Welcome Dinner

After tea with the SOE we were invited to have dinner at the Yifu hotel restaurant, on the Xiamen campus. The meal was hosted by Jasmine, the program manager at the school of economics at Xiamen. After she gave us a brief introduction about the university, we were served an array of delicious authentic Chinese cuisine.

This included:  chicken stir fry, duck rolls, an oyster omelette, seafood noodle broth, jellyfish and deep-fried mango pastry etc.

In China, it is customary to serve the dishes on a revolving table, as it is expected to be shared with everyone. Moreover, in Chinese culture they use chopsticks and spoons to eat as opposed to knives and forks in the Western culture, hence it was difficult to adapt to the change but over time we became more accustomed to it.

To finish the night, we played a fun game of fish eye roulette, whereby we placed a fish eye on a plate on the rotating table. Chinese people consider eating a fish eye to be beneficial to your eyesight and very nutritious. We then spun the table and whoever the plate landed on would have the honour of eating the eye.

It was a fun and delicious way to end the day.

Diandra Wilmot, Farzana Yeasmin, Premsai Patel, Yinka Sobamiwa