Chengdu Chronicles

Log 57: Buy, buy before bye-bye

With only a short amount of time left in China, Chris and I are starting to work down the list of things that we had made a mental note to buy here before leaving.  It isn’t a long list, but some items are comparatively costly and we’ve been putting off spending the money until now.  This is our last chance to buy them so we're doing it! 

Ming Dynasty set of chairs and small table.  As soon as we first saw them, both Chris and I thought these were really cool looking.  Pieces over 600 years old can be viewed in various museums around the country, and furniture showrooms that specialize in replicas feel more like galleries than stores.  These chairs are simple and refined, combining strong angular shapes of the seat and base, with beautifully curved back and armrests.  The only problem with them is that they can sometimes be uncomfortable.  Last weekend Chris and I went to the antique market where we looked at and sat in many, many chairs.  We discovered that subtle differences in design made drastic differences in comfort.  We settled on a set of two chairs and a table made from a dark coffee colored wood known as “chicken wing wood” because the grain of the wood looks somewhat like the feathers of a chicken’s wing.  The chairs and table are an exact copy of a Ming Dynasty set and they’re beautiful….. and comfortable!!!!

Silk comforter.  In addition to the items that we want to buy, my sister Gloria sent a list of items that she wants us to buy for her.  They’re items that she didn’t buy while she was here (or didn’t buy enough of).  She’s also thinking of doing her new house in Feng Shui and is looking for some key pieces to improve the qi of the place; thus improving her luck and guaranteeing her good fortune. 

When Gloria visited us last year, her first few weeks in China were spent with a tour group.  I told her “if you see something that you like along the way, buy it because you don’t know if you’ll ever see something quite like it again”.  This is true for many items here, many of which are regional specialties and can only be found in specific places.  She took my advice and when her tour group stopped by a silk market she bought herself a silk comforter and two silk pillows.  Silk comforters, as the name implies, are stuffed with raw silk threads.  They’re famous for being extremely light weight, yet very warm.  Gloria bought a light-weight summer comforter and she absolutely loves it! 

We were thinking of getting one as well, but the price was a prohibitive factor (there isn't a silk factory here in Chengdu and only the higher-end stores carry them here).  We already have a great down-filled comforter, but the drawback with it is that it’s somewhat heavy and it's actually a little too warm to use on anything but the coolest nights.

Gloria’s summer comforter is ideal to use through most of the year in San Diego but when she found out that we were leaving China she asked us to buy her a more substantial comforter to use during winter.  We went into the store to buy it for her and we found the process and the product to be so interesting that we ended up coming away with TWO; one for her and one for us!!

Silk comforters can be purchased in various sizes and the retailers make them per your specifications, right before your eyes.  During Gloria's trip to the silk factory she learned that the comforter filling is actually composed of multiple thin layers made from a double silk worm cocoon, which is a large cocoon produced by two silk worms.  Gloria says; "single-worm cocoons are typically unraveled into one very long silk thread, the unusual double cocoons, because the silk threads of the two worms are intertwined are impossible to unravel, therefore they are used to make the layers for comforters.  They open up the cocoon and remove the worm, then flatten it- making a small square of silk. Four people then each take one corner of the square and pull. Each small square of silk eventually becomes as large as the very thin layers that you see in the movie below."

When buying one of these, you pay for the silk comforter (price is determined by size) as well as the silk filling (price is per “jin”- which is half a kilogram).  The sales people informed us that five jin (only 2.5 kilograms) is more than enough to keep someone warm during the cold Chengdu winters, but taking into account that the average Sichuan person’s tolerance for cold is much higher than a typical westerner, we added a couple more jin and purchased seven jin comforters.  They made our comforters as we watched:  starting by turning the comforter inside out and laying it out on a large wooden work table, then weighing the silk and carefully spreading it out across the entire comforter, flipping the whole mass in upon itself, and finally sewing it in certain areas to help keep the silk filling from moving around in the comforter.

We’re obviously not going to get a lot of use out of our comforter while we’re in the Philippines, but we’re following the advice that we gave Gloria, “get it now because you’ll probably not get another opportunity to buy one like it again!”

ART- One other thing that we’ve been planning to do before we leave is to get all of our art pieces framed.  As in many other countries, the arts and crafts here are unique, beautiful, and affordable, and we've bought a lot of interesting pieces over the last couple of years.  The dilemma that most people face afterwards is the high cost of getting the art custom-framed in the United States.  In my opinion, custom framers in the United States gouge us out of as much money as they can for a service that doesn’t really warrant the cost.  More often than not the pieces that people buy end up sitting in a closet because despite how pretty it would look framed, it’s hard to justify spending $300 to frame something that cost less than $30 to buy.  Framing isn’t an issue in China however.  For a custom   made frame that would cost $250 in the US, you could get the same thing done here for $10.  Seriously.  It’s THAT big of a price difference and there is no loss in quality of framing or the selection of framing materials.

One of the main reasons people don’t capitalize on this opportunity to get things framed cheaply, however, is the hassle involved in bringing a large framed piece of art back to the United States.  Fortunately for us, this isn’t an issue.  Even with everything that we’ve purchased while here, we are well under the allotted weight allowed for the shipment of our household effects.  We just needed to make sure that we had everything we wanted before the packers come to pack us out (next week), hence the buying frenzy.  In a few weeks our stuff will all be moved to the Philippines for us (where we will no doubt buy MORE STUFF) and eventually everything that we accumulate will make it back to the United States. 

Now people might wonder:  do we really NEED all of this stuff?  Do we need a Ming Dynasty chair, a fairly sizeable replica of a terracotta warrior, hand-wrought silver ornaments made my Miao minority craftsmen, or delicate watercolor paintings done by an amazingly talented disabled Chinese artist?  For that matter did we really NEED the hand knotted rugs bought in Armenia, and beautifully woven wedding blanket from Mali, or the colorful oil paintings from Peru?  Of course the answer is “no” we don’t need any of this stuff.  We don’t even necessarily want a lot of stuff.  What we DO want, however, is to be able to really remember these places and these experiences.  We find that we can’t help but to think of the experiences when we look at these things that surround us.  Sure, a picture might do the same thing, but pictures more often than not, sit in photo-albums, in photo-books, on a website, or in a memory stick somewhere, rarely ever looked at beyond the first time they were put together, and rarely shared beyond the first mass distribution of the photo-sharing website link.  All of this stuff, however, surrounds us.  We walk on it every day.  We sit on it, we sleep under it, and we use it to cook and to eat.  It hangs on the wall or sits on a table and we look at it and appreciate it, every single day. 

This stuff serves to remind us of our great adventures overseas and of the great people that we’ve met along the way.  They are interesting conversation topics that allow us to share our experiences with our houseguests without forcing them to sit through a slide show.  Most importantly, they serve to inspire us to have more of these adventures, to commit to seeing as much of the world as we can, and to bringing back a little memento (or two) to continue to remind and inspire us.

POST SCRIPT—so the movers came and packed us out yesterday; and five hours and 105 boxes later (most of which were marked “decorative items” to indicate what was inside) we might want to reconsider our whole “buy stuff” approach to fueling our inspiration……. On second thought, a lot of the boxes were (in my opinion) a little under-packed.  For example, they went crazy with the bubble wrap and paper when preparing our wine glasses for shipment (which I don’t really mind per se, because we want these wine glasses to make the trip safe and sound, but you’d think you should be able to fit more than 10 glasses in a huge box!).  Off on our next adventure!!!!!

Log 56: Fenghuang and Xijiang

 

With our time quickly winding down in China we headed out on our last domestic adventure in late October 2009.  Based on strong recommendations from several of the Chinese Peace Corps staff members, we traveled East and South to two amazing sites – an ancient riverside town in western Hunan province (Fenghuang) and a minority village in central Guizhou province (Xijiang). The trip was wonderful and provided us with several images and impressions of China that we will not soon forget – one funny one that we wouldn't mind forgetting, but most that we hope to remember for many, many years to come.

 

We took an overnight train from Chengdu to the eastern edge of Guizhou province to a town called Tongren.  Neither of us had traveled by “soft-sleeper” before (a cabin with four beds and a door), so we splurged to experience the more private four person compartment vs. the less private and more open 6-person hard sleeper arrangement.  Our compartment-mates were nice people, very open and friendly, and willing to talk to a few foreigners – one was an older man from Shandong province who was in the midst of vacation in central China and the other was a young guy from Chengdu, who was headed to Shanghai and was very animated during our talks, especially when we were discussing the NBA.  I was fighting a cold, and I took the top bunk and was asleep soon after the train started to move around 10pm.  Charles was awake a bit longer.  The younger kid in our compartment was quite agile in getting from the floor to his top bunk – picture a Chinese gymnast on the parallel bars swinging himself up to the bunk in one graceful and quick movement.  This was in stark contrast to me, trying to not fall on my butt as I climbed up or down from the bunk.  As everyone else was preparing for bed, which for our Chinese friends included removing all of their clothes but their underwear, Charles was “lucky” to witness the old man’s curiosity in how the kid was able to get in the bunk so quickly.  This is the image referenced earlier that we’d like to forget.  You can imagine that an old man in his tight briefs trying to jump up to a top bunk with his body a few inches from your face is not all that pleasant.  The same scene, minus the acrobatics, was repeated early the next morning when Charles awoke to the man standing between the beds while he was putting his pants back on.  “Good morning” and it’s time to get off this train!

