One afternoon before going away last week for Spring Festival, one of my former Harbin students and his mother took me to lunch at a local hot pot restaurant. (Juan, the mother, is the one who helped open the door for me to return for another year of teaching here in Qiqihar.) At these restaurants you order various fresh items (meats and vegetables) you want to cook in a flame heated pot filled with a broth. At this particular place we each had our own pot, each cooking what we liked. Take a look at the spread before us....