These pictures are from the department outing to “Fuxing recreation grange” (pronounced Foo Sheeng. And, no, that is not a misspelling. It’s grange. What does it mean? I don’t know. Translations are funny like that.)
I was rather surprised that the pictures made it look so lush and green. The feeling I got when I arrived was, “Hmm…This is like….I’ve got it! An amusement park with no rides!” The whole thing is concrete. Not a blade of grass anywhere. You can see that I had high hopes – I brought my Frisbee! Alas, there was nowhere to play without risking it going into the pond.
The food was great though. Even though it’s November, it’s still about 80 during the day, so it got pretty uncomfortable. Not to mention the whole point of the outing was to barbeque. I’m not talking about American BBQ. Chinese BBQ is totally different. The biggest difference is that it lasts a lot longer. We were there for 5-6 hours and they were barbequing the whole time! I got too hot sitting by the fires (you have to find your own firewood), so I took off to check out the rest of the area.
You can see me helping to marinate (or whatever) the meat. We brought plastic gloves and doused the meat in sauce and mixed it with our hands. Then we carefully put all the bits onto wooden skewers for easy cooking. It took a long time.
You can also see a picture of us cooking oysters. At least, I think that’s what they were. They were delicious! And by far the easiest thing to cook. When the food ran out, we all went home. The only other activity was mahjong, a betting game. The same 4 guys played the WHOLE time. No kidding – no breaks. The women brought them food. I’m not sure how much money changed hands, but it was definitely changing hands.
Portland to Portland 