 

In Tongren we met a few Peace Corps Volunteers for an early lunch before taking a bus to the town of Fenghuang in Hunan – about 1 ½ hours away.  Fenghuang is a beautiful riverside town with an ancient city wall, gate towers and houses on stilts that are built into the cliffs along the riverside, all of which date from the 1600s.  We enjoyed walking along both sides of the river and exploring the various shops in the narrow alleys of Fenghuang, which looked to us like an elaborate movie set rather than a vibrant authentic village.  In Fenghuang we had our first stay in a Chinese guesthouse (or kezhan in Chinese).  Kezhans are much simpler than hotels and are more akin to hostels.  We discovered that kezhans only have squat toilets and they don’t provide towels.  In shopping for towels in the old town, we found that only Chinese-style bath towels were available.  “What is a Chinese style towel?” you might ask?  Picture a dishtowel and you would be pretty close.  While we were fine using our new Chinese towels for a few days, we missed our big American-sized bath towels and didn’t feel like we ever got completely dry.  The kezhan we stayed in was right alongside the river with a balcony that overlooked a pagoda and several old style pavilions.  At night the lights on these structures provided a nice backdrop for the people that released floating candles along the river.  The other amazing aspect of this kezhan was how quiet and peaceful it was at night which was a significant contrast to our Chengdu apartment (and most other places in China for that matter).  Once the sun rose though, people were out living their lives in the much the same ways that they did hundreds of years ago probably; washing their clothes and vegetables in the river (note to self: “make sure vegetables consumed are well-cooked and absolutely NO salads!”)

 

After a couple of days we traveled from Fenghuang, Hunan to Xijiang in Guizhou by renting a car and driver from one of the Peace Corps counterpart universities in Tongren.  We weren’t expecting the trip to include a couple of people from the foreign affairs office of that university, however.  They were headed to a town near our destination and decided to combine the two trips.  One of them was a heavy smoker who, in broken English, repeated the phrase “I need smoking” more than a few times on the trip.  It turned out that these folks were incredibly warm and friendly people though and we enjoyed our conversation with them during the five-hour ride through the interesting countryside.

 

The beautiful mountain village of Xijiang is thought to be one of the largest traditional villages of the Miao minority.  Miao (H’mong) people are spread across Southern China from northern Vietnam, Laos and Thailand.  While part of Xijiang has been restored and fixed up for tourists, the majority of the village feels like it has hardly changed for centuries.  The two storey houses are built of wood and stone with the lowest level devoted to livestock and the buildings all have large central windows on the upper floors where corn and peppers are hung to dry. 

 

The majority of the inhabitants of Xijiang are farmers.  Starting at the town edge and extending far into the surrounding hills were beautiful rice paddy terraces.  Although the rice crop had already been harvested, we enjoyed exploring around the paddies with their odd-shaped stacks of dried rice stalks and farmers busily headed to and fro.  We noticed several farmers using large woven bottomless baskets in the paddies and at first I thought they were doing something to prepare for next year’s rice crop, but when we talked to one woman who was agilely moving her basket around she told us that she was trying to catch a type of fish that thrives in the flooded paddies.  These folks are nothing if not resourceful.  We stopped to watch for a while and though she didn’t catch a fish while we were watching, she did pull out a few fist-sized clams.  We walked for a few hours in the terraces along the river and away from the village, enjoying the clean air, the beautiful scenery and exchanging friendly greetings with the many farmers that we encountered along the way. 

 

Back in the village, we found a hole-in-the-wall restaurant that served one of the local specialties:  hot and sour fish soup.  While we enjoyed the soup, during our meal we were alarmed by the many bursts of small firecrackers that were being set-off by kids.  Since we arrived (the day before) the firecrackers had been going off throughout the town, at times startling us and making us jump.  At first we were annoyed and thought it was a plot to frighten tourists, but after lunch, a shop vendor explained to us that the Miao New Year was being celebrated that evening.  As the night began, the fireworks and firecrackers increased in intensity, and at midnight we were awakened to a booming onslaught of firecrackers that lit up and shook the entire village.  Charles tells me that it was quite a sight.  He watched for several minutes as the ground-level sparks and rumbling reminded him of a scene in Apocalypse Now, but I was too lazy to get out of bed! 

 

The next morning we took a bus to the nearby larger city of Kaili.  On our walk to the bus station, we saw a restaurant sign that just cracked us up.  Guizhou is famous for its culinary specialty “dog hotpot”, which is dog meat served in a spicy soup.  The sign had a picture of the dog on it that looked absolutely (and rightly so) petrified.  We thought it was a riot, and don’t worry, we didn’t show the photo to Marley when we got back to Chengdu! 

 

The bus ride to Kaili through the mountain passes of Guizhou was winding and beautiful and it gave us an appreciation for how separated and hidden the various Miao villages we passed were from each other- and from the rest of China.  After a brief stop in Kaili, we took another bus, although this one was not as scenic, to the capital of Guizhou, Guiyang, and from there we flew back to Chengdu. 

 

This trip was a wonderful trip of planes, trains, automobiles and buses, which allowed us to explore western China for one final time.  For that reason alone, this trip was especially memorable because we don’t know if we’ll ever make it back to China again.  But it was also memorable because we saw some of the most beautiful sights that we had ever seen here in China during this last trip.  Over the last 2+ years, we’ve had some amazing trips within this large and diverse country.  We’ve seen the beautiful ice sculptures in Haerbin, the famous Great Wall in Beijing, impressive and serene karst mountains in Guangxi, the colonial Bund of Shanghai, and the natural beauty of Jiuzhaigou in northern Sichuan to name just a few of the places we’ve seen.  This last trip really drove home that fact that this has been a fascinating and beautiful country to have explored during the time when we called Chengdu our home.

 

 

Log 55: Baking 101

Chinese people don't bake. 

They fry.  They steam.  They roast.  They boil.....there are dishes that involve combinations of these various cooking techniques, but they don't EVER bake.  The reason for this was a little bit of a mystery to me until it dawned on me that the activity of baking is predominantly a "wheat culture" activity.  In culturally traditional "corn cultures" as can be found in the Americas, and the "rice cultures" of East and SE Asia you just don't see a long history of baking.

However, if you make your way west from here to Central Asia and South Asia, you don't have to go too far before you start to find cultures that make excellent unleavened breads.  The Uyghur people in Xinjiang, China's westernmost province bake delicious sesame flavored flat-breads in big vase shaped ovens.  They also make the most delectable lamb-filled baked bread (called "san sams" in their language) that they bake by wetting the dough with water and then sticking them to the inside walls of the ovens.  Continue further west from here and you'll find that the art of baking continues to elevate in complexity until it reaches its apogee in Europe.  To say that "the Europeans can bake" would be a gross understatement.  Breads, cakes, pies, cookies.... flans, tarts, tortes, (which I only recently realized were NOT the same thing) etc., etc.  The things that the people there do with ground wheat (aka flour) and an oven are mind boggling.  Anytime that a friend of ours goes to Beijing, we coerce them to make a stop at the German bread bakery there, in order for them to bring us back a loaf or two of their delicious breads (of the at least 15 different varieties that are available).

This isn't to say that you can't buy bread or cake in Chengdu.  They're available pretty much everywhere and at all times of the day.  However, the sad fact of the matter is that the baked goods that we can get here are not very pleasing to our western palates.  Breads tend to be soft, white, and sweet.  Bakers also tend to add stuff that we wouldn't necessarily choose to add to our bread:  sweet red-beans, black sesame paste, and this stuff called "meat floss" which is made from dried pork that has been finely shredded. 

The cakes here always tend to be a huge disappointment as well.  They're wonderfully decorated, gorgeous works of art that are so bland and flavorless that you often have to read the tag to figure out what type of cake you're eating.  The Chinese palate has a comparatively low tolerance for sugar and the desserts here are adjusted accordingly.  The other "off" thing about many of the cakes here is that there are usually cherry tomatoes on them.  The majority of the cakes are decorated with shiny sugar-glazed fruit, and cherry tomatoes are used to add a bit of glistening red to the orange of oranges and the green of kiwi.  Because cherry tomatoes are considered a fruit here (and technically speaking, from a botanical standpoint, they actually ARE a fruit), it isn't unusual to see them added among the watermelon, orange, and apple slices in an "end of the meal" fruit plate, or as one of the fruits in a fruit tart.  Our friend Shirley told us of a time when she had special ordered a carrot cake decorated with the Peace Corps logo on it.  They were extremely happy with the final outcome........ that is until they realized that the red part of the logo was done in..... you guessed it!  Ketchup!!!  ugh.

Needless to say, Chris and I realized pretty quickly that if we wanted a truly satisfying baked dessert, we were going to have to make it ourselves.  Over the course of the last couple of years we've rediscovered our interests in baking.  While our skills have improved significantly, breads are still a little out of our league.... and who's got the time or patience for that anyways?  Cakes, pies, and cookies however are not a problem.  Many of the ingredients (and viable substitutes) are widely available here and while our "oven" is actually little more than a glorified toaster oven (especially by American standards) it is perfectly adequate for doing the job, and over the last couple of years we've been really good about sharing our baked desserts with our Chinese friends.  In fact, pretty much every time that there is an office celebration we have brought in something baked to share, and every time that we've brought visiting guests into the office to meet the staff, they've always baked their own specialties to share with them (Gloria made cookies, Mary made pie, and Begonia made flan).

While a couple of folks complained that our desserts were a little on the sweet side, most of them had that "aha" moment where they looked at us, smiled and said, "So this is what chocolate cake is supposed to taste like?”, which is always quickly followed by, "Will you show us how to make this please?!?”, to which I have always replied, "Sure, sure."

