Food, food, food and vertical boobs

Last night, I finally learned how to cook Chinese food. Wang Wei and his pal came over to show us how it’s done. After Mark and the boys wandered around the back alleys collecting various veggies and meat from vendors, it was time to get started. We-and by we I mean they, as I just watched and chopped- made these awesome and very thinly sliced potatoes cooked in oil and white vinegar, a Sichuan stew, spicy mussels-so fresh they were alive when we put them in the pot- and dry fried green beans with pork and pepper. I despised green beans my entire life-until I came to China. I don’t know what happened. And I never thought I’d like mussels. But I do. A lot.

We spent hours cooking and probably two hours at the table talking away about the state of the world, drinking wine and beer and eating all of our yummy food. It made me remember how much I miss cooking and having people over for dinner. We go out to eat as much as twice a day, usually. Because, basically, our electric burner only works with aluminum alloy pans. And those pans are crap. So, they ruin the food. Wang Wei and his friend had to add a ton of oil and water in order not to burn the food. Somehow, it was still delicious. When I get home I’m going to attempt to recreate these dishes, and I’ll post the recipes then.

My life these days is pretty ridiculous. It revolves around meals. I had another hours-long meal this afternoon, with Korean ladies I’ve been teaching English to on the sly for the last few months. And after we indulged on five or six different kinds of dishes at a student’s house, we went to the spa for a facial. I’ve never actually had a facial. These are, first of all, out of my price range in the USA. Secondly, people touching my face is just…weird. But, I really wanted to try out a Chinese spa before I left. We changed into little cotton bath gowns and lay (laid? lied? layed? Why can’t I remember this rule. Ga!) down on comfy spa beds. A woman rubbed scented creams all over my face and pressed my pressure points. But, I couldn’t really turn off my mind and just relax. I kept thinking about the crop of zits on my forehead, and how heavy cream probably won’t do them any good. And then I kept thinking things like “What’s the deal with my break outs? It’s because they’re moving so much dirt around, and there’s dirt everywhere. Gross. Mmm this cream smells like lilacs. I love lilacs. My backyard at home has lilacs. ” After many minutes of rubbing, pressing and heavy face creams, she put a clay mask on me. She was also giggling periodically, in a stifled way, and whispering, and so were the other girls. I got all annoyed and super paranoid, thinking things like, “Why are you laughing at the white girl, beeotch?” But, who knows, because I can’t understand Chinese. She must have read my mind. The giggling suddenly stopped and she started to play with my hair. “Ah, this is nice,” I thought. And then she tugged it so hard I was sure my scalp was going to detatch. I just kept my mouth shut. I finally relaxed when she gave me a really nice shoulder rub. The best part of the experience was definitely the shock I got on the way out. A woman was lying on her back, naked from the waist up, with a glass dome over each breast. The domes were attached to tubes, and the tubes to some kind of a vaccum. Her breasts were vertical.

Alley observations

I realized yesterday that I’d gone local. I was outside of a dumpling restaurant, waiting for my order and watching two grannies’ floured hands flit over dumpling ingredients just inside the door. They cut the skin for the dumpling out of a flattened ball of dough, added the filling-a mild green onion and egg- and then shaped each into a half-moon. Each was formed to perfection and I marveled at the grannies’ efficiency. The restaurant is altogether a four-person operation-the two grannies inside the door, and a man and woman alternately boiling the dumplings outside in a pot, frying them on a single burner, also outside, running dumplings to patrons and doing dishes. None of them ever stopped moving. Their restaurant is tiny and charmless and always busy. There are four tables and a beat up couch in the back, in a dingy, cramped box on the bottom level of an eye sore high rise apartment complex. Their dumplings, however, are the best I’ve had anywhere. I was drooling over the prospect of biting into my perfect little tender-skinned dumplings, after dipping them in a mix of dark vinegar and soy, when I realized that there was loud, annoying techno blasting just to my left, from a shoe store. I had been standing there for a good five minutes, and it hadn’t even occurred to become annoyed at the very annoying synthesizer techno-pop. It hadn’t occurred to me to scowl or roll my eyes. I hadn’t noticed the music at all. Stores around Qinhuangdao blast techno out of outdoor speakers, at decibel levels that would cause court cases in the US, to apparently lure customers. I don’t quite understand that logic, but I’ve also just stopped asking why. The realization that the quirks of living in China have become somewhat normal to me caused me to open my eyes and really take a look around. I saw a two year old crouching on the sidewalk to pee from his split pants. Nothing unusual there. But I cringed at the fact that he had in his toddler’s death grip a finch. I looked away, because I kept thinking about the poor little thing’s crushed legs in that toddlers tight pink hand. A woman walked by me. She wore brown Mary Jane heels and black fish net socks; horizontally striped leggings under olive green shorts and an orange top. People sold vegetables and all kinds of sunflower seeds from carts. Another cart sported a makeshift pet store, complete with salamanders, goldfish and turtles. Men played cards and Chinese chess. Swirls of dust blew over all of it. Someone sucked phlegm out of their throat for a good five seconds before hawking a big fat loogie. I got my dumplings in a little baggie to go, and despite the sidewalk pee and the half crushed finch and the loogie, I still fantasized about my juicy, perfect dumplings. Just another day in the alley.

