China Memories - BBQ with Friends

Through my final months spent in China, one of my best friends was someone who’s name I never fully learned. I guess that’s not entirely shocking when living in a country that speaks a language you don’t understand.

His name existed only as a series of symbols in my “WeChat” application (the main social media app in the country) that at one point I vaguely understood, though I could never remember it. And of course, I’ve since forgotten his name.

He owned a dumpling shop that I often stopped by after work. “Jiaozi” is the Chinese word for dumplings, and “zhū ròu” (if you don’t understand pinyin this might not mean anything) is the word for pork.

I ordered the pork dumplings (with soured vegetables) from him on an almost daily basis, to the point that he started to deem my predictability laughable. “My dumplings seduce you so thoroughly, or is it me?” He’d often joke through our phone apps.

“Zhū ròu jiaozi, suancai? (Pork dumplings with sauerkraut?)

“Yǒu.” (I’ll have)

I typically ate alone at his dumpling store during my final winter months in China. The store was essentially a food stand, amidst a maze of food stands, within the first-floor supermarket of a tall and decrepit business building.

If the customer line wasn’t too long, we’d have an extended conversation. He couldn’t speak a word of English and my Chinese was shaky at best, so we communicated almost entirely through our phone apps.

We talked about life, work, the daily grind, and the daily pressure of putting food on a family’s table. He asked me about culture in America, and I asked him about culture in China.

We made jokes about how easily the Russians in the area were mistaken by Chinese locals to be American.

After a few weeks of pleasant lunch conversations, we started having dinner and drinks together. “You have to experience Chinese food beyond my dumplings, after all!” He’d joke. His wife worked with him and she often joined us in our gluttony (and we truly feasted). Chinese bbq was typically our favorite meal.

This was one of our favorite bbq spots. These photos were taken three years ago to this day. It brought back a smile to see my old friend again.

I’d since deleted my WeChat profile, and I often regret it. There is a pang of nostalgia and a wish to send him a message to catch up on life; I can only guess that his store is doing well (they were excellent dumplings after all!).