Haining people

I’ve talked on here before, and if you talk to me or Mark in person, you’ve heard us mention that the people in Haining are so lovely and welcoming to us.  On Alex’s birthday,  our friend Helen met us in Nanguanxiang to take us to lunch.  Helen is local Haining, she’s lived other places, but she’s from here originally.

Helen told us she was taking us to a local place for special noodles. So off we went!  We had walked past this location everytime we’ve gone for tea in old town, but never noticed this place… and you wouldn’t, unless you knew what to look for.

We walked in with Helen, who spoke to the owners and we sat down at a little table in the corner.  An older man, in chinese, told Helen that this place was for local Haining people only.  Clearly, the Butalas are not local Haining people.  Helen said something back to him and he dropped the subject.

The owners came out with an absolutely huge bowl of  noodle soup, with bok choy and fish chunks and mushrooms, it smelled and looked delicious! That bowl was just for me! There was an equally large bowl for Mark, and a smaller bowl for Alex.  Alex loved the fish, which was a white fish and so flaky, he ended up eating all my fish too.

The lady owners came by to talk to us (through Helen) and asked how old we were (not too much older than their children) asked about Alex, he could answer for himself.  They thought he was so wonderful. They took pictures with him, tried to get him to eat more food (good luck ladies), gave him more sunflower seeds to snack on- he was the birthday celebrity.

He mostly ate sunflower seeds while we were there,  ignoring the noodles as soon as all the fish was gone, so they gave him a big bag to take home with him.

The really cool part to all this was, despite not being locals,  we were welcomed in and included.  And before we left, we were told that we could come back any time and be Haining people.  We haven’t gone back yet, but hopefully soon we will!