Yangshuo Chefs

Andrew and I can officially make edible Chinese food! - at least with a Chinese instructor hanging over our wok and our every move ;)  Yesterday we went to a cooking class to learn how to make some specialties from this area.  It was a happy combination of interest on our part and rainy weather.  The lesson started out with a visit to the market in town, and our instructor pointed out many types of food we had never seen before.  There were buckets of eels, snails, turtles, and frogs, huge concrete baths full of live fish, and cages upon cages of live chickens and geese.  There were plenty of dead poultry as well, lying on the tables, stiff and steaming with more organs than I care to see associated with something I'm going to eat.  Sadly, there were also dogs and cats at the butcher stalls, some dead and hanging on hooks and others still alive in cages.  I don't have a moral problem with people eating cats or dogs, but seeing them in tiny cages waiting to be slaughtered was very sad.

After the market visit, we headed to the cooking school, which had a huge room full of woks, supplies, and pots and pans.  We were the only scheduled pupils for the class so we had a private lesson for the cost of a shared one!  We made pork-stuffed vegetables, wok-fried greens, cashew chicken, Yangshuo-style eggplant, and the local specialty, beer catfish.  Surprisingly, our renditions of the dishes turned out pretty well, and we were stuffed after eating our own creations for dinner!  You might want to give us another go-around to practice before you ask us to cook for you though!  I need to try without the instructor correcting the heat under my wok!