So with my time here dwindling down to mere weeks, last weekend I finally decided to hold a baking class for the Peace Corps staff who had indicated an interest in learning how to bake.  Though none of the six of them had ever baked before, they were enthusiastic to learn about the process.  Their knowledge was minimal to non-existent, and ingredients like nutmeg, baking soda, and vanilla were completely foreign to them.  Most of them didn't even have ovens, their decision as to whether or not to purchase one resting on whether or not their experience in my class was a positive one.

In planning for the class, I conducted a brief needs assessment.  From their responses I identified three recipes that were consistent favorites that we would all make together:  pumpkin pie, lemon cake, and fruit and nut muffins (aka "morning glory muffins").  With Chris as my able-bodied sous chef, we presented our own cooking show, demonstrating the processes and involving the class, giving them hands-on experience in the process of baking desserts, covering things like:  how to use measuring spoons and measuring cups, greasing and flouring a pan, and testing for doneness with a toothpick.  It was all very interesting to them, and best of all..... it was FUN!  We all had a blast and our class discovered that baking desserts is not the intimidating intricate process that they had thought it to be.  Quite the opposite, they found it to be easy and enjoyable and they were thrilled when everything that they made themselves that day came out perfectly delicious.  Their favorite was the lemon cake, a recipe that was given to me by my friend Sueko, who got the recipe from her mom.  I love that about recipes; how they have a
history and how you can share that history with the people that you pass them on to.

At the end of the day everyone left excited (and full!).  As they were leaving they talked about plans for sharing their new skills with friends and baking homemade desserts for their children.   Some have since purchased ovens and have asked for additional recipes..... recipes of which I'm sure they'll decrease the amount of sugar by at least half!

We've had a lot of interesting cross cultural experiences here in China, and I have say that this baking class ranks right up there as one of the best.  Many people who serve in the Peace Corps will say something along the lines of "I gained much more than I ever gave", in an effort to describe how overwhelmingly enriching the experience of living in these cultures is, and how extremely giving the people that we serve are toward us while we are there.  It can sometimes make our best efforts seem quite small and insignificant.  What we often realize later on is that the seemingly insignificant things that we do often have the biggest positive impact.  In this case, I'm pretty sure that teaching the staff how to bake cakes isn't going to change the world, but I do know for sure that taking our Sunday afternoon to teach them a new skill made them very happy and very excited.  The experience will be a shared memory for both us and them of several laughs (especially when we made them wear silly aprons!), an exchange of ideas, new English words for them, new Chinese words for us and a few more pounds around the waistline from all those sweets!

Log 54: The Enciso Family Cookbook

I have always wanted to write a book.  It has been on my “list of things that I want to do in my life” for ages now.  Here in China I knew I would finally have the time to do it.  In fact, I started working on a novel during my first summer vacation here.  The novel was a political thriller based in China, where the protagonist was a foreign student from the US who uncovered (and eventually thwarted) an evil genocidal plot by a rogue subversive group within the Chinese government.  One of my favorite antagonists in the book was a homicidal, criminally insane, former world-champion Chinese female gymnast/assassin who was barely four feet tall.  Her favorite method of killing people was by jumping on their backs (in a stylish “full-twisting Sukahara”) and strangling them with her powerful legs……… she was bad ass.

I’m not sure that The People’s Republic (working title) will ever get finished, but my second summer vacation was spent working on another book which I’m happy to report has finally been completed.  This book is NOT a work of fiction.  In fact, it is the exact opposite.  As the name implies, The Enciso Family Cookbook highlights a collection of (mostly Filipino) recipes that I’ve collected from my family.  It is also replete with family photos and stories.  Using the Adobe desktop publishing software, InDesign, I finished putting it together into what ended up being a fine looking book, which is a little surprising given that my only previous experience with InDesign was a five-minute “how to” tutorial from our friend Nerissa. 

Below is an introduction that I wrote and included in the book:

Back when I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Tonga, I discovered that whenever I felt severely homesick, the best cure was a little bit of Filipino “home cooking”.  Of course, seeing as how I couldn’t really cook Filipino food-- because before I moved to Tonga ,all that I had to do to access home cooking was to request it directly from the source (Mom or Dad), obtaining or making food that tasted “just like home” presented major challenges for me.

I had some vague idea of how some of dishes were cooked, having watched my mom cook for us every day.  I was never one of those kids that had to be dragged back into the house kicking and screaming at dinner time.  In fact I was quite the opposite.  I was the kid who knew exactly when dinner was going to be served and who got home early to help out with the easier parts of the process.  This is how I learned the word "guissaw", which means to sauté.  Mom frequently assigned this task to me because the overwhelming majority of the Filipino dishes that Mom cooked started with the process of guissawing garlic in cooking oil until it was golden brown and had infused the oil with its flavors, and then adding sliced onions and guissawing those until they were soft and clear.  Beyond that, however, I never actually learned how to cook any of the Filipino dishes that Mom and Dad made for us while we were growing up. 

In order to overcome my homesickness while I was living in Tonga, it was imperative that I learn how to make some of these dishes.  Through snail mail communication with Mom and Dad (this was before email and each letter took an average of two weeks to arrive in Tonga) I managed to learn a few of the easier dishes like adobo and pancit.  The process of learning these dishes has continued over the last several years and has eventually morphed into this project:  The Enciso Family Cookbook.

This cookbook contains the recipes of most of our favorite dishes from when we were growing up, many of which we only knew by their nicknames (such as the dish we refer to as “balls balls balls”).  It also contains recipes of some of our current individual “specialties”, those dishes for which we are known among our circles of friends because we tend to make them for guests.  They’re our “go to” dishes, if you will.  Our extended family is represented as well, with recipes that Damian and Chris recall most from their own childhoods.  This book is a true family book in every sense of the word.

Putting this book together has been a work of joy.  If there’s anything that we Encisos do well, it’s FOOD (both cooking food AND eating food), and this book effectively captures this in the various recipes, stories, quotes, and pictures.  My hope is that this book will help to ensure that no matter WHERE we all are in this big world, none of us will ever feel homesick again and that future generations of Encisos will always be able to make these dishes, that are all such an important part of who we are.

Charles

The book also contains a brief glossary because I use several Tagalog and Illocano words that people might not be familiar with.  The glossary was also another place where I could tell more stories about my family.  For example:

Bagoong-  Bagoong is a salted, fermented fish or shrimp based paste that is used to add fishy/salty flavors to Filipino cooking.  Bagoong alamang is the shrimp based version and is the type most commonly used by Mom and Dad.  Sometimes bagoong alamang is bright pink, or dull purple, or even gray- depending on the brand that you buy.  As you would expect, it has a VERY strong fish smell, especially when fried (as when cooking kare kare), and can really stink up a house in very little time.

Dad tells a funny story of an event that occurred when he and a Filipino friend, who was in the Navy with him, were riding the San Francisco trolley-cars back in the 1960s.  His friend accidentally dropped a bottle of bagoong which quickly stunk up the entire trolley car.  For whatever reason (probably embarrassment!), Dad’s friend started to pretend that he was Chinese, mimicking the sounds of spoken Chinese, figuring to lay blame on the Chinese culture for the horrible smell in the trolley car.  However, his ploy was unsuccessful.  An old Chinese man on the trolley got up, pointed to Dad’s friend and started shouting:  “Him lying!!!  Him no China man, him Filipino!”

I submitted the cookbook to the online book publishing company Viovio, and ordered it in the 12.5 in. X 10 in. hardcover spiral bound format.  I specifically designed the book for this size and format because the spiral binding will allow cooks to easily keep the book open at the page that they’ re using and the large size makes it easy to read while working on a recipe.  You can check out more of the book by going to this website:  http://www.viovio.com/shop/55571

While it lacks the intrigue and excitement of a political thriller, The Enciso Family Cookbook is still (at this point at least) a much more entertaining read than The People’s Republic.  I couldn’t be happier with the way that it turned out.  I finally--after all these years of wanting to do so-- wrote a book, which makes me really happy, but more importantly we collected and saved all of these recipes that we love!

I'm grateful for a lot of the experiences that living in China has afforded us.  One of the best being that living here has afforded me "time"; time to do things that I've always wanted to do, to further develop personal interests and to identify new ones.  I feel extremely fortunate because I realize that this is an opportunity that few people get in their lives.  Chris will have the same opportunity when we are in the Philippines and he's looking forward to it!

Log 53: La Mian

** Please note that the video, which was previously not working, has been fixed.  You should be able to view it now!

 

The regional cuisines in China are famous worldwide.  Who hasn’t heard or tasted the spiciness of Sichuan (aka Szechuan) cuisine, or the sweet and sour combinations of Guangdong (Canton) cuisine?  While Sichuan cuisine is our most favorite (and it is totally different from the Szechuan cuisine that you get in the United States), one of our other favorites is the lesser known cuisine of the Northwestern provinces of China--  Xinjiang and Gansu.  These provinces are predominantly populated by the Uyghur minority, who make for the majority of the Muslim population in China.  Culturally, they have much more in common with the peoples of Central Asia than the Han Chinese who make up the overwhelming majority of the 1.3 billion people who live here.  Their script is different, their language is different, and of course the food is different. 

One reason for this difference is that they don’t eat pork because they’re Muslim; and pork is the most popular meat throughout the rest of China.  Instead they eat more lamb and beef and they’re well known for their barbecued meats.  Northwestern China is dry and hot, thus dried meats and fruits from this region are famous.  Special drying houses made of bricks, where every other brick is missing to provide adequate ventilation, are used to make one of the region’s most well known agricultural products- raisins.   Because the green seedless grapes are dried inside these houses, the raisins keep their fresh green color and they’re extremely delicious!  The people of this region also use spices that other regions don’t use as often:  cumin, anise, cinnamon, nutmeg, and others. 

