LUO JING: I’m from the province of Chongqing. I came to Guangdong more than six years ago in order to find work. In all these years I’ve gone back to my hometown only a few times. Actually I just went there some time ago, I stayed there for more than a month and then I came back to Guangdong to work. It’s difficult to get used to living here in Guangdong again. Back in my hometown I ate a lot of local food. I even had dreams about the food from my hometown, like spicy hotpot or spicy boiled fish. It makes my mouth water just to think of it.
    Apart from these dreams, my dreams are usually about my family, for example about preparing dinner at home or doing farm work with them. I often dream about things I did during the day.
    My family has a fish pond. My father used to fish, he used to kill and gut the fish all by himself. Then he would prepare some hot spices to be used in the cooking. He taught me how to cook fish. First you clean the fish and cut it into small pieces. Then you mix wine, salt, ginger, green onions and the fish in a pot and stir for about 10 minutes. Then you clean the fish again. You heat some oil in a pan and add some red pepper cut in slices. You fry the pepper for a few minutes and then add some water. When the water starts boiling, you add the fish. When the fish is done, you take it out of the pan, add some more oil and pepper and heat it up. Finally, you pour the pepper on top of the fish.
    That was one of the things I dreamed about. It smelt so nice and the taste was so delicious, I started drooling in my dream. Here in Guangdong it’s too hot to eat such spicy food. I really like eating spicy food but here I don’t dare to do it. It’s hard to get used to the food here in Guangdong when you are from Chongqing.

BELOVED
ASPIRATION
TENSION
SUDDENLY
DISILLUSION
HARDSHIP
MOVEMENT
PERSISTENCE
ACHIEVEMENT
DESOLATION