Dumplings on Election Day

Tonight, incumbent Ma Ying-jeou beat out challenger Tsai Ying-wen to win a second term as President of Taiwan. (Note: I don't know enough to claim an opinion on this.) But, while I received updates of the race in real time from the TV, I have to admit my attention wasn't fully fixed on the screen, since I was spending the evening with my extended host family, making dumplings and learning Chinese out of a first grade Chinese textbook.

It was glorious.

Seriously, I've said it before, but I really REALLY love my host family and extended host family. There's a whole new level of comfort and amazingness with just hanging out at a three-generational gathering that counts you as one of them, whether you are biologically or not. 

This time we went to my host cousins' house, which happens to be across the street from Margaret's parents' house, and when we got there they weren't home, leading to a search of the grandparents' house and several phone calls by Bunny, who was over visiting, to her parents. And all of this just served to confirm the wonderfulness of being part of a close-knit family, running back and forth and being comfortable enough to take off for tea when they're coming, and not mind in the slightest that you have to wait for a few minutes to get in.

And then we made dumplings. Mine weren't beautiful like my host aunt's were--of course, she does have a bit more practice, and had made several hundred this morning before we came--but they did at least beat out Jenny's, which tended to be flat and semi-circular, rather than rounded and crescent-shaped. Bunny taught me how to make them and then set me loose, and I had a ball, sitting around the kitchen table with all the women and girls in the family (momentarily distracted by all the international gender norms going on as the men sat in the room next door watching the election unfold) and shoving a mixture of pork, leek, onion and mushroom into little pre-made dough squares and folding and crimping the edges.

Finished!

As we crimped the edges on the final dumpling, Jenny hauled us back into the living room, where we debated Monopoly or Uno for a while before choosing the latter, which we played until it was time to actually cook the dumplings, which we did (just plopped them in boiling water and put the lid on--so easy!) before resuming our game.

Dinner itself was scrumptious, and included not just our homemade dumplings, but some yummy curry Margaret had made, seafood pizza and roasted chicken from Costco (baby Mumu particularly enjoyed just putting her face down and gnawing on the chicken before it was served, seeing as it was positioned just so perfectly at her height), some soup which I was too full to taste, and vanilla pudding.

After our meal (and some initial prodding by her parents), Jenny set about to teach me Chinese. At first it was a group effort, with Margaret, Bunny, Jenny and their mom all drawing characters on both Bunny's Asus tablet and Mumu's play table (it has a magnetic drawing board with one of those slide erasers on it--and yes, I loved the vast gap between the technologies being used), as everyone shouted out various words or phrases for me to learn. Then, at Margaret's request, Jenny (who's 9, by the way) got out her old 1st grade Chinese book, and the lesson began in earnest.

Seriously, I've never had a more determined teacher. Together, we plowed through four complete lessons in the course of about an hour, and as I repeatedly mistook similar characters for each other (在 and 左, for instance), she would stop the lesson, pull out Mumu's table, and write each one in turn: "What's this? (writes 左)" "Zai?" "No." "Zuo?" "Yes." (draws 在) "What's this?" "Zai." "Yes." (repeats process several more times, pointing out the specific points where the characters vary and connecting their various radicals to other characters which I should, in theory, know).

And she's nine. Born teacher if I've ever seen one!

 Both her mom and Margaret helped her along, making her translate the little chants she was teaching me into English and say them for me to follow, so she could practice her English at the same time. And whenever I would forget a part of the chant--as I routinely did, given that I knew very few of the vocabulary words before this little lesson--she would frown and say "no English!" before launching into yet another explanation of what word I should be saying.  "坐下来," for instance, not "something 下来." After a while, Margaret and her mom started urging her to leave off with the lesson, since there was no way I'd remember everything she was teaching me (truth), but she would not be deterred. Even when she was finally satisfied with my ability to recite lesson 4 without help, it took some persuading to keep her from going on to lesson 5, and she continued quizzing me on other things as we moved on to Wii.

The rest of the evening was spent losing various video games to Bunny and Jenny, with the whole family looking on. That, and a lot of fun family self-portraits.

Bunny has bunny ears. :)

So yes, Taiwan re-elected a president today, as the world looked on. But for me, good or bad, that was hardly the highlight of the evening.