Life in United Kingdom

My cousin told me she made Jiaozi dumplings with her classmates one weekend, fillings are "wild chives" and pork mince. They picked "wild chives" in the wood behind their house. Though I asked her to show me next time and also pick some to make dumplings, I was suspicious, and not so enthusiastic about making wild chive dumplings. There is an old Chinese saying, 'He who was once bitten by a snake will always have a fear of a coiled rope.' Last Christmas, I bought a bunch of daffodils and mistook them as garlic sprouts. I cooked with pasta, half an hour after dinner, my stomach started aching and vomited everything out. Luckily my daughters didn't like the bitter taste, they only ate a little. They vomited also, but not as serious as me. It's said on the internet that many Chinese mistake daffodil as garlic shoot and got poisoned. I AM afraid of being poisoned again by some unknown plant. Today we went for a walk along a the Ox Field Beck, crossed...

I am not a big fan of Jiaozi dumpling, but when I notice the familiar shape of Italian Tortellini, I still felt glad of finding another similar western food. There are two kinds of Tortellini on the supermarket shelf, one filling is spinach and ricotta cheese, another bacon and ham. I don’t expect fillings like pork mince and garlic chives or cabbages as we usually do in China. During the research, I found that there are other varieties similar as Chinese Jiaozi along the Silk Road from Korea in the east to Italia in the west, all the way cross the Siberian Plain and turns at Middle East to India in the south west, such as Korean Mandu, Japanese Gyoza, Siberian pelmeni, Italian Tortellini and Ravioli, Turkish Manti, and Indian Gujia (also called gujhia). There are no questions that Mandu and Manti are cognate words, while Gyoza, Jiaozi, and Gujia are cognate words from another origin. Pelmeni is originated from Tartar Pilmän. The Korean word Mandu was derived from Chinese Mantou, w...

Youtiao literally means ‘oil stick’, is a long golden-brown deep-fried strip of dough, it’s twisted like a cruller and so made that you can tear it lengthwise in two halves. If crullers are described as resembling "a small, braided torpedo", then I would say Youtiao is a mini "finger of God" tornado twister. Youtiao is eaten at breakfast, as an accompaniment for rice congee, soy milk, or stuffed inside a roasted flatbread to make a sandwich. We really missed this for breakfast in the first year in the UK, youtiao was one of the reason for homesick. One day we found Yorkshire Pudding, which is mainly flour-based and fried, with its similar texture and its golden colour, but it seems totally different kind of food judged by its round cup shape. Oven-baked for four minutes till it’s crispy when dipped into soy source, Yorkshire Pudding tastes exactly same as Youtiao and perfect with rice congee, and soy milk too!

The Living, the Dead, and the Path Between Linora Kingsley is a nine-year-old child; she has light brown hair that reaches down to her waist, hazel eyes, and fair skin; she is curious, dreamy, adventurous, but was born weak, and had to visit the hospital many times when she was younger. Her parents dote on her and care for her, but all she wants is to be healthy, so she can explore the world. She can rarely go to school during the winter, and she gets extremely ill in the middle of October, so she has to miss a lot of school. She feels left out, and she isn’t as ‘smart’ as people her own age, but she manages to get by since she learns at home. But, her parents work and they can’t have so much time for her, so she is almost always left with her aunt, who almost doesn’t care of her Niece's existence. On the Christmas eve, Linora slowly walked up the stairs to her room, past the room that auntie was sleeping in, and through the creaky door. Moonlight streamed into her room, and the s...

Women have been suppressed for thousands of years, when many noble and chivalry man were killed in two World Wide Wars, the aristocracy fell on the ground and smashed into pieces, feminist lifted their head proudly, they began to protest on the street and demand their rights. Their revenge is fierce; man has no way to escape their anger. Sometimes I wondered that limited liability company was invented by hen-pecked entrepreneurs who tried to protect their property by way of national law after the ancient aristocracy fallen apart. I believe that one Chinese billionaire has deep understanding of the nature of the relationship of husband and wife, he transforms fourteen years of his future salary into company shares, and pays himself symbolic one cent of salary annually, he made these arrangements before the wedding day. Almost at the same time Man invented Entrepreneurship, the bankers stealthily sneak up behind their back, and persuaded those entrepreneurs to protect their property...

APR, AER, EAR are abbreviations of annual percentage rate, annual equivalent rate, equivalent annual rate, respectively. APR is used to express the true cost of the money borrowed on credit cards, loans and mortgages, EAR is used to demonstrate the full percentage cost of overdrafts, AER on the other hand is only used in relation to savings and interest based investments. What does EPR means?  APR is most commonly seen, its calculation takes account of the basic interest rate, when it is charged (i.e. annually, monthly, weekly or daily), all initial fees and any other costs you are obliged to pay. As lenders all calculate APR the same way, it enables you to make direct cost comparisons between competing lending products. So if one bank is offering you a mortgage at 4.75% plus an arrangement fee of £450 and a building society is offering you an interest rate of 5.1% with a £100 fee, then the APR figures will show you which of the two mortgages is the cheaper. There are then tw...

Regular Debit Card Payment Pay regular bills automatically, such as magazine subscriptions, using your debit card. The payments are agreed between you and the company or organisation, often by telephone. If you need to cancel a payment, you'll need to speak directly to the organisation that set it up. This is different from Direct Debit (DD) because you can cancel DD at any time, but you need to speak directly to the organisation first to cancel regular debit card payment. Direct Debit  DD is convenient to pay regular bills such as gas or electricity automatically, direct from your account. You can cancel DD payments at any time online, via telephone banking or in a branch, and you have also to remember to cancel them with the organisation that set them up. When you fill a direct debit form, you may notice that there is a "Direct Debit Guarantee", so what is the Direct Debit Guarantee? Simply speaking, Direct Debit Guarantee means two things: one is the amounts ...