Day 3 Blog - Charlie Brisch

 Charlie Brisch

Mr. Zhou

January 7th, 2020

Chinese Culture

Day 3

Today we read the introduction to the book we are reading during class, The Chinese In America by Iris Chang. This book talks about the hardships chinese people had to go through when coming to America, how they came to America, and their stories. After our reading and discussion, we listened to a short 10 minute podcast about the Houston Chinatown and how it has moved locations, unlike other Chinatowns. When we finished listening to the podcast we got started on our way to Chinatown.

Once we arrived in Chinatown, we had to do a scavenger hunt. In this scavenger hunt we had to find different things and take pictures of them. The first item was an instant noodles brand with the logo being a chef with a chefs hat. There were many different brands and nobody really knew which one to take a picture of because there wasn’t an exact one we could decide on. The second task was to find two different regional cuisine restaurants. Both of the groups got dropped off at two different markets so there was a wide variety of restaurants to choose from. Then the third item was an instant Hot Pot. The instant hot pot is a dish that instantly heats up the food inside of it and makes it ready to eat in a short amount of time. My group got this wrong because we didn’t exactly know what to look for and we don’t think the market that we were in even carried that type of hot pot. The fourth item was the most recent Chinese newspaper, both groups found a newspaper together, but it was from early last month. The company that printed the newspaper was also kind of known as a cult in China, and the paper is also outcast by the Chinese people. There is suspicion that the owner of the newspaper moved to the US, which is why we were able to find it in Chinatown. The fifth item is 3 different decorations or items for the upcoming Chinese New Year. My group had found 3 different foods and candies and the other group did not find anything for Chinese New Year. The final task was to find 3 things our group was not familiar with, these ended up being foods that we have never seen before or just random obscure items, such as detachable pot handles.

After we arrived back at school from Chinatown, we got takeout. This particular takeout was Szechuan. Szechuan foods are mainly spicy, but I really enjoyed them. The food was really good and really filling for how little of it I ate. I still want more of it now that I’m writing this. These foods were Kung Pao chicken, tofu, lotus roots, fried vegetables, fried rice, and normal rice. I was a little cautious when trying the lotus roots but they ended up being very good and I really enjoyed them.

Once we had finished eating we went back to the room and watched the first episode to a documentary about Asian Americans and their hardships. This particular episode was dedicated to talking about the Chinese Americans who helped build the intercontinental railroad, they worked the toughest of conditions, then once the picture was taken of it being finished, the Chinese were not allowed to be in frame because of their skin color even though they had built over half of it.


These two images are of the markets that we went to:

This is a picture of the food we ate:







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