Last Saturday was the chinese cooking party at the president’s house. The “chefs” were a group of Chinese students from the University of Aizu, one who will be starting his internship come summer.
According to the only girl in that group – Ling – it seems to be the current fad for Chinese guys to pick up cooking and do the cooking. Whether it is because of the popularity of weak-minded males(草食男子) or because it will give them an edge over other competitors in a country where males outnumber females, or perhaps both, it is a good thing for females to have the job of their hands.

It would be good to marry a Chinese, although with my painfully inadequate spoken Chinese there will be difficulties. It may not seem so to others, but composing a sentence purely in Chinese requires much thinking and translation from either English or even Japanese, and the words feel foreign when I try to speak. My mother tongue has become a foreign language.

The food was delicious, not nostalgic but with a familiar Chinese – spicy – taste. I may be losing my Chinese, but it should be fine as long as I do not forget the taste of Chinese food.

Ying Tong (who has gotten used to having her bentou laughed at)