Dead Fish

I asked my friend Xin Zhang what she misses most about China.  "THE FOOD! THE FOOD! THE FOOD! You people here eat DEAD fish!"  "You mean you like raw fish like sushi?" "NO! The Chinese cook their fish--(small rant here about crazy Japanese cuisine).  But when I go to the store here the fish is frozen. It is dead.  I asked if Chinese food in America bears any relation to real Chinese food.  HUGE eyeball roll.  Xin says she can cook 100 times better than the Chinese restaraunts, but that she is not considered a good cook.  "In China I am a stupid cook. My father won't let me into the kitchen." 

According to Xin we should skip Shanghai--it's just like New York and not at all the real China.  She also described a fun place but couldn't tell me what it was in English.  Somewhere in China there is a huge flat rock--that is covered by about six inches of water. I'm still not sure if it's part of a river or a lake.  But the rock is so smooth and the water so shallow ("only this thick") that it feels as if you're walking ON the water.  People come from all over just to walk around and play on this rock.  Xin says that China is fun because there are so many people and all of them are thinking of fun things to do all the time.