Making Noodles and Dumplings

 We checked into the Sofitel Xian and the most exciting thing I found in our suite was a washer/dryer unit.  I know all you moms out there will understand - I literally clapped with joy.  I had been faced with the possibility of sending little t-shirts, undies and socks out to the hotel laundry - now, I could do a couple of loads during our stay!  Ah, the simple pleasures...  Oh, the rest of the suite was very nice as well!

Dinner that night was at Le Chinois, the hotel's Chinese restaurant.  We had been really looking forward to this because we were slated to learn how to make dumplings and noodles.  We had been thinking we'd actually eat the product of our work, but we were served a beautiful meal to start. In retrospect, it was a good thing we didn't eat what we made... ;)

Here are the various kinds of dumplings we ate - aren't they beautiful?!

We then watched Ms Yan hand pull lo mein noodles for our noodle soup, which was wonderful.

After we were sated, we started off with Ms Yan trying to pull lo mein noodles ourselves.  I don't have a photo of this because my hands were covered with flour and I was too busy being frustrated.  Suffice to say, I would not have eaten anything we made - my big learning:  it's really, really hard to hand pull noodles.

We then moved on to dumplings.  A couple of them were quite easy to make.  One was very, very hard.  We made and remade multiple versions.  Our dough got a little messy.  Here's our final set of dumplings - the really nice ones were made by our teacher, although I thought some of mine were quite credible!

And finally, we made another kind of noodle that was a lot easier so the kids loved doing this..

We had a great time - this was a fabulous experience that we had access to by booking with a great tour company.  It was not something usually offered by the hotel and we wouldn't have been able to set it up on our own.