the village and her greens

The field reminded me of the childhood song that we used to sing and felt somewhat sad.

Planting rice is never fun, bend from morn’ till set of sun.

Cannot stand, cannot sit, cannot rest a little bit.

Guess what plant is this?

Cucumber! The farmer gave us a bagful of them :-)

The strawberry sandals that they bought for me. My toes looked tense up for some reason.

One of the many uses of baskets :-p

The boy who ran for his life after i tried talking to him. Was it me or my mandarin -.-|||

Beauties, everywhere.

Even the fish pond was green.

Olives, anyone?

The fat green chilli in the third pix was eaten as a kind of vegetable there. It was usually

thinly sliced and stir-fried with meat and tasted yummy.

The path that leads back to the house.

PengHe Village (蓬和村)

the town

Walking further down from the wet market, we came to a more organised part of the town.

There were shops rather than stalls, the streets were cleaner and less crowded.

Oops! i got caught taking pix at strangers again.

Check out the colour of the sky, it was going to rain again.

Side entrance of a provision shop.

Writing services along a small side lane. The old man was helping to write names on

invitation cards.

A noodle shop. Buying freshly made noodles to be cooked at home. The boss was trimming

thin sheets of dough into smaller pieces.

Motorbikes and bicycles repairing services.

Cooked food stalls.

Beef noodle soup. i had my breakfast here.

LiHu Town (里湖镇), PengHe Village (蓬和村)

the wet market

The wet market in LiHu Town (里湖镇) was a bustling scene of crowds, motorbikes, bicycles,

occasional cars and colourful umbrellas (brought by the morning drizzle), about 15 mins

bike ride away from the village.

Most locals done their marketing on a motorbike or bicycle and shop from stall to stall.

If i heard it correctly, the rental for setting up a stall per day was just RMB1, irregardless of

the area size occupied. The man in the above picture only had a basket of vegetable and a

traditional weighing scale with him.

There were many different types of dried goods on sale, many of which i don’t recognise.

But then, i’m one of those who don’t usually cook.

i cringed at the sight of these live animals (some familiar, others not) waiting to be

slaughtered, (thus the lack of photos). Nevertheless, it was still a rewarding trip of sight,

smell and hearing (of both humans and animals).

The trip to the wet market was interesting but i am definitely glad to be back shopping

in a supermarket :-)

LiHu Town, PengHe Village (里湖镇, 蓬和村)

food in the village

There wasn’t much things to do in the village (well, that’s because i don’t have to work in the

field like the villagers), so meal time was always the highlight of my day.

A typical morning breakfast consists of sweet potato porridge with peanuts and salted

vegetable. The fried kangkong and beancurd dishes were specially prepared for guests

(that’s us!).

Mid morning snacks for lazy people (like me) who woke up late – sweet black sesame kueh

and deep fried beancurd.

Lunch and dinner usually starts with a bowl of soup to warm the stomach before eating rice.

Lunch & dinner spread. My two favourite dishes were ngo hiang (prawn roll) & “小米”

(steamed vegetable dumplings).

One of the days, electricity was cut off. So we had dinner along the passageway outside the

house, it was breezy after the rain, quite a fun night.

These last few pixs were food from the town. i love those RMB5 noodle soup, they were so

yummy. The last pix was a spread of beef feast hotpot.

PengHe Village (蓬和村)