After our long train ride from Chengdu, Auntie Bekah and I had breakfast at a little restaurant near her apartment. Emmeline, the restaurant was very small, about the size of our kitchen. Our breakfast was two different kind of dumplings–one was meat wrapped in a noodle made of rice, and the other was meat inside a little ball of bread. They cook both of them with steam in the wooden tray you see in this picture.

After he gave us the dumplings, the man took two little bowls and made a mixture of spices in each bowl. When he got to the hot red pepper he held out the bowl and said, a little concerned, “Can you eat this?” He wanted to make sure that he didn’t make it too hot for us. It was hot, but not that hot. (As Emmeline would say, “It didn’t spice me.”)

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