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I absolutely love red bean paste. I like it in ice cream, I like in fried dumplings, I like it in boiled dumplings, and I love it in mooncakes. This recipe, taken from <a href="http://beckyblog.com/">Becky Blog</a>, a Chinese food and recipe journal, walks you through the recipe for making red bean paste soup with glutinous rice flour pearls. <!--more--> 

If you've never been to China, you've probably never had this dish. The soup is thick and a bit starchy, and flavored with red bean. The "pearls" are boiled rice balls with a texture something between gummy and sticky. If you've ever had Japanese mochi ice-cream, you'll know exactly what I mean.

I don't want to cut into Becky's 'net traffic, so I'm not posting her pictures here, text only. In the original post, she snaps photos of each step of the cooking process, so you might want to check out the original post to get a good feel for the dish.

<a href="http://beckyblog.com/read.php?229">See Becky's original recipe</a>
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<h4>Interesting Vocabulary</h4>
同学 - [pinyin]tong2 xue2[/pinyin] - Classmates

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Today I'm going to Jiang Ping's house. Jiang Ping and I are highschool classmates. She's my good friend, and she's also good friends with everyone in our class. She studies very hard, she's the best student in our class. She studies, she plays, and she also often helps others. The teacher and the other students like her. She recently participated in an examination for an American college. That test is very hard, but she did very well - she earned full marks. I heard that only three people in the whole world got full marks. This college gave Jiang Ping their highest scholarship. We're all very happy for her.

Next week she's going to study abroad in America, and all our classmates are going to see her off.

Jiang Ping's house is on the east side of the city very far away from mine. I left my house a little after four o'clock in the afternoon, and didn't get there until 5:30. When I arrived, the rest of our classmates were already there.

Jiang Ping warmly welcomed us. She hadn't seen her classmates in a while, and after she greeted us, we talked and smiled, chatting happily. We wished Jiang Ping success. Wished her a pleasant trip. I said, Be sure to write often. Jiang Ping said, Of course. When she said "Goodbye", she cried, and I also cried.

On my way home, I thought, We often say "Goodbye" [lit: see you again], but sometimes "Goodbye" is sad. When will Jiang Ping and I be able to see each other again?

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