Chinese New Year at Uplands

On Sunday, February 6th, I went to a Chinese New Year celebration at Uplands Nation.  The schedule included performances of (mostly) traditional Chinese arts, authentic Chinese food for dinner, and a Chinese (or at least Hong Kong) movie afterwards.  I arrived promptly at 4:00 when it was supposed to begin, but it didn't begin promptly at 4, nor did most people arrive at 4.  However, I was able to get a table by arriving early - if you were one of the last ones to arrive that was difficult.  At first I was with an SLU exchange student from Germany I had met before, and later several Uppsala students we were acquainted with arrived.  SLU is another university in Uppsala, but it is an agricultural university, and to the west of the city.  While SLU students aren't students at Uppsala, they are still able to join the Nations.

After perhaps an hour the food was prepared in adequate quantity for consumption to begin.  It wasn't bad, but I'm not sure authentic Chinese food is my favorite, either.  Granted, it was prepared by students, not professional chefs, but most of the students who were helping with cooking were actually Chinese.  The SLU student with whom I was eating said she thought there was too much oil in the rice, whereas a vegan student at our table noticed the dearth of vegetarian options.  Similar to at the Smorgasbord at Uplands, none of the food was labeled, which was unfortunate.  Maybe some more of it actually was vegetarian but it wasn't clear to westerners that it was?  The food was restocked a few times, and there was enough in the end.  There also was Chinese tea, but it was depleted when I went to get some, and being thirsty, I settled for water.

The performances were a mixed bag - the auditory ones were mired at first by a speakermaster who wasn't particularly good - I think the main problem was the sound was too loud, both for the audience and the speakers, but the transitions in volume were not smooth, either.  The recorded music tracks were also too loud relative to the live singing.  Fortunately it did get a bit better as time went on, and by the time there was a performance on a traditional Chinese string instrument (whose name escapes me now), it was enjoyable to listen to.  There was one performance that seemed decidedly non-traditional, a dance to decidedly modern, club-style music.  While it may well be common in China (my guess would be Hong Kong in particular, but by now it may be throughout China), it didn't seem to mesh with the general theme.

I didn't stay for the movie, as I'd already been there awhile and it hadn't gone as smoothly as might have been hoped.  I left with the SLU student and an Uppsala student, and after some debate we decided to go to the Hemkop grocery store in the center of the city.  It was the first time I'd been to a non-Ica grocery store, and they did indeed have some different inventory.  I tried a new vegetable, Jerusalem artichokes, which I found to taste similar to a potato but with the texture of a carrot, as well as some traditional Swedish pastries.  Probably the most traditionally Swedish is the Punsche-rolle, or vacuum cleaner.  All the pastries were to my liking, which probably isn't surprising.