Li Mei Hua at 11:22 PM

So, when I first came to China, my diet was pretty pathetic. I was too new to this place to know what to buy. For the first few days it was instant noodles and crackers. the crackers stuck, cause I didn't know what else to do for munchies. Other than that we ate outside. Within a few weeks we found a place that makes hand pulled noodles and fried dumplings. We had this amazing food place literally 20 steps from the bottom of our stairs, but about 2 weeks into the semester they moved and someone else came in who made yuck food. So I was a little discouraged, until I found Li Mei Hua.

Li Mei Hua makes the best fried rice I have ever heard of. First off, we have to realize, that I can't read Chinese and I did not know what to eat in this country when I first got here. So any type of food I found that was safe, tasted good, and was easy to find again, was an instant success. Right outside the back gate of our school is this alley that has all these ghetto food places. It's actually really cool, partially because they're super poor and they're really nice. Anyways, I tried to eat at a lot of these places and it was good, but it was so different that I felt like lunch every day was a gamble. Until I found Li Mei Hua. When most people make fried rice in Hunan they do two things. Usually it's spicy, which is REALLY good and usually they put in these pickled beans, which I think taste like unhappiness. So one day, (there's about 6 or 7 food places) I went to this random place in the alley with this random lady and I asked for fried rice. She cooked it and gave it to me, and I partook.

Spicy - Check
No ugly pickled beans - Check
Good price - Check (4 yuan, which translates to about 60 cents)
Vegetables - Check (This is important cause we didn't have a working kitchen and you can't eat veggies raw here or you get parasites so they have to be cooked in your food)

Delicious - Double Check

It was love. Not with Li Mei Hua, she's married and I can't understand her Chinese anyways, well I can now, but I couldn't then. It was the fried rice! I think almost every day for the next 2-3 months I had fried rice for lunch (Don't worry mom, fried rice here is way healthier than in America). Every time she saw me she would start laughing and shout out "Ji dan chou fan" (Fried Rice), because she knew that's what I was going to order. Anyways, it's weird how you can be friends with people even though you can't speak the same language. I actually think she was usually pretty happy to see me despite the huge communication barriers. After a month or two, once I figured out how to ask questions in Chinese, she would teach me the names of all the foods she cooked with. Which was super cool, because, most of the words I know for food came from her. Anyways, the first couple months of this semester I didn't go out there as much cause I started eating fruit in the mornings and oatmeal for lunch. Plus lunchtime was a good time to study, so if I ate alone i usually got more done. Anyways, I went out there last week for the first time in a little while and I think it totally made her day. It made mine too. It's weird how we're friends due to all the times I ate there. Especially because my Chinese wasn't good enough that I could understand her and have conversations until recently. (Which by the way, having a conversation in Chinese doesn't mean I'm good at it. Just want to point that out.)

Anyways, she's my hero. I'm not really attracted to Chinese girls in general, but I always thought if she was about 30 years younger, not married, and a member, those things with her food would be enough for me to consider a marriage proposal.

So I've attached some pictures of her here and where she cooks and lives. It's basically a two room place. One room opens to the street where people can sit and she cooks. and the other is her bedroom which also has a table for eating. And that's it. That's her house. For a woman with no money, she seems really happy. Basically, I think she's the bomb and she's one of the things I'll miss the most about China.

The first picture is her bedroom pretty small. The second and third pictures are her cooking in her front room for students at lunch. The last picture is the view of the Alley just outside her place.

It kind of makes me grateful for how much stuff we have in America. Like places to live that aren't totally open to the elements. Air conditioning and heat. A clean work place. A computer. A car. The list goes on....