Chinese Cookout

On one of our Friday afternoons we headed to the north part of Shanghai. It took close to 3 hours to get there by subway—it was far. Our destination was a park that had grills you can rent for a cookout. We had some Chinese friends with us and our teacher, Weiqi, came with us.

The park was really nice however the grilling area was less than clean, we actually joked that it would be equivalent to cooking out in a dump back home. There was trash everywhere and remnants of food were scattered all around. This would not be someplace I would cookout back home, I would definitely think twice about my location.

A few people went to the store previously so we had a bunch of food with us. When we got there we washed the vegetables and started putting things on cooking sticks…like the street food people. We had mushrooms, onions, eggplant, tomatoes, corn, chicken wings, beef, buns, and a lot of snacks…there was so much food! We covered the tables and the benches with plastic so we had a nice clean surface to lay the food on.

At first the cooking took a while. It took a while to figure out the most efficient way to grill things, but the food was delicious! Everything in China is cooked with oil and there is no exception to that at a cookout.

The cookout was an all day event because it was tiny pieces of things being cooked at a given time, just a taste. There were only two small grills and about 20 of us. We all just hung out and enjoyed each other’s company.

There was a young girl (who all of the American’s thought was a boy, but the Chinese assured us that it was a girl) who was digging through the garbage’s with her mom. She kept watching the guys play Chinese hackey-sack and observing what we were doing. We eventually offered her food and at first she was really resistant to accept it but Weiqi eventually talked her into it. After that she immediately warmed up to everyone and even started playing tag with some of the guys. The mom looked so happy to see her little girl running around and enjoying herself, as if, for a minute she forgot their circumstances.

As we were packing up to go home we realized how much food we had left, there was no point for us to take it all the way home since we don’t cook in the dorms. So, Weiqi talked to the mother of the little girl and we gave them everything we had left. It was a feast for anyone, whether they were poor or not!!! I still cannot get over how much food we had left. The mom was so grateful she even tried handing us a small sum of money, which, we did not accept.

It was a great day. The Chinese style cookout was a ton a fun and a bit of a surprise, I wasn’t exactly sure how it was all going to come together but it did. J