Up and out early again today, our destination, the furniture district. My apartment came furnished with only a bed and Yue Li's futon, so I've offered to buy Sky a much-needed computer desk and chair if I can use it at my place until I leave. Right before we left Yue Li's step-mom came for a visit with more chicken soup - she brings a potful two to three times a week for her. Yue Li has one living grandparent, her mother's mother, who lives in the country. She raises (15) chickens and after the baby was born she sent 300, that's three hundred, eggs for Yue Li. Along with the chicken soup these are her post-baby restorative foods. Anyway, Yue Li elects to stay home and visit - she wasn't keen on going anyway, she described the furniture store as "being too big and where Sky looks at everything and says 'this is way cheaper than the states'".

The furniture store turns out to be the size of a convention center - five stories high. It is filled with mom and pop owners who rent a section of the floor to display their goods. Dining sets of glass and wood, apartment size, sell for $300, chairs included. Dining sets of "stinky wood" literally translated (it didn't stink to me and looked like cherry wood) the six chairs with carved backs and leather seats and absolutely gorgeous sell for $800.00. I walked around saying "this is way cheaper than it is in the States."

I get a Skyler-style history lesson as we lose ourselves in the maze. "This furniture all mimics the Yuan Dynasty," he tells me. And this the Ming Dynasty. I point out one large section that looks Japanese - yeah, he says, that style was around about the time the Japanese-to-be left China. The Japanese haven't really changed a lot of stuff since that time. He laughs and adds, "that's why nobody here can figure out why they're so rich."

One small computer desk and chair later (that will be transported to my apartment this afternoon in a "loaf truck" for six dollars) we leave the center and stroll past a car that someone has written on it's dust-covered trunk, "wash this, pig" in English. "Calling someone pig is different here," Sky tells me. "The pig here is like the cow is in India. Well, except they eat it. But it's held in high regard - they don't think of them as dirty, and they consider them intelligent. Intelligent and cute and naive because they go along all happy with life until one day out of the blue they get slaughtered. You know the Chinese are tough, they lead really hard lives, so to them, that's pretty naive, being happy all the time with that inevitable end. "

"I have to fight the students all the time to stop calling each other pigs in English. In Chinese, they say it affectionately, not so much like an endearment, but not an insult either. More like, silly, or ignorant, in a nice way. When I first started teaching they called me pig all the time, partly because my nose turns up, like this. (He shows me and laughs) Man, I'd get sooo mad, until I understood better. Still, I don't let them call me a pig."

"Look, this is the character for house. If you look at the top of it you can make out a roof, see, it looks like a roof. Everything else underneath it is the symbol for pig. So home means, a roof over the pig."

He's distracted by another car while I absorb the whole pig thing. "Here's the car Yue Li and I want to buy. The father of one of my students owns this car factory. The model is called "The Antelope." Look at the Chinese on it - you can see the antelope horns here."

I give it my due admiration, really thinking now about how hungry I am. "Are you going to feed me before you go to work?" I ask him. He's looking for a taxi and isn't giving me his full attention. "Skyler, can you tell me where I can eat around your apartment?" He laughs and tells me I don't want to eat anything around his apartment. "Just tell Yue Li when you're hungry," he says. I explain to him I'm not going to get his recovering wife up to cook for me every time I'm hungry and I can't do it myself because the only thing I recognize in his fridge is peanut butter and it even has chocolate swirls in it which I've never seen before. There's no bread to put it on, either. "Yesterday I ate a roll for breakfast and didn't eat again until you got home at 9:30 and Yue Li made curry." That gets his full attention and he laughs uproariously. "Ok, you want some noodles? Here's a noodle place."