One of our favorite dishes is a dish called la mian (pronounced "la mee-yan"), which translates to “pulled noodles”.  It is a dish that has gained popularity throughout the country and has successfully crossed-over into mainstream Chinese culture.  As a result, you can find a la mian restaurant in most of China’s cities, which is great because we eat the stuff at least once a week!

The most popular form of la mian is a soup.  Its base is a rich beef broth to which they add sliced meat, some vegetables, and cooked noodles.  It is similar to Vietnamese pho, but with some different spices.  Chao mian is another dish that we will often opt for if the weather is too hot for soup.  Chao mian translates to “fried noodles” , and it starts with the same pulled noodles that are cooked and then added to a sauce- like spaghetti, but with an entirely different flavor.  We’ve brought every guest that has visited us to our local “Muslim noodles” restaurant.  I’ll remember forever that these noodles were the dinner that Chris, my sister Mary, and I ate on the night of the day the massive earthquake hit Sichuan.  Because of fear of aftershocks and potential for fires, the city shut down all of the gas lines.  Most of the restaurants couldn’t operate, the one exception being the la mian restaurants.  Because the majority of their dishes are noodle-based, and because their noodle and soup pots are usually located near the front of the restaurants and attached to a free-standing propane tank instead of the gas lines, they were able to make their noodles for the crowd of people who lined up for them that night.

Besides the deliciousness of the noodles, the other reason that we bring our visitors to these restaurants is because the process of making the noodles is entertaining to watch.  As the name implies, “pulled” noodles are made by pulling.  Young men, using deft hands and strong arms, are able to turn formless mounds of prepared dough into the most beautiful, delicate, and delicious noodles you can imagine.  They are made fresh to order, and you can watch as your order of noodles is literally “pulled” before your eyes.  I’ve enclosed a video here because the process is something that has to be seen to be truly appreciated. 

We’re really going to miss la mian when we leave China.  We’ll miss the dish itself, but we’ll also miss watching the entertaining process of making the noodles as well as the gracious and friendly la mian vendors who always seem so pleased to see us when we enter their little shops!

Log 52: Happy Birthday China

October 1^st marked the 60^th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China.  It was a very big deal here.  To the Chinese, a person’s 60^th birthday is extremely special because it signifies having lived a “full cycle” – which is represented by the 12 zodiac animals that most of us know from Chinese restaurants (e.g., rat, ox, pig, dog, etc.) and the less commonly known five elements of the zodiac – fire, wood, earth, metal and water.  For those mathematically challenged, 12x5=60.  Family members put a lot of effort into celebrating one’s 60^th birthday as it represents a moment of immense pride.  Therefore, it is no surprise that October 1, 2009 – sixty years to the day when Mao Zedong stood on the balcony of the Gate of Heavenly Peace overlooking Tiananmen Square and declared the founding of the PRC – represented an incredibly important day for this nation. 

This year, Guo Qing  Jie (Chinese National Day) and the lunar-calendar based Mid-Autumn Festival overlapped, which combined to give the Chinese people a week off from school and work (and to effectively shut the country down for a while).  Everyone was in a celebratory mood and anticipated the broadcast of the Guo Qing Jie celebrations on TV.  On the morning of October 1^st, we watched the 2+ hour military and civilian parade on TV, which was broadcast live on every channel (and continues to be rebroadcast for our multiple viewing pleasure).  

  

Like the ‘coming-out’ party last year at the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese government wanted to put
on a similarly polished show to commemorate this day.  The military parade was impressive and the preparation and practice of the parade participants was immediately apparent.  The military might of the country was equally impressive—television commentators frequently emphasized that the machinery and weaponry was made completely in China.  We thought it was interesting that the parade started in reverse.  President Hu Jintao was driven from Tiananmen Square down the parade to greet the thousands of troops who were standing at order ready to begin the parade.  For each group, he had one of two greetings – one of which was, “Tongzhimen hao,” which means, “Hello, comrades.”  [One interesting side note is that “tongzhimen”, which means “comrade” has been adopted in modern day colloquial Chinese as a term for gay people.]  The President drove to the very end of the parade, stopping at the last group, a group of military women (in red retro-stewardess dresses and white go-go boots), before turning around to head back to the front of the parade.  Every soldier’s head turned in robotic synchrony as the president drove by.  The parade began and the soldiers displayed precise goose-stepping as they passed by the main stage of the parade route.  Amidst all the ground-to-surface missiles and spy planes, one type of amphibious vehicle was highlighted by the television commentator “for its use in combating the United States’ aggression in Korea in the 1950s.”  Hmmmmmmm……interesting. 

The civilian part of the parade followed the military salute and it started with tributes to the main leaders of China since 1949 – Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaopoing, Jiang Zimen and Hu Jintao.  Following the political rhetoric were many floats, each surrounded by hundreds of people performing synchronized routines.  Float themes highlighted the progress made in various aspects of Chinese society over the last 60 years– e.g., agriculture, transportation, and space exploration to name a few.  There was even one float dedicated to “environmental protection” and the one for “energy” was solar powered.  A main theme throughout the day’s celebration was the inclusion and recognition of “the 56 indigenous ethnic minorities” who make up a small percentage of the 1.3 billion Chinese people.  Given the racial riots that occurred in Tibet last year and the riots in Xinjiang this year, it is no surprise that the government would try to emphasize peace and integration during these ceremonies.

During our time in China, we’ve come to expect that these types of events will involve a vast amount of people who you can tell have practiced, practiced and practiced to obtain perfect synchronization in their routines.  The end results are visually stunning.  When I asked one of the 14 year-old kids that I tutor, what she thought of the ceremony, she responded, “I think there are too many Chinese people living in China.”  The vast number of parade participants was a reminder to her and us that 20% of the world’s population lives in China.

 

The parade ended with thousands of adorable Chinese children carrying multi-colored balloons that they released into the sky in front of the main parade stand.  As the balloons flew away, the kids (who represented “the future of the country”) ran towards the viewing platform waving colorful hoops towards their country’s leaders, who warmly greeted them with smiles on their faces. 

In the evening, Tiananmen Square was full again for nighttime performances and fireworks.  The fireworks were stunning and the performances were a spectacle, but at times they blurred the line between “celebration” and “public relations”.  We watched the evening gala for a little while, but after performances of the songs, as translated by CCTV9 (China’s only English TV station), entitled “Xinjiang is a Happy Place” and the Tibet-inspired, “Emancipated Serfs are Happy”, we decided that we had sufficiently celebrated this year’s Chinese National Day. 

 

This was our third and final Guo Qing Jie in China.  It was good to end it all with such pomp and circumstance.  Immediately afterwards, we watched the British movie, “The Boat that Rocked”, which portrayed the story of a group of British people in the late 1960s who challenged their government’s restrictions on the radio airtime of rock-n-roll music by operating a pirate radio station from a boat out in the ocean.  It was an interesting juxtaposition and a reminder that Britain and the United States in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, with their restrictions on music, movies, etc. weren’t all that different from the China of today.

We wish China all the best on its 60^th birthday.  The unity, strength and pride that this nation has developed since 1949 are commendable, especially given the historical context of the last two centuries.  It was only after living here that we learned that from the late 1800s through the 1940s this country has endured an immense amount of crap imposed upon them by foreign countries.  After that, they struggled internally through growing pains that included a civil war and the Cultural Revolution [one should read The Search for Modern China for a better understanding of it all].  As China completes one 60-year cycle and begins another, we wish it continued success in the economic prosperity, poverty reduction and education improvements achieved during its ‘reform and opening’ of the last 30 years.  We also wish all Chinese people and their government peace and harmony both internally and externally as they continue to work toward their goals of a “peaceful and harmonious society”. 

Photos for this blog were borrowed from China Daily, the UK Guardian, the UK Telegraph and boston.com.

Log 51: Hainan Island

It was July, and both Chris and I were desperate for a vacation.  I had just completed my hardest semester yet of studying Chinese (I realize now that it only ever gets more and more difficult….) and Chris was slogging through one of his busiest periods of the year.  Add to this the facts that we hadn’t had a vacation since our Christmas trip to the Philippines and that it had been an exceedingly rainy summer.  It was cloudy and steamy; we hadn’t seen the sun in weeks and we were starting to feel the onset of SADness (Seasonal Affective Disorder).

Our original plan was to head up to Xinjiang.  The sunny, dry, large, far-northwestern province of China where the population is composed mainly of Muslim Uyghur people.  The town of Kashgar was an important stop on the Silk Road, and has the largest weekend open-market in all of Asia.  Xinjiang is one of the few remaining parts of China that we want to visit but haven’t had a chance to yet.  This plan got shot (literally) when inter-racial riots (between Uyghur and Han Chinese) in Urumqi, the provincial capital, created an explosion of violence in towns across the province.  As a result, travel to the region was restricted. 

Alternatively, we had heard that Hainan, which lies south of China’s Guangdong province, east of Vietnam and SW of Hong Kong, is sometimes referred to as “the Hawaii of China”.  It is a relatively big island, populated largely by representatives of the Miao minority (also known as Hmong in Vietnam).  During the winter it is flooded by millions of mainland Chinese looking for a little bit of sun and warmth.  Early August, however, is the height of their off-season.  Flights were cheaper, accommodations were cheaper, and crowds would be minimal.  While doing online research we blundered onto the website of the Boao Inn, an inn run by a Chinese / American couple that promised a B&B experience that we never thought would be possible in China.  As their name implies, the B&B is located in a small town called Boao (famous for the annual Asian Forum meeting that big names like George Bush, Bill Gates and most Asian political leaders have attended), located far away from the crowded cities of Haikou and Sanya. 

