Of Cheese and Erhus

Yesterday Becka and I decided to fulfill our ambition of cooking jacket potatoes with beans and cheese. This involved finding baked beans so we trekked to Haixin Plaza, makes Waitrose look like a soup kitchen, as I remembered seeing some beans there. Sure enough, in the exotic imported section nestled some Heinz cans of baked beans. We scooped some up at £1 a tin and then headed to Jusco for cheese, butter and potatoes, as we reasoned that this would be cheaper. It wasn't really. So Becka and I ended up paying around £4 for 250g of slightly plasticky cheddar cheese. And £2 for a block of margerine.

Then we headed back to my room to cook up our feast. Our equipment consisted of one microwavable bowl, a lid to the bowl, a large knife and a spoon. We cooked our four potatoes in relays in the bowl and then microwaved the beans in the bowl as well. For Becka's plate we stretched a plastic bag over the grill that was supplied with the microwave and for mine I used the bowl. The plastic bag contraption actually worked quite well. For cutlery we used a rice scoop and a soup spoon.

We allowed ourselves a sliver of cheese each.

It tasted amazing.

Where, and what, we normally eat:

Our feast:

Today Becka, Daisy and I ventured forth into Chinese culture with music lessons. Daisy and Becka elected to play the 古筝, Guzheng, which is a horizontal board with strings stretched over the top, rather like a sideways harp. I went for the 二胡 which is like a violin except it is played on your lap, it only has two strings and the bow is connected to the strings. So I suppose, not really like a violin but close enough! The erhu orginally came from Mongolia and has a bit of the peasant about it as opposed to the furniture-like guzheng. Which is kinda why I chose it as it is easily portable and I have this vision of being sat in a village in Yunnan (picturesque province in China) sawing out some haunting melody. We'll see :P

I was a tad nervous before starting as a) it would be all in Chinese and b) all I have heard about the erhu is that it is supposed to be the most difficult instrument to learn to play. But I confidently assured myself that years of half-hearted violin playing would give me a head start, and besides, how hard can it be...

It was actually quite good fun. My teacher was very cute and fascinated that a laowai was learning the erhu. Despite her talking at top speed I was actually surprised at how much I could understand and it helped that she happily pushed and pulled me into the right position. I was a bit, alright a lot, rubbish at first as it was quite hard to pull the bow smoothly across the strings. Cat wailing doesn't even begin to describe the sound coming out. My wrist action wasn't so good but after a while I learnt to relax and got a good flow going. By the end of the lesson I had mastered the c major scale and twinkle twinkle little star. That famous traditional Chinese tune :P Plus my Chinese had got a good workout so that was a Chinese and an erhu lesson for a mere 60kuai!

So now I am thinking of buying one and setting about learning it properly. A medium quality one is around 1000元 so 100 pounds.... xmas present sized....

This is a video from the House of Flying Daggers- the string instrument is an erhu :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CftQoGezY3Y