Newsletter (2017-2018) February 2018 Newsletter | Page 7

BUDDY SCHEME EVENT
By Belinda Zhou
For the January buddy scheme event, a group of
students and International Tutors went to Tai Po
Market’s cooked food centre to share Cantonese
dishes with each other in a casual atmosphere.
The idea was also to simulate a dai pai dong ex-
perience, but indoors, both out of convenience
and to save us from Hong Kong’s surprising-
ly chilly winter evenings. Due to our limited
knowledge of Chinese, we relied on the students
this time to order dishes that would be appro-
priate for the group. This was not necessarily an
easy task, as they had to make sure to accom-
modate some dietary restrictions. However, the
students did a fantastic job and ordered a variety
of meat, seafood, and vegetable dishes, leaving
everyone satisfied with dinner.
The whole group at one of the restaurants in Tai Po
Market Cooked Food Centre.
very uncommon for me to wash my tableware; I
usually assume everything at the table is clean.
For this reason, while cleaning in this way is
Having dinner as a group was a great way to very common practice here, it has still taken a
bond and discuss food culture. One topic of lot of us quite some time to adjust to this routine.
conversation included the practice of washing This was done so much more efficiently by the
bowls, glasses, and chopsticks with hot water or students, so we were lucky to have them with
tea in Hong Kong. In the United States, even if us, especially since the process had to be repeat-
I am eating at a Chinese restaurant, it would be ed for thirteen people.
Afterwards, a smaller group of us went to a Can-
tonese-style dessert shop in Tai Po Centre. While
some of us opted for molten chocolate lava cake,
a more western style dessert, several of us also
ordered more traditional Chinese desserts, in-
cluding different types of soup (糖水) and black
sesame glutinous rice balls (黑芝麻湯圓). Person-
ally, I like that they were not as sweet as West-
ern-style cakes and pastries. Having these light
and warm desserts were a perfect way to end a
chilly evening after a filling meal!
Our desserts included Chinese-style sweet soups
(left) and a chocolate lava cake (right).
Two of the dishes we ordered were steamed fish and
spare ribs with rice noodles.
7
FEBRUARY 2018