Elizabeth, the proprietor of the Boao inn picked us up at the Haikou airport in northern Hainan in the early afternoon and offered to take us by a nearby volcano park.  The park was very nice; beautifully landscaped, with trails that led up to the top of a small volcano and along the rim, providing lookouts to two sub-volcanoes nearby.  This park was an amazing introduction to Hainan Island.  The sun was shining; the vegetation was lush and tropical.  It was hot, probably hotter than it was in Chengdu, but because we were surrounded by trees and there was a nice breeze, it didn’t feel anywhere near as hot as Chengdu had been.  The air was really clean and we commented on how disturbing it was that we could so easily tell the difference.

One other major thing that we noticed was the butterflies.  On our short hike up to the crater and around the rim we must have noticed 15 or so different species in a wide variety of color combinations:  brown and purple, white and orange, brown and blue, black and turquoise, brown and orange…… they were amazing and they were everywhere.

We arrived in Boao later that afternoon.  The cozy four-bedroom inn sat at the end of a quiet beachside road.  A small, winding path along the side of the inn led past a Taoist monastery and out to the beach.  Elizabeth made fruit smoothies for us and we headed upstairs to unpack and take naps.  The first day of our vacation had already provided us with everything that we were looking for, and the amazing dinner that we had at the nearby seaside restaurant (a large place with several large aquariums containing live blowfish, various lobsters, clams of all kinds, and other treasures from the sea…… all there for our potential eating pleasure) where we ordered a local specialty called boao yu “boao fish”- a delicious steamed ocean bass served with a light sauce made of soy-sauce, garlic, and the tangy juice of a small citrus fruit that Filipinos call calamanci.  We slept better that night than eit her of us had slept in a very long time.

Back when I was living in San Diego, I went through a phase when I would wake up early (around sunrise) and head off to the beach for a morning run (followed by coffee and a muffin somewhere along the beach).  It was amazingly cathartic and I had been looking forward to doing the same along the long beach in Boao.  Chris got up with me and together we walked to the ocean and ran north with the ocean waves on our right.  Having lived in DC and now Chengdu for the last 12+ years, I haven’t run on the beach in quite some time.  It’s HARD to run on the beach!  The soft sand (while great for the joints) is energy-sapping and in very little time I was gasping.  I was also very, very happy.

Breakfast was pancakes, bacon and sausage, scrambled eggs, banana bread, fresh fruit, fruit smoothies and coffee.  I honestly don’t think that there is another place in all of China that offers a western-style B&B experience like the little Boao Inn does – each day was a feast of pancakes, grits, oatmeal, French toast, or biscuits with gravy.  After breakfast we decided to walk around town (this is a THREE street town mind you), which of course didn’t take long, so we walked back down to the beach.  We stopped at a small restaurant to order another local specialty chao bing “fried ice-cream”, which isn’t actually “fried”, but is a flash-frozen concoction of sweetened condensed milk, juice and fruit, and topped with nuts.  Could it get any better?  Yes… it could.  We arrived at the beach adjacent an amazing hotel complex, set our stuff under a woven cabana and proceeded to frolic in the waves.  “Frolic” is not a word that use lightly….. or ever for that matter, but you have to understand how badly we needed this vacation and how much a good frolic was in order. 

On our way to a noodle place for dinner we passed by a seafood restaurant in town that had two sea-turtles in their “for the menu” aquariums on display in their front window.  I was both outraged and heartsick to see these turtles in this situation.  We had no intention of eating there, but we stopped to ask the proprietors if they were aware that catching these kinds of turtles and eating them was against the law in China.  We finally asked how much it would cost to buy a turtle alive, in hopes that we could take it back to the ocean to set it free.  The cost was dear….the equivalent of a full year’s tuition.  It was far more than we could afford, but not out of reach of the wealthy Chinese businessmen that come and stay in places like the Shangri La hotel, who might want to impress their clients with a fancy dinner.  When we returned to the Inn we found that Elizabeth had baked an apple pie.  Wonderful!  I needed a good dessert to get my mind off of those turtles and that night I said a little “please free the turtles” prayer before drifting off to sleep.   

The next day Elizabeth suggested that we take a boat ride upriver to visit a small traditional village and then down to the delta to see a long strip of land known as the “jade belt”.  Elizabeth came along in order to introduce the tour to her newly hired assistant “Rainy”, which was great because Rainy spoke the local dialect and was able to help us communicate with the villagers.  The boat rides, the walk through the village, and the dinner at the riverside “floating” restaurant were a great way to spend the afternoon/evening.  Because it was late Elizabeth offered to drive Rainy home and in the small village of Shitou (which means “stone”) we visited with her uncle, a beetle nut farmer and his family, who treated us to tea and conversation, showed us his pet python, and sent us home with several coconuts as a parting gift.  These kinds of opportunities, to spend quality time with locals, don’t often present themselves on vacations.  It was wonderful.

The next day, after an early breakfast, we took the four-hour bus down to Sanya, the big tourist destination on Hainan island where the overwhelming majority of visitors to the island end up staying.   Sanya is famous for its natural sandy bays, which reminded both of us of Hawaii.  Dadonghai Bay actually reminded us of a weird combination of Waikiki and the Jersey shore.  The scenery was beautiful and tropical, while the boardwalk was out-of-control with vendors selling “beach” paraphernalia, and the beaches were crowded with tourists (which made us wonder what the place must look like during high season)!  There were two things about Dadonghai that we found particularly fascinating.  One was the inordinate number of Russian tourists and their impact on the culture here.  Russian Cyrillic signs were everywhere, as were large Russian women with over-dyed hair and large Russian men with their undersized speedos!  It was all very disturbing.  The second (equally disturbing) thing was all of the Chinese tour-group members in their matchy-matchy “Hawaiian print” ensembles.  If there ever was an ideal example of the Chinese “group-think” mentality, this is surely it.  Practically every Chinese couple that we saw was wearing matching shorts and shirts.  I can imagine that after one couple buys a set, the group-think mentality takes over and everyone else thinks to themselves, “Wow, they’re really cool looking in their matching outfits…. We need to get some too.”

After a full day down in Sanya we took the bus back to Boao to find that Elizabeth had made a carrot cake!!!  We were so glad that we had decided to stay in Boao.  Zero crowds, empty beaches, and carrot cake!  Their pet bird, a tame Asian mynah named “Freddy” was out of his cage and flying around the house.  He landed on our heads a few times, trying to get to our cake!

On Friday we had a light breakfast because we had been invited to accompany Rechard and Elizabeth to visit the home of a local wealthy businessman friend of theirs who had invited them over for lunch.  This businessman is originally from a small rural village near Boao, but has made his fortune in China’s new free market economy and lives most of the year near Shanghai.  He makes annual pilgrimages back home which managed to coincide with our stay in Boao.  It was interesting, this experience of hanging out with the filthy rich in a quaint little village composed mainly of his poor relations that still farmed the rice paddies and grew beetle nut for a living.  It was even more interesting talking to his son, a reasonably normal kid, for someone who can get pretty much anything he wants and attends a prestigious private school in Hangzhou, one of the most beautiful old-towns in China.  He had yet to develop the same sense of value for the simple life and didn’t understand why his father dragged the family down to this village every year.  How could he?  He’s rich and sheltered and doesn’t know much about the “real world”.  He dreams of studying overseas one day where I imagine he’s likely got get a nice slap of reality…..

After lunch we made our way to the beach where we napped on the sand, getting up occasionally to cool off in the ocean.  We weren’t super hungry by the time dinner-time rolled around so we strolled up the beach for several kilometers until we found a beachside restaurant with gorgeous views of the ocean from their open deck.  We had dinner there and made our way back to the Boao Inn, walking along the darkened nighttime beach.  It was all very nice.

We got up early to play what would be our lat set of tennis on Hainan at a nearby hotel.  It was truly like having our own private courts.  The day’s agenda was simple, as we planned to tag along with Elizabeth as she did errands in Boao and the neighboring regional capital.  She needed to replenish her groceries at the local markets and along the way we hit some tourist sites including an old pagoda and the famous coconut factory.  The coconut factory was a real treat…. Literally!  Given Boao’s tropical climate, coconuts and their many products are a big industry in Boao.  This is all highlighted at the Coconut Factory, a complex that combines both production and retail of all things coconut related:   candies, milk, etc.  The afternoon, per usual, was spent at the beach relaxing.  That evening, our last in Boao, we went for a foot massage at the local parlor.

Relaxing on the beach, foot massages, amazing breakfasts, ocean-side meals…. Indeed everything about this vacation was exactly what we were looking for and what was exactly what we needed after a particularly busy and hectic spring and early summer.  This blog was written several months after the fact.  It is cold and cloudy in Chengdu now, but remembering Hainan, with its warm weather and warm people makes us very glad that we had decided to go there and will help us cope with the long and gray winter ahead of us.

Log 50: A Chinese Wedding

Sometime near the end of my second semester of Chinese study, one of the chapters that my class was studying focused on the various aspects of a Chinese wedding.  The intent of the chapter was to introduce us foreigners to the characteristics of a traditional Chinese wedding, as well as to introduce us to wedding-related vocabulary (married- yihun, wedding- jiehun, groom- xinlang, bride- xinniang).  The book that Chris uses to study Chinese also contained a similar chapter.  The information presented was interesting and as a result both of us were eager to participate in a Chinese wedding. 

