Saturday, July 10 – Kung Pao Chicken and Cha

On our last morning in Guilin we started off our day at the Cloud 9 Cooking School. The adults tromped up to the roof and donned chef hats and aprons and proceeded to be taught the fine art of preparing kung pao chicken and beef with peppers and onions. I’m proud to say that it was really just like my own cooking at home, with one exception. We each had our own wok positioned over its own gas burner which gave me wonderful heat control - my own wok never gets so hot…and can never be cooled down incredibly quickly to regulate the speed at which vegetables are cooked. I also learned to fry dumplings without burning them and having them spill their contents into the wok. This was lunch. I was hoping that the children could cook, but it turns out that there are too many knives, raw scary meats, and flames for it to be even remotely safe.



After lunch we piled into a van to tour the Guilin Tea Research Institute – a tea farm developed to promote research on the medicinal value of teas and to develop new variants of tea. We participated in a formal tea tasting ceremony and spent the obligatory 30 minutes in the gift shop (again, didn’t buy anything). It was fascinating to see how tea is harvested, kneaded, fermented, and dried. I’ve also now learned that my Chinese manners are horrendous – one should never put the tips of chopsticks in one’s mouth; one should never cross one’s chopsticks; if you drink your tea in one gulp you are a water buffalo; if you drink your tea in two gulps you are a donkey; if you eat everything on your plate you’re indicating that you didn’t have enough food, etc. etc. Then back to our cushy Sheraton hotel and a pre-dinner swim in the exceedingly warm pool.



Dinner was a lavish ‘farewell feast’ at an excellent restaurant about a 5 minute walk from the Sheraton in Guilin. There were many toasts, a few tears (mostly among the children who didn’t want to leave each other), ‘Great Wall’ red wine (yuck), and excellent food. We turned in early after dinner because we need to catch an early flight to Guangzhou.