Hell yea
Near the end of the week-long holiday last week, Miguel and I decided to try out some different meals from my usual fare of going to the canteen and spending 10-12RMB on some questionably-cooked meat and vegetables.
My standard dinner: Tomatoes, Potatoes, and Mystery Meat...
...purchased from here!
I decided to try out some of the local restaurants, going to an overpriced Islamic - or Huimin (Hwey Min 回民) as they're called in China - place that looked like it had some interesting foods.
Inside the Huimin restaurant
Unfortunately, the folks who ran the restaurant catered mainly to the stupid foreigners who understand nothing about Chinese pricing, as the menu showed some of the most outrageous prices I'd ever seen in a Chinese restaurant:
I don't care if I get to eat the sheep's brains, 1888RMB is still too much!
Thus, being a total cheapskate, Miguel and I decided to opt for a lot of the cheapest things on the menu, rice and lamb kebabs (yang row chwan 羊肉串)!
The meat didn't even taste that good
With the debacle of the Huimin restaurant at an end, we both decided to give the canteen another try. As it turns out, the canteen does not just serve questionably-cooked, lukewarm meals, but rather a variety of strange and wondrous meal that include a make-your-own-soup (malatang 麻辣烫 - which I've eaten previously)...
... as well as a freshly-made food section that cost a little more than the luke-warm pig swill food that you could get at the the primary canteen:
That little trip ended me up with a box of noodles, literally called "Eggs and Beef with fried Noodles" or "Jidan Niurou Chaomian (鸡蛋牛肉炒面)", which was much warmer and more pleasant to eat than my usual cafeteria fare.
Comes with complimentary wooden chopsticks!
The next day, Miguel took me to a place that one of the other Laowai had shown him, where they sold much higher quality meat-kebabs than the barely edible - and overpriced - food at the Huimin restaurant.
Unfortunately, as the saying goes, "curiosity killed the cat," which was what was metaphorically about to happen to my innards.
Thanks Boromir!
When I woke up the next morning, I found my stomach to be in an unbearable amount of pain. After trying to tough it out and let the feeling pass naturally, I gave up and rushed to my medicine drawer. Before I left for China, I smartly bought a fairly large collection of medicine with the knowledge that finding such things in China would be a little more difficult.
My medical 'war chest'
After taking some medicine from my supplies, the pain diminished and I felt better, but, of course, the worst was yet to come.
It wasn't long after that my intestines began to sing a lovely tune to me, that simply refused to stop. Below is an approximation of that tune:
After several hours, my dorm room's bathroom and I became very, very well acquainted with one another. It was a very uncomfortable time to say the least, and I came to realize that I needed to get some of the only kind of medicine I had forgotten to bring with me from Canada. Miguel was still recovering from a night of heavy drinking, so I had to venture out alone in my journey to get some medication.
I first went to my ayi (阿姨), who is basically the caretaker of my dorm building, and asked her where on campus I could find some medication. The ayi pointed me in the direction of the campus hospital, which I quickly made my way to. Unfortunately, when I got to the entrance of the hospital, the lovely guard at the door told me the building was for emergencies only, and that there were no medications for what I needed on campus. After clarifying with the guard that this was a hospital that had no medication in it, he said to me that I would have to go off campus to look for a drug store. My reaction was well-behaved and appropriate:
Still in considerable discomfort, I stumbled my way out of the nearest campus gate to look for a drug store. Luckily, there was a drug store fairly close-by, and I went inside and purchased some medication that was recommended by the pharmacists.
My Chinese medication
I took the medication, and the symptoms slowly began to abate. I was confident that would be able to get to class once the holiday was finished. This, however, didn't turn out to be the case, as my lovely condition continued for almost a week straight - albeit greatly lessened from what it had originally been. I was feeling so terrible that I even chose to take some time off of work from my kindergarten job.
As of writing this, I good enough to actually go to my classes and work this upcoming week, and will - hopefully - be able to return to my regular schedule here in Suzhou. In the meantime, I've learned my lesson not to experiment too much with Chinese food around here, and be sure to play closer attention to the health inspection labels put up in every Chinese restaurant!
As you can see by the happy face, the Chinese bureaucracy declares the SuDa canteens to be CLEAN!
Until next time!
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