We have had a few invitations over the last couple of years, but those were all from friends who were invited guests at other people’s weddings.  They invited us to be their guests because they knew that we were interested in attending a wedding, but we gratefully declined those invitations because we felt it would be weird to attend a wedding when we knew neither the bride nor the groom.  However, a couple of weekends ago we (and our American friend- Kayte) were fortunate to have been able to attend the wedding of a friend of ours, allowing us to finally participate in a “traditional” Chinese wedding.  Weddings here have adopted some western influences as well, and it’s the combination of old and new practices that makes a Chinese wedding so interesting.

Early on the day of the wedding, there is a traditional cultural event that occurs at the home of the bride during which the groom and his party “pay and bribe” (with actual cash) their way through several locked doors behind which the bride has been hidden away.  After they finally gain access to her she is then whisked away to prepare for the courthouse ceremony (this administrative aspect of the wedding isn’t attended by guests).  This all occurs fairly early in the day (starts around 6 am on the day of the wedding) and we were invited to attend this as well, but we gratefully declined because as interested as we were in witnessing this interesting cultural ceremony, it was just way too early for us.

The presentation ceremony and lunch scheduled for noon were held in the largest room of a banquet hall near the center of town.  Well in advance of their weddings, Chinese couples schedule professional photography sessions which involve travelling all over the region in tuxedos, suits, and various dresses to take pictures for what eventually becomes a high school yearbook sized wedding photo album.  The best picture is then selected to be blown up into a giant sized (4ft by 4ft) poster of the couple that is displayed near the entrance of the banquet hall.  Our friends selected a beautiful picture of themselves with the interesting caption:  “My heatl [sic] will go on” written in script across the top of it (yes, unfortunately there was an English error/ typo in their Celine Dion quote:  “My HEART will go on”).

Immediately inside the hall’s entrance stood the bride and groom (with their best man and maid of honor).  Per tradition the bride offered us a cigarette from the tray that her bridesmaid carried and lit them for us.  At this time, guests give the hongbao to the groom.  Directly translated, hongbao means “red envelope” and is a special red envelope that often contains the Chinese characters for the word fu which means good fortune, or the shuangxi characters which literally means “a pair of joy” printed on the outside.  If you’ve been to any wedding in which at least one person has Chinese background you would have likely seen the “double happiness” characters somewhere during the wedding.   The inside of the hongbao contains cash, the amount of which is significant.  Numerology is vitally important in China with certain numbers being more appropriate than others for gift giving.  For example you can’t give an odd amount for a gift because it is unlucky to give a couple an odd amount of cash (one and three are particularly bad numbers because they imply divorce or an extramarital affair!).  You also can’t give four because the pronunciation, si is a synonym for the word that means “death”.   Therefore the typical amount for a wedding gift is 200 RMB.  At this point I hope you’re getting a sense of how complicated this can be and why there was more than enough wedding related subject matter to provide a lengthy text in our language textbooks.

The groom handed the hongbao over to his best man for safe-keeping.  By the time we arrived and added our hongbao to the lot, they already had a pretty full purse of red envelopes.  In China it is considered VERY poor form to open gifts in front of the giver, so the hongbao are kept safe until the end of the night when the bride and groom can privately open all of the envelopes to count their cash.

One interesting thing that we noticed rather quickly was that dress of the other wedding guests was very casual, even by American standards.  Some guests even wore shorts and t-shirts.  The bride wore a foreign-style white wedding dress (per our western traditions) and the groom wore a short sleeved shirt with a tie (it was a very hot day).  We were wearing suits (without the jackets), long sleeved shirts, and ties, and we were among the best dressed (and the sweatiest) people at the wedding.

In the large ceremony/dining hall we selected the best un-reserved seats for viewing the action.  At every place setting there was a small container of hard candy, another traditional Chinese custom.

The best man soon found us at our seats and informed us that they had planned for us to have a special role to play in the ceremony.  Chris and I were going to be responsible for the “confetti cannons”, which are large tubes that, when ignited (by twisting), emit an explosive burst of confetti.  We were situated on the right-hand side of the stage, while our other friends were on the left.  The couple entered the room through a silk flower covered archway to the tune of, “I am your lady, and you are my man” from none other than Celine.  They walked down the center aisle and approached the table where their parents sat (located near the front of the stage).  The best man and maid of honor held trays with pairs of tea cups on them.  The groom presented the tea to the bride’s parents and the bride presented tea to the parents of the groom.

After that, the couple took to the stage, some words of congratulations were said by the master of ceremony and they were formally presented to the audience as a “married couple” (igniting a flash of sparkling fireworks-- which was our cue to shoot the confetti- paying special attention as to not break the crystal chandeliers that were hanging above the stage)!  The bride was whisked away to change into her second (of three) dresses of the day.  In most cases the bride changes from a western white wedding dress to a traditional Chinese qipao.  In this case, however, the bride opted for a more modern mini-dress.

After this, the rest of the ceremony was similar to that of a wedding in the US, but with some minor differences.  For example, rather than buffet style or  “sit down” where each plate is a complete meal, the waiters started piling various dishes onto the large lazy-susan in the center of each table and the guests began to eat “family style”.  I should note that the dishes were quite “special”, which is a euphemism for “bizarre”…….even by Chinese standards.  Duck tongues, chicken feet, pig knuckle soup, and dishes comprised of various organs.  Not typical “everyday” foods, but expensive delicacies, some of which have special significance and meaning.

After the large meal, guests usually retire to the adjacent tea-room to sit, chat, rest, or play mah-jhong.  We had decided that we had successfully fulfilled our goal of participating in a Chinese wedding and headed home to rest, and to reflect on the experience.  All in all, we found that the chapters that we studied in our texts were pretty accurate….. or in other words you might say that the wedding we attended was a “textbook” traditional Chinese wedding…(HA!)….for the most part, at least.

We are really thankful to our friends for inviting us to participate in their wedding.  It was an extremely interesting experience for us, not only because it was very traditionally Chinese but also because it was a total and complete sham. 

The groom, you see, is gay.  The best man is his partner.  The bride?  A lesbian.  And the maid of honor was her partner.  The current situation for Chinese gays and lesbians is such that MANY of them undergo these types of weddings….staged mainly for the benefit of their parents, families, and co-workers. It seemed to us to be disturbingly reminiscent of the United States in the 1950s- when societal pressures forced many people into similar marriages of convenience.  For our Chinese friends, however, it is a current fact of life, and the Chinese “one-child policy” has upped the pressure for them to get married. 

This experience was an interesting and important reality check for us.  Our society in the United States has progressed so incredibly far from the days of legal discrimination against gays and lesbians, when it was ok to fire people from their jobs based solely on their sexual orientation and when upwardly mobile gay (closeted) professionals had to take on a spouse if they dreamed of continued promotion. 

At times we still see disappointing reminders that the American society still has very far to go.  Last fall, the result of the Proposition 8 vote in California was extremely disappointing, and was a dangerous step backwards.  However, the subsequent support of gay marriage in Iowa, Maine and New Hampshire, and the public outcry over the California decision, give us hope that things will continue to change in the direction of equality. 

Our gay Chinese friends would give anything to have the freedoms that we have in the US.  They were brought to happy tears by the photos of our wedding in Canada, where we were surrounded by our wonderfully supportive family and friends and embraced for a short time by a small Canadian town.  Despite their situation they maintain a positive outlook, counting themselves lucky to at least have the option of marrying lesbians, creating a situation that is mutually beneficial, and lamenting the situation for gays and lesbians who are not in major cities and who still enter in marriages with spouses that are unaware of their orientation.  They were also inspired by our photos and are hopeful that one day the two men getting married in the pictures might actually be them (and should that day come, rest assured that we will strongly advise them to avoid the cheesy poster-photo in the doorway!!). 

Please note:  for obvious reasons we have obscured the identities of the Chinese people in these photos.

Log 49: 100 Lists

Ghetto blasters, phony jewels
Cathedrals, castles, making up rules
Trashy novels and leather gloves
This is a list of the things I love
CHORUS
I am the girl of 100 lists
From what shall I wear
To who I have kissed
Check items off
Let nothing be missed
Sing I to myself and my 100 lists

Pick up your laundry, doctor's at ten
We're out of toothpaste, rehearsal (again)
Stop by the bank and cash my pay
These are the things I must get done today
CHORUS
I am the girl of 100 lists
From what shall I wear
To who I have kissed
Check items off
Let nothing be missed
Sing I to myself and my 100 lists

The above song, “Girl of 100 Lists” is one of my favorite songs by the Go-Gos.  Like the majority of their songs, it’s bouncy, happy, and very Californian (SOUTHERN Californian I should clarify), and its topic:  “list making”, is something that I can totally relate to.  I get a lot of simple and pure joy from the process of writing things down in a list, reviewing them, prioritizing them, categorizing them, and (bliss!!) checking them off. 

I am the guy of 100 lists.  I have lists for everything.  One of my favorites is the one that I’ve dubbed my “Three-syllable City Tour” which is a worldwide list of cities that I want to visit during my lifetime.  To me there’s something extra special about a city that has three-syllables in its name:  Istanbul, Singapore, Manila, Kathmandu, Jakarta, Marrakesh, Zanzibar, Timbuktu……. Just saying them out-loud conjures images of exciting and exotic locations.  Try it……. “Is-tan-bul”, “Zan-zi-bar”…… how could you NOT want to go there?!?!?  (I’ve already been to a fair number of them….)

