Life in rural China introduced by Swedish vegetarian

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, I have been interested in news about China. When I was in university, I studied Finnish and Swedish. But later, I taught myself two Asian languages Chinese and Korean to keep balance. In this corona period, I often wish I could understand the Chinese language better to grasp the situation more correctly. I was shocked to see how negatively some media in Japan and abroad reported about China. To my mind, COVID-19 is a kind of natural disasters like typhoons (people don’t care about where they come from), and the government of each country should have focused on taking practical measures from the beginning to prevent further spreading instead of blaming China.

In YouTube, I have found some foreigners who live in China and tell about their experiences through their channels. They have their own words to describe the reality in China. In addition to the measures for covid 19 and other policies taken by the government, I can also learn about the lives of ordinary people, which are more interesting for me than political matters. Among such channels, I found “Miriam in China” especially heartwarming and rare.

Miriam is a young Swedish woman who is married to a Chinese man from a rural area in Qinghai. She first came to China in 2015 as an exchange student. In her channel, she has introduced their rural life, traditional annual events and foods. She is a vegetarian. It is exciting to see how she, her husband and mother-in-law cook at home. Her husband makes noodles in a skilled manner, and their moon cakes are very different from the ones I have seen before. All the dishes are vegetarian (or some of them may be vegan) and look so fresh and delicious!

Last week, she posted a video  “Dragon Boat Festival in Rural Qinghai.“ This is a traditional festival held on May 5 of the lunar calendar. In this video, Miriam and her mother-in-law have mugwort behind their ears and look cute. I remember our kusamochi (rice-flour dumpling mixed with mugwort) eaten in traditional events such as Doll’s Festival. Both in China and Japan, mugwort is considered good for health and has been used as a medical herb. As a traditional food for this day, Miriam makes zongzi with sticky rice, candies dates and raisins by wrapping them with bamboo leaves. In Japan, we have a similar food called chimaki, which has become a sweet available on confectionary stores and eaten on May 5 of the solar calendar.

In “Dragon Boat Festival in Rural Qinghai“, Miriam uses “Ensam (Alone)” by Sandra Marteleur as the background music for the scene of mugwort field. It sounds like Swedish folk music but in natural harmony with the scene, like Miriam herself in the family.

“Dragon Boat Festival in Rural Qinghai“
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQfvYkaIvYg&t=195s)