Okay, hands down. The part of Chinese culture I was most excited to learn about is the food. Chengdu is the capital of the Sichuan Province, which, even in China is known for its excepional cuisine. There is a lot of flavor, most of the dishes have a ton of spiciness and hotness to them, which can occasionally knock you out for a minute trying to get your mouth back under control (hint: I found out having a piece of tofu after something crazy spicy helps!)
There are some things traditionally different when it comes to meal time in China. Eating at home, Chinese people don't have drinks at the table. No water, no glass of wine, nothing. So you gotta gulp that food down by itself. Luckily most of the dishes are swimming in a sauce of spices and other things I couldn't disguise yet, so it goes down quiet well without the help of water. Still I was used to drink almost half a liter at every meal, which I now split up on 1/4 liter before and 1/4 after dinner. That way I still get my liquid input for the day :-) my family really only uses chopsticks, which makes mealtime a real adventure for me. It's like going on a hunt, sometimes I'm successful, sometimes I'm not. But I definitely see improvement! But honestly, I want to see you trying to fish those crazy long Chinese noodles out of the soup with chopsticks! Special fun with 8 other people watching. Thank you Nainai for coming to the rescue!
But the real fun is that you could ask me after almost every meal about what I ate, and I could maybe tell you about 2 dishes I was able to recognize, but the other 6 dishes - hey, it was delicious, but no idea what I just ate there! It get's especially flaky when it comes to meat when it gets served in this massive sauce. Trust me, you can't tell which body part of the animal once held this meat. It could literally come from anywhere. So I bet over the last week I've been eating pieces of meat I would have never touched back in Germany, but to me there is no way to disguise them. And grandma telling me the Chinese name of it doesn't really help yet ;-) but just so you get an idea, most of the meat that is served here is on the fatty side, wabbly and chewy. Haha, luckily the Chinese don't have a hard time spitting out food pieces they don't like. I can adapt pretty good to that ;-)
Eating out at the restaurant you do get served a drink though. But it's no water, it's no tea (teatime is not til 3pm), and definitely no alcohol. It's freshly pressed fruit juice. In my case watermelon juice, served in a huge wine glass. And I have to say, with the temperatures here these days it's exactly what you want.