We recently saw “The Bucket List”, a movie starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman who play two men with terminal illnesses who create lists of things that they want to do before they “kick the bucket”.  Terminal illness was the impetus for writing their lists, and the lists were their guides through to the end.  I think it’s unfortunate that they waited until they were dying to do this, though better late than never I suppose.  As these men worked toward ticking all of the items off of their lists, the themes of the movie became evident: identify what’s important to you and follow your dreams. 

There’s power in the writing of a list.  A list can focus your future, while also cataloging your past.  Lists can both motivate the uninspired and reign in the spontaneous.  They’re both finite and limitless.  In some cases, even when the actual physical list is itself long gone, what you wrote is printed in indelible ink somewhere in your subconscious.  The list sits there in your head, influencing your life decisions without you even realizing it, and as you go through life you mentally check things off and add to it as well.

Back in college I made such a list.   I wish I could say that the list-making procedure was part of some grand project, an assignment from a creative-writing teacher or some self imposed task to help me focus my future and maximize my education.  However, the sad fact of the matter is that the list’s creation was a result of being bored to tears.  I created the list while trying to study Bio-chemistry (hence the “bored to tears”) with one of my best college-friends Christine, in the below-ground level of the SDSU library.  Active discussion is allowed in this section of the library, which was a rule that I’m sure the administration meant to help foster collaborative studying.  In actuality, the policy made the area a magnet for the very large segment of the SDSU student population who knew that they had to study, but didn’t necessarily want to study, and felt that a good compromise was going to the library and chatting with their friends over open textbooks.

I can’t remember which one of us was the first to say the words:  “I’ve always wanted to….,” but the process of list-making quickly snow-balled from there.  At one point, we both realized that we should write things down, probably more for the sake of comparison than record keeping.  Our lists contained things from the banal:  “learn how to windsurf”, “learn how to play the guitar”, “learn a foreign language”; to the fantastic:  “live on an island”, “backpack around the world”, “perform in a musical production”; and the inspired:  “have careers that help people”, “write a book”, “change the world” etc.  It would be safe to say that this was probably one of the best study sessions that I’ve ever had.  We kept our lists and added to them over the next few days and a sure sign of our compatibility was that many of the same items appeared on both of our lists.

I wish I knew where my list ended up.  It’s highly unlikely that I threw it away, and it’s probably tucked away in my Bio-chem textbook, stored in a box at my parent’s house in San Diego.  Fresh from the process of making the list, I decided to fill gaps in my following semester schedule with “Beginning Guitar” and “Beginning Windsurfing” classes (one of the many benefits of attending San Diego State University was the fact that “Recreation” was a popular major there and the PE classes offered to students included such fun classes as:   sailing, windsurfing, and sea kayaking).  Over time, the pursuit of items on the list became less and less conscious.  When I eventually applied to the Peace Corps I was given a choice of countries by my Placement Officer (this is extremely rare).  She said I could choose between Nepal and Tonga.  Either would’ve been great….. but a little voice in my head encouraged me to chose the South Pacific over the Himalayas-- I only remembered that I had written that on a list some time after I had arrived in Tonga!  It’s interesting how powerfully the subconscious mind can act upon these things.  That voice in our heads can be pretty persuasive and I imagine my own brain’s running commentary went something like this: 

Brain:  “Oooooh…. The South Pacific…. Don’t you remember?  We’ve always wanted to live on an island!  Yes, I know that seeing Mt. Everest was also on your list, but you can do that later.  How often do you think you’ll get an opportunity to live on an island for two years?  Really……. this decision is a no-brainer.  Pun intended.  Heh!  Heh!”

Apparently my brain thinks it’s funny.

After my Peace Corps service was finished I could’ve returned directly to the United States, but a nagging desire to “backpack around the world” made me walk into the ONE bookstore in Nuku’alofa (the capital of Tonga) to buy a world map that I hung on my living-room wall and  studied endlessly, in planning what became a seven month trip that started in Tonga, went up through New Zealand, Australia, into SE Asia, across to NE Africa, up into Europe, to the East Coast of the United States and eventually back home to San Diego.  There have since been many other examples of items on my list popping up unexpectedly, like the time I made the spur-of-the-moment decision to attend try-outs that were being held at the National Theater in Washington DC., for a role in the national touring show of “Rent”.

List making is a valuable tool for life planning, especially when trying to plan the lives of TWO people.  If a list-making exercise for couples isn’t already a required process in a couples-counseling session, I think it absolutely should be.  The process starts with the couple making individual list of the things that they want to accomplish during a period of time (Chris and I prefer five year increments).  Ample time should be allowed for each individual to write a list that fully encompasses their dreams and goals for the next five years of their lives.  The goals can be completely individual (ex. “get a PhD”), or goals for the couple (ex. “buy a house”).  When the individual list-making process is complete, the couple then shares their lists. 

(Here’s where the process can get a little dicey…..).  The couple then combines the two lists into one shared “couple” list of agreed upon items that they’ll attempt to achieve together over the next five years.  This process involves identifying their shared items, prioritizing items, and then negotiation regarding editing or deletion of the unshared items.  For example, if one person has “have a child” on their list and the other doesn’t….. well……it’s probably better that they discuss this sooner rather than later don’t you think?  That’s what this process does best.  It puts it all out there.  It demands discussion between two people and bypasses the ineffective and frustrating ways that people in a relationship sometimes use to try to communicate about the things that are important to them….. hints, innuendo, implication.  If you‘ve never done this before, I suggest that you give it a try…… you might be surprised with what you discover about yourselves and your partners.  I can totally imagine a smart couple like the Obamas going through this process:

[It is 2005.  Barack and Michelle Obama are sitting in their downtown Chicago loft apartment discussing their recently-created five year lists.]

Barack:  Ok….. what’s on your five-year lists?

Michelle:  I’ve got “write a book”, “advance National Service in this country”, “get a dog—that one is for the girls”, “move into a house with a bigger yard—for previously mentioned dog”, “meet Bono”…..

Barack:  That one’s ALWAYS on your lists…..

Michelle:  And it always will be until I meet the guy…..  and your list?

Barack:  I’ve got “reform health care”, “improve the country’s education system”, “make the United States a global leader in green-energy”, “improve our country’s global image”,  “meet Bruce Springsteen”……

Michelle:  And how do you plan on getting all of THAT done in five years?!?!?

Barack:  Via the first item on my list….. “run for President of the United States….”

Michelle:  <Gack!>…..I’m not so sure…..

Barack:  Aw c’mon!  It’s been on my bucket list since I was eight years old!  Think about it….. if we win you could work on expanding national service in America, and the house that we would move into has a pretty nice yard….fenced and everything.  I promise we’ll get a dog for the girls, and as President and First Lady of the United States of America, Bono and Bruce will probably want to meet us….

Michelle:  Hmmmm….I like the sound of that…..ok then, let’s go for it….  “Mr. President”- hah!

 

So with a little over six months left in China we’ve been thinking seriously about what our next steps should be.  It would seem that we have some good options.  What do we want to do next?  Where do we want to live?  Are there things that we wanted to do in China that we haven’t done yet (actually, the decision to move to China helped me strike more than a few things off of my lists:  terracotta warriors, Tibet, the Great Wall, Mandarin,…..)?   Our last five-year list had “live and work overseas together” on it (which we can now check off!) and now it’s probably time for us to start working on another five-year list.  And who knows?  It might even include a trip to Nepal’s “Kath-man-du”, enroute to seeing Mt. Everest…..

            Brain: “Now you’re talking!!!  That’s a two-fer!”

Yeah…. I thought you’d like that…….

Log 48: A funny thing happened.....

In Chris’ last blog he explained why there has been a little bit of a dry-spell of blogs of late.  We’ve both been pretty busy—trying to figure out what our next steps (post China) are going to be, going to school, going to work….. nothing too out of the ordinary.  It appears that there hasn’t been a lot going on in here lately.  Or perhaps it’s that now, after almost two years here, things just don’t seem as wacky or interesting as they might have when we first arrived.  Things that may have turned our heads and made us gawk a year ago are now things that we just walk-by, hardly noticing.  This can tend to happen to people when they’ve lived in a place long enough to have gotten really comfortable, and is the reason why a person can end up with 100 pictures of the place that they vacationed at for a week, but only a handful of pictures of the home  that they lived in for 10 years. 

In retrospect, however, we’ve had some observations and experiences that maybe wouldn’t warrant a full blog, but when gathered together make for a nice collage of random “only in China” events that we should probably document.  After all, these are the things that make life here distinctly different from anywhere else that we’ve lived and when this is all over, they’re the things that we’re going to want to remember.

Where to begin…….?

Mariah Carey’s anniversary party perhaps?  It should come as no surprise that Mariah’s domination extends all the way out here to Chengdu.  In fact her fans here have been throwing her an annual party for several years, the pictures from which are later displayed on Mariah’s official fan site.   This year, the party’s organizer was a former student of a Chinese friend of ours and it was held in a gay club called “Connections”.  You can imagine what it was like:  blaring Mariah Carey music (check), lots of young gay guys and their gal-pals (check), bigger-than-life-sized posters of Mariah on every wall (check, check, check, and check).  What we certainly didn’t expect was the VIP treatment and the seats reserved for us near the stage.  We didn’t expect that Gavin, a strapping straight Scottish lad and the most unlikely person in our large group to end up being a serious Mariah fan, would know enough Maria trivia to win a prize during the Mariah trivia contest!  We definitely didn’t expect the electricity to go out during our friend Shirley’s karaoke rendition of “Hero”, and we MOST CERTAINLY didn’t expect to find the entire crowd (us included!) waving candles and lighters in the air and singing along with her…… in the dark!!

