Everything you describe sounds blissful - from the shopping in that impressively enormous place, through the cooking and (especially *g*) the eating. How lovely to have someone show you how to cook Chinese food properly and I'm sure Tieyu enjoyed being the teacher and the company of you and your family.

What you say about the Western attitude to food is very true. Particularly for women. Of course, we're not helped by the way our food is processed to hell, with all manner of nasties and anti- health-giving additives being slipped into it. So much better to make food from scratch. I have a cookbook by a US guy ... Andrew Weil? ... who claims that real ingredients prepared with love can't help but do a person good. I want to believe that. Just as I want to believe Husband's colleague who, finishing a bottle of very good wine on his own, declared "I can feel this doing me good!"