On a beautiful Sunday noon, SIECA members led the foreign exchange students to LaoMenDong, which locates at the south of the city, aiming to appreciate the unique cultural landscape and taste delicious traditional snacks.
In order to make the activities more interesting, we continued the stimulating game which we played last time——the ‘Snacks Bingo’. Everyone participating the game was required to be divided into two groups. Each group were supposed to find the appointed food, take pictures with it in the right storefront and finally take a group photo after having the food. The group which first completed the task would be given a reward to taste all delicious food for free.
On the subway to LaoMenDong, exchange students and Chinese students lively discussed the following arrangements and groups. After arriving at LaoMenDong, the members scattered in small groups in the alleys, looking for the delicious food. Everyone eagerly queued up to buy delicious food, with smiling faces and plum blossom cake in their mouths. The exchange students also tasted chicken soup buns, beef pot stickers, stinky tofu, baked cakes and other special snacks with Jinling flavor. They raved about the bean jelly. This is a grand feast of taste, foreign students praised the delicious Nanjing traditional snacks, and are also deeply attracted by the Nanjing food culture.
After the entertaining food tour at noon, we went to a charming tea house to help everyone experience Chinese culture better. We were pleased to taste the traditional Chinese snacks Qingtuan(a sweet green rice ball), Rice Crackers and so forth. We also appreciated the shop assistants’ professional tea ceremony，including the selection of tea leaves, the preparation of the utensils，waiting for the boiling water，leaning the tea ceremony etc. All the exchange students were eager to give it a shot, and most of them experienced the Chinese tea ceremony themselves and drank their self-made tea in the end. At the same time, they also took this as a good opportunity to discuss the differences between different cultures, and learnt some idioms and commonly used expressions from each other.
This activity enables the exchange students to have a deeper understanding of Nanjing and China, opening a whole new world of the profound Chinese tradition and culture.
Peng Ruizhi, Xia Yixin