 

Hooters-  Our very good friend, Joanne, was leaving China and to send her off “in style” we took her to Hooters.  Walking through the Hooters front door is always a little disorienting.  Outside, it’s China, but inside it’s a slightly disturbing version of Americana.  Joanne has spent much of her recent years overseas and had never been to Hooters, though I should point out that the likelihood of her never going to Hooters regardless of where she lived is fairly high.  I should also point out that Joanne is an infamous trickster.  She plays some of the best practical jokes of which both of us have been victims.  Chris and I decided that Hooters would be the ideal place to get her back in-kind.

We arrived early and informed the staff and management that we were celebrating the departure of a very dear friend.  We told a fictitious story of how she paid her way through med-school (she really is a medical professional) back in the early 1980’s by working at the original Hooters in Clearwater, Florida.  Yes…. she was one of the original Hooter-girls and this is why we chose Hooters for her goodbye celebration because it has always held a special place in her heart, and would they mind making her departure celebration “extra special” for her by giving her a rousing welcome and presenting her with her own official “Hooters-Chengdu” tank-top uniform?  They were very gracious and happy to oblige, and when Joanne finally arrived, every girl in the place converged in a rousing rendition of “You are my Sunshine”.  The look on Joanne’s face was priceless, especially when they started saying things like “you still look like a beautiful Hooter’s girl”!!  Ever the trooper, Joanne recognized the joke and played along and everyone had a great time. 

 

Militant Hair-dressers.  Those of us who live here know that it isn’t uncommon to see restaurant, retail, and salon staff involved in pre-work shift exercise drills.  I’m not quite sure why they do this.  Maybe it’s something that they teach in Chinese business school?  Imagine that you’re walking by a Korean restaurant, for example.  All of the wait-staff (girls) are dressed in beautiful traditional Korean dresses and standing in a line.  Their manager (also a woman, but she gets to wear a business suit) is barking at them, military style.  They’re barking back, in unison.   I’ve never stopped to try to understand what they’re actually saying.  I imagine it’s something like:  “Are we going to kick some food-service butt today!?!?!?”   “Yes ma’am!!  Boo-yah!!!!” 

But the absolute worst is when the hairdressers are out on the sidewalk in front of their salons, lined up before their manager.  The reason that it’s so bad is because their hair styles are always so ridiculous.  You remember men’s hair-styles from the 80’s (think Andre Agassi or Duran Duran)?  Well… add a crimping iron and some “Sun-in”, and you’ve got “Chinese hair-dresser guy hair”.  And while they’re lined up like this, before the hundreds of people on their commutes to work, it looks to the entire world like a hair-pageant gone horribly, horribly wrong.  Add the military chants and some jumping jacks, and you’d swear that somewhere between home and this salon you’d fallen into the Twilight Zone…..

 

Fish that eat dead skin.  Just the thought of it incites shiver inducing memories.  Some Chinese friends of ours had invited us out to Mianyang, a town north of Chengdu that is famous for its hot springs.  Neither Chris nor I are big fans of hot spring spas, even though the curative powers of soaking your body in really hot sulfurous water are legendary (but unproven?).  The smell isn’t pleasant.  In fact, it downright stinks.  That said, the spa that we stayed at was very nice, and the various outdoor soaking pools were interesting (they had one in the yin/yang shape where one side was infused with milk and the other side with coffee, and a cluster of six that were all infused with different kinds of flower teas).  The MOST interesting pool, however, was the small one full of thousands of small fish. 

These inch-long fish are a schooling fish that the spa advertises as being expert skin cleaners.  Their diet:  dead skin.  I’m not quite sure why I thought this experience might be pleasant.  Perhaps it was the brochure picture of the beautiful lady lying serenely in the pool, or perhaps it was the fact that this was the only pool that didn’t have sulfur in it and the stench was really getting to me.  In any case I convinced everyone (they were all reluctant and it took some serious convincing) to join me in the fish pool. 

After keeping very still the fish slowly approach you.  They tend to concentrate on your feet and legs, sending in a few “scouts” to check it out before the whole school moves in for a feast.  Their nibbling, while not overtly painful, was also not really “pleasant” per se.  It felt like bunches of little needles poking at your skin.  People have endured worse in the name of beauty, and if it started to hurt too much, all you had to do was shake them away.  It all took a very bad turn, however, when our friend allowed them to graze on his back for just a little too long.  At one point almost every fish in the large pool was on him, many were partially above the surface of the water trying to get to him….the water was churning…..it looked like a Lilliputian-piranha feeding frenzy.  We all were thoroughly grossed out yet fascinated (in an “ooohh….. this is just like a nature documentary!” kind of way) and the rest of us got out of the pool to take pictures of the scene.  The next day after breakfast, our friend showed us the five or so large scars that he had on his back.  The fish had apparently broken his skin.  In essence, they had been eating him……alive.  Ick!

 

Evangelical proselytizers- Speaking of “ick”…….. I’m pretty certain that there are few people in this world that can- in the way that I can- attract every single Christian in the room who feels the need to “save” someone.  Like vultures to something rotten, they home in on me from far and wide.  If I sound a little perturbed, it’s because I am.  Back when I was a student at SDSU I was a frequent (as in several times weekly) target of “Church of Christ” recruiters  who would approach me as I sat on the grass under a tree, while sitting outside the bookstore waiting for my work-shift to start, or pretty much any time that I was alone.  Their methods were predictable, two people would approach and one would say something to start a conversation such as:  “Hey that’s a cool backpack.” (seriously, someone said that to me once).  Invariably I would be invited to bible study and when I politely refused they would sadly shake their heads and pray for me.  I really disliked those people for the way that they tried to impose their views on others and for their condescending attitude for people who didn’t agree with them.  I disliked them even more when I learned about their organizational structure and their recruitment techniques.  They target the people that they perceived as being “lost” or “lonely”, the timid type that they figured had nothing better to do than go to their bible-study, who would be more than willing to join their cult in the end.  The last thing that they expected from me (because apparently I fairly reeked of “timid, lost and lonely” to all of them), was a stern and unyielding (and devoid of politeness):  “Get the FU** away from me.”   But I digress……. 

Proselytizing, if you weren’t already aware, is illegal in China.  I’m not quite sure what the penalty for proselytizing is, but I imagine that in the least the activity would get a person kicked out of the country.  This hasn’t stopped religious zealots from developing devious ways to sneak in.  I’ve heard that a favored approach is to create “fence” teaching operations to import english teachers and their supplies (read:  “recruiters and their bibles”) and then starting illicit “home churches”.  Chengdu, it would seem, is a hotbed for this activity but until very recently we’ve never witnessed it.  This all changed however, when I was sitting at Starbucks one afternoon, reading (ironically enough) “New Moon” the second in the series of Vampire themed teenage-romance novels.  A young American woman approached me to ask if she could sit at the chair across from me.  I thought it was odd, seeing as there was nobody else in the place and there were about 50 or so available seats, but I said “sure” and went back to my reading.  I had a good guess where this was heading….. I have a fairly developed “sense” about these people.  Before long she asked me what I thought about the book (I’ve read that they take classes on how to approach people but it still always comes off as completely disingenuous to me), she proceeded to tell me that she loved the books that I was reading, and (incredulously) she found a way to insert God in our discussion about Werewolves and Vampires.  It was ridiculous and I had no desire to discuss God with a total stranger in a Chengdu Starbucks.  But I’ve mellowed slightly over the years.  Instead of cussing her out as I would have 15 years ago (too immature) or asking her to leave me alone (not dramatic enough), I casually mentioned that I had Chinese friends who work for the PSB (Public Security Bureau- aka Chinese policemen) who were, in actuality, as fictitious as the book that I held in my hand.  This had the desired effect however:  she blanched slightly; she quickly excused herself, and then she left me to my reading-- and hopefully in the future she’ll think twice about the next time she decides to bother someone who is reading alone at a Chinese Starbucks.

Chinese exercise.  The older generations of Chinese people firmly bought into the message of “strong body, strong country” espoused by Chairman Mao.  On a rainy day in Chengdu, we need just look outside our back window to see that almost every balcony has someone’s grandparents on it doing their morning calisthenics.  When it isn’t raining, they’re up bright and early and spread across the complex grounds playing badminton, doing taichi, or using the equipment located around our complex (and throughout the city) that is specially designed to facilitate exercise for adults. 

There’s one guy who lives in our complex who we find particularly fascinating to watch.  When my sister Gloria was visiting us we would sit on the balcony, drinking our coffee while watching him do his routines in the courtyard below.  We ingloriously dubbed him “Mr. Slowly-walks-back-and-forth Guy” because unlike everyone else, all pumping arms and kicking legs, our pal (as his name implies) gets his workout by slowly walking back and forth across the courtyard.  It’s really more of an “amble” actually, as he slowly moves forward he rolls his head from side to side and does circles with his shoulders in a way that might make one think he was doing slow-motion modern dance.  When walking back to his starting point he doesn’t turn around, rather he walks backwards while completing the same motions with his body. 

Mr. Slowly-walks-back-and-forth Guy had disappeared for the duration of winter and we were worried that maybe he had moved or that something had happened to him.  However, when the weather finally slightly warmed up he reappeared…. like our very own Chinese “Punxsutawney Phil”!!  Unlike this famous groundhog, however, Mr. Slowly-walks-back-and-forth Guy doesn’t claim to be able to predict the weather.  Even if he did, since 90% of the days here are overcast, it significantly skews the odds toward a short winter.  Rather, his appearance merely signals the onset of spring.  Though it would be appropriate to say that it also marks- in a very unique (“only in China”) way- our steady, ambling approach toward the end of what has been an amazing time here in China.

<