I had a really interesting night. :) I met some of C's friends, who he met online with the chinese student internet forum in Sheffield. They are really nice and friendly people and I would love to spend another time with them. It did take a while for me to warm up and join in the conversations. Firstly I was very confused by them using their internet aliases when speaking with one another. I did not even know they were refering to C at certain points during the night. Secondly, I was slightly lost in the 'Chinese Chinese' everyone was speaking. They spoke chinese with their beautiful mainland chinese accent and speckled their sentences with what I would think as posh phrases and sayings. There was a slight oxi-moron that while I identified myself as a being a rather traditional chinese person, I definitely would not appear as such to them. I actually felt inferior interacting with my new friends with the way I was speaking (to be fair... my chinese fluency has decreased since I came to study in UK :p). It was quite a strange feeling.
This comes back to our little discussion about ethnicity at SOUL last night. :) F was talking about how ethnicity is not only defined by skin-colour, but also by a common history or way of living. A group of chinese in one country may live a life completely different from another group of chinese else where. While they are bonded by a common ancestry long long ago, recent developments have put them down different cultural trajectories.
What I learnt today...
that there are savoury mooncakes!!! Apparently in certain parts of China, people use meat as mooncake fillings. Today J. made some and we all had a try. He used short-crust pastry to wrap the fillings in.
The mooncakes that I am familiar with are usually the ones that are filled with sweet fillings like lotus paste, bean paste, nuts. The only savoury bit I know would probably be the gorgeous egg yolk and the occasional time when I have the 五仁 type with bits of ham in there.
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