The Days Before Christmas 聖誕節的前幾天

There are some things which have impressed me 給我最深刻的印象 this Christmas season. The first is that of my wife and daughter line dancing to Feliz Navidad. My wife likes to dance traditional dances with steps and does it pretty well 我的太太喜歡跳舞. As for me, I have never been that coordinated. It is “1, 2, 3, step on her toes 踩她的腳. 4. 5, 6, kick her in the shins 踢她的腳. 7, 8, 9 trip and fall over the chairs and fall into the couple next to me, etc.” Her workplace had a Christmas party and her coworkers agreed to dance for the workplace.

Another impression is that of our little son asking “is it Christmas yet?” “聖誕節到了沒有?” every couple of minutes. “No, it’s not December 25 yet, just a couple more days.” After another 20 minutes 過了二十分鐘, “is it Christmas yet?” Anticipation is a wonderful thing!

Another impression is that of our little son smearing peanut butter 小兒子把花生醬擦在壽司上 onto the vinegared rice and seaweed of a maki roll that we, a Chinese and American couple, borrowed from Japanese 日本 and Korean 韓國 cuisine. Now, that is a hybrid combination worthy of the child of a cross-cultural couple!

(The 2nd photo, which has nothing to do with any of this, was of our recent Christmas party where we somehow fed 25 people.)

Milk Tea 奶茶 2

I don’t yet know much about Uighar culture 維族 except that they are a central Asian people group from a dry and starkly beautiful land. We returned to our pickup point at the late hour of 7:00 a.m. to discover a restaurant serving Mongolian breakfast food had already opened. That is where we enjoyed our first cup of Mongolian milk tea 蒙古奶茶.

Why care about milk tea 為什麼提出奶茶呢? Well, it’s interesting to me to see how cultures spread. Unlike Chinese, Mongolians drink milk tea and they drink it out of glasses 玻璃杯子 rather than tea cups. This is the same as the way Russians 俄國人 like to drink their tea.

In fact, it is the way my ancestors 我的祖先也是這樣喝茶的, who were Germanic peoples settled in Russia drank their tea. A group of Mongolians early in the Manchu dynasty moved en masse east 1000s of miles to around the Volga River 伏爾加河. With their wagon trains and ponies, paintings of these settlers made me think of the American West. After carefully looking at photos of my grandfather I suspect 可能有蒙古血統 that one of our relatives way back married one of these settlers.

Milk Tea 奶茶

There is nothing quite like drinking steaming hot salted milk tea 冷冰冰的清晨喝鹹奶茶很舒服 that I am drinking in the chill of the morning. As I think I’ve mentioned before in this blog, I’m not a morning person 我不是早鳥 and so anything to relieve the strange combination of grogginess and super sharp awareness of the early morning feels really good.

I am drinking the milk tea we got in Inner Mongolia 內蒙古. We had just been kicked out of bed and gotten off the overnight train from our home in Beijing at Hohhot 呼和浩特市 at 5:00 in the morning. Nothing was open. It was cold, very cold. We eventually found a kindly taxi driver 有人带我們去who took us to a Xinjiang 新疆 餐廳(Uighar) restaurant that was open. The Uighar 維族 peoples who are apparently early risers. We went to the restaurant you see in this second photo which served Halal food since the Uighars are Islamic回教徒 .