My Hometown

Every time someone asks me where my hometown is,I will say Yangzhou municipality because it is more well-known.Actually it is not so exact.My hometown in fact is a small county in Yangzhou named Baoying.
My hometown also has another name-the hometown of lotus,because lotus is widely planted there.If you travel to my hometown in summer,you can easily smell the delicate fragrance of lotus flowers as well as its leaves even when you are in the downtown.You can also enjoy a really special meal of which all the courses contain some part of the lotus:tea made in the way of steeping lotus leaves in either boiling water or ice water,a kind of beverage made from the juice of lotus roots,cute balls made of both meat and lotus roots or completely lotus roots if you are a vegeterian...My mum is really good at making this kind of balls.Every time my father's business friends from other provinces come to Baoying,the first thing they want to do is to have a taste of the special balls made by my mum.
I think the most special local food of my hometown is Guihua Nuomi Ou(soory I really don't know how to translate it into English).Guihua means the flowers of laurel.Nuomi means polished glutinous rice and Ou means lotus roots.Its main cooking process is :first fill the long holes in lotus roots with polished glutinous rice,then sprinkle the honey of laurel flowers over the lotus roots and finally steam the lotus roots.As far as I know,this kind of snack is only available in my hometown as well as some areas nearby.That is to say if you want to have a taste of this kind of rare delicacy,just welcome to my hometown!
Three weeks ago when the new term started ,one of my seniors who is from the same hometown as mine flew back and brought with him some loaves of Guihua Nuomi Ou.To my great surprise and delight he gave me one as a present!I shared it among all my roommates and two of my be-frienders and they all liked it very much which made me feel very happy and proud.One of the be-frienders Shiyan commented that he had never seen this way of cooking lotus roots and the taste was a little bit like that of Zongzi(a pyramid-shaped dumpling made of glutinous rice wrapped in bamboo or reed leaves).I think it may because they both contain glutinous rice.
To tell the truth,when I was staying in my hometown,I wasn't able to discover its beauty.Once I am now far from it,however,I've come to realize its beauty,its people's warmth and what a deep influence it has made on me.Wish you all the best my hometown and those lovely people!