Matters of Life and Death

I rearranged my schedule this week so that I can take a few extra days off in the next coming weeks to do a little extra travel. It’s actually been a busy couple of days. Another intern started, I’ve been working on a project, and I’m trying to plan some trips for the next couple weeks.

But first, we need to talk about wantons.

On Monday, Vivi suggested we go to try a new wanton restaurant. After surviving the health code violating location twice, I was excited to give something new a try.

As we walked, she typed out something on her phone. “How do you pronounced this word?” she asked.

I read it. “Anxiety,” I said. She tried repeating it. “The ‘a-n-x’ almost sounds like ‘a-n-g-s,’” I said. “Angs-iety.” It wasn’t exact, but it sounded kind of close.

She tried it a few more times, getting a little closer each time. Her English pronunciations are still way more understandable than my Chinese pronunciation drills.

“I had a word to ask you about,” I said. “What was the phrase you taught me that means ‘Keep fighting’?”

“Jiayou,” she said. “It is a very popular word.”

When we got to the new restaurant it was very crowded. Vivi got me an English menu and I ordered pork and corn dumplings. We waited outside while they prepared them.

While we waited she asked me, “So what did you do in Suzhou this weekend?”

I told her about our day on Sunday. When I got to the part about going to church she said, “I have also gone to church with some of my friends. It is always foreigners that are in the church services.”

I told her about the various accents at the church and how much trouble I had understanding them.

“Yes,” she said. “And what is your religion?”

“I’m a Christian,” I said. “Basically Lutheran, but technically non-denominational.”

“Okay,” she said.

“What about you?” I asked.

“I follow the Baha’i religion,” she said. “Have you heard about it?”

“I studied it in High school,” I said.

“Really?” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “I don’t know much about it.”

Basically—and this is a gross over simplification—Baha’i-ism is an Abrahamic religion (just like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) but it evolved much later. The three basic beliefs are (1) that God is the creator of the universe (2) that all religions are true and contain part of the narrative of truth and human history and (3) that people are supposed to help each other and serve each other through acts of love and community service.

“We do not go to church,” she explained, “it is not part of our beliefs. But my friends and I get together to study together and do things to help people.”

“I think that is very cool,” I said.

“I believe it is very important to be active in the community and do things to help others,” Vivi continued.

“I agree,” I said. “I think if you look at a lot of religions and churches, they forget that.”

“Yes,” she said. “All of the religions can be friends, I think. We can all work together to help the world.”

“I think that is true,” I agreed. “I think religion is all about finding hope, and figuring out how to make relationships with other people work.”

“Yes,” she said. “Exactly.”

This had been a really fun conversation. When we got our wantons, we went back to the office. Taking a bite, they were again one of the best things I’ve eaten in China. The meat was really tender and really flavorful. I scarfed all 13 of them down as Vivi and Yang Renjung laughed at my excitement over good food.

Because I liked them so much, we made a point of having wantons everyday. After a bit of a miscommunication, I learned from John and Yang Renjung that there are about 20 different words in Chinese to describe what we Americans call “Wantons.” It all depends on the ingredients, the way the dough is closed, and the cooking style. We tried four different types of “wantons” from four different restaurants over this course of the week.

We also continued talking about religions. On Wednesday, John joined us for lunch. Yu Cai shared with us about a religious group in Tibet. (This story is a little graphic, so if you would like to avoid it, feel free to skip the next two paragraphs…resume reading at “I had no idea…” and you’ll miss the gory parts.)

“They are a very superstitious group,” she said. I didn’t catch the name of what this group was called. “If they think you are healthy, or think you are lucky, or think you have a lot of money, they will poison you and when you die, they belief your health or your wealth will transfer to them.”

“In this same group,” she continued. “When you die and you are part of them, they do a ‘sky burial.’ They cut you up into 108 pieces and feed your body to the birds.”

“I had no idea you guys had such deep conversations at lunch,” John said.

“Oh yes,” I informed him. “I’m getting a hard core cultural lesson every day.”

And I have to say, eating lunch really is probably the highlight of my day. We have fun conversations and Vivi, Yang Renjung, and Yu Cai (I finally learned how to spell all of their names correctly) have taught me a lot. They have also become really fun friends.

On Thursday, Yu Cai brought me another bing for breakfast. (Like a pancake rolled up with different ingredients in it.) It was really good. For lunch, she took me to get fried wantons (kind of like “pot stickers” in the US) along with “soup wantons” (which I’ve never seen in the US.

All of it was really good. The fried dumplings had chives, onion, and garlic in them. The soup wantons had shellfish in them so I only ate a couple. We also got friend pork chops and deep fried pumpkin (which truly tastes amazing.) Yu Cai wanted to buy my lunch for me, which I gratefully accepted.

“If you keep feeding me, Yu Cai,” I joked, “I’m never going to leave China.”

“You promise,” she joked back, and she, Vivi, Yang Renjung, and I all laughed.