Gu老师 came back from the fancy hotel buffet to the table with a small plate of noodles. “Oh look,” Wang老师 pointed them out. I had been asking earlier how to say “popular” (I have forgotten again) so that I could say These noodles aren’t very popular. At the buffet, I had found a seemingly-untouched dish of 中式炒面 zhong1shi4 chao3mian4 – Chinese-style fried noodles (chow mein) in the midst of all the fancy foreign food – fruit, soups, sushi, etc. She’d laughed and told me the Chinese-style noodles were too normal, too common. Everyone wanted to come here to eat the fancy, exciting food!
Someone asked Kraytul once, “What do people eat for supper in the United States?” After thinking for a moment, he replied, “Foreign food!”
It seems the same is true in China!
Gu老师’s noodle plate actually contained some of the Chinese-style noodles as well as strands of spaghetti mixed in. “Ha!” she joked, “国际炒面！” International Noodles!
The Tracy Update Blog 