fengyi's stories about her grandmother and mother almost identical to my own! My grandmother smoked cigarettes as well until the war broke out and couldn't cook a \ thing~ Even though they were broke, there had to be a servant! I guess how my story differs is that they ate more like Northeasterners. Noodles, jiao zhis, man tous... anything flour-based. I've never seen my mother pickle anything but she'd be wanting to have a big bowl of beef noodles every day! She does have a preference for pork. She says that she can still sometimes taste the 'cowness' (?) in the beef if prepared improperly. I don't know if I would say that northeastern cuisine is like regular chinese cuisine. If you asked my dad (he's han), he'd say that northerns don't know how to eat