which most people in America will never be exposed to. God only knows what sort of qualification the people flying the planes have, and I doubt there's any standard for who can be a bus driver. In China cleaning a plate involves washing it for about half a second in cold water, of questionable cleanliness, and then sticking the plate, still wet, back onto a shelf. But one thing I had been avoiding, completely out of fear, until last night, was fish. We are about as far from an ocean as it is possible to get without going to the moon, and I just couldn't shake the feeling that any fish was probably brought in on the slow train from the coast. I get sick enough from the food already without risking, what I imagine to be, week old Salmon. But last night Slav invited me, Niel, and Lake, out to dinner at this place not far off campus, which was supposed to have good seafood.

I was still nervous so I asked him to limit the seafood to one dish which turned out to be some surprisingly expensive oysters. Now this is like doubling down on the seafood risk since oysters are already more risky than most seafood, and the risk is probably doubled again if you consider the poor hygiene in most Chinese restaurants. But I went for it and as of this morning I can say with some certainty that if I was going to get really sick, I'd probably be sick already so it looks like the oysters were clean. What's maybe even more surprising is that the oysters were really good. Now I'm not going to go crazy and compare them to French or Belgium cooking, but considering where I am they were easily the best food we ate that night. So while some people may talk about eating blowfish in Japan, which if not prepared correctly are deadly, I think I just survived an even greater risk, oysters in Alaer.

I don't know if I've mentioned this yet, but Slav is actually leaving sunny old Alaer in about two weeks. He wanted to go back to England and get a real job, sounds like a strange decision to me. He made a deal with Ma where he found some guy to replace him for the remainder of the semester, so hopefully I won't be left alone here, but it's too bad he's going. When I first got here I thought it would be no problem to be by myself, but after trying it for just a few weeks I realized just how big a difference it can make to have someone else around who understands what you are going through, even if it's just someone else to complain about China with.