Lunch in China

We have a two-hour lunch break, which is typical in China. Afterwards, people will often take a nice nap. If only our country would adopt that policy! I used to stuff a sandwich down my face while working at my desk, in order to leave a little early to try and escape rush hour. Still, I always had at least an hour, if not a one-and-a-half hour, commute. Never again (I can only hope). Anyway, today, after grabbing some yummy potatoes, chicken and green pepper and some crisp, dry-fried green beans -with pork and hot pepper- at our favorite alley spot, Mark and I took a leisurely walk. It was a sunny day, so I turned my camera to black-and-white mode, because I think shadows are pretty. I didn’t even know I had black-and-white option on my camera until Mark messed around with my menu options today. I felt too shy to take pictures of people up close, so I took pictures of mostly buildings and ducks and stuff. That’s kind of boring, and I’m going to try and walk the back streets of Qinhuangdao much more, with a phrasebook and a more outgoing ‘tude.Tonight I want to study the phrase “May I take your picture?”-because otherwise, it’s just rude. People in the alleys are quite friendly, in a curious sort of way. We are an absolute oddity in their setting. They stare and say, “Helloooo!”, which sometimes causes them to burst into laughter.

The pictures are of a typical alleyway in Qinhuangdao. The main streets are modern and paved, lined with shops and boxy high-rises. Behind these, there are often mazes of small, one-story dwellings and dirt roads. The roads are narrow alleys without names, and these are alive with residents, vendors, wee street-wise dogs, the occasional chicken or duck coops, bicycles and cars squeezing and honking through.

Why we don’t go to the bar

Why we don’t go to the bar

Days about Qinhuangdao

We got to do quite a bit of traveling over the holiday. I assure you our day to day life is not quite so exciting. The life of this ESL teacher consists mostly of long periods of boredom, with memorable moments sparking up here and there. Those moments become stories we relay to each other, because there is not much else to do but tell tales. The tales get a lot of mileage and eventually take on a life of their own. Like the Story of the Gut Wrenching Departmental Basketball Game Victory and the Time a Tiger Almost Killed Mark in Harbin.

At my university we all live in on-campus, block-style apartment buildings. They are pallid green with bars over the windows and seven stories high. In our apartment building, foreign teachers are stacked on top of each other in a neat vertical row, with Mark and I on the first floor, Eric on the second, etc. etc. I suppose we are easy to keep track of this way. We borrow each others’ books, butter, and DVDs. We relay important news. Food – especially dairy products – is especially newsworthy subject matter: “I saw cheese yesterday at the Korean store,” or, “I found tomato paste yesterday!” There are eight foreign teachers here, enough for a decent party, which we had, Saturday night. We sat in the little glass room meant to dry laundry at the front of the 4^th story apartment, drank wine and smoked cigars.

I’d say there are two other groups of foreigners bumming around Qinhuangdao. One consists of younger Europeans and assorted Americans who mostly work at an English language school downtown. They go to the bar. A lot. The other group consists mostly of divorcees, mostly British gentlemen into their 40s and 50s. This group meets at cafes and discusses the state of the world. Eh, I get the feeling that most men are here to get a girlfriend. Even the cab drivers have asked English-speaking male friends (who happen to also speak Chinese), “Are you here to get a Chinese girlfriend?” Whether or not this is their intention, my friend Julia has it on good authority (hers) that this happens for all willing newbies approximately two weeks after arrival.

Mark and I typically don’t go to the bar. It’s expensive, for one thing, and you get a lot of unwanted attention when out on the town. There are lots of stares. The drinks embolden the locals’ desire to get to know you. We are an oddity and a rarity here in Qinhuangdao. I don’t mind chatting, but when the inevitable question, “Can we be friends?” comes along, I cringe. It sounds like an earnest question. But, local English speakers likely hope to befriend you so you can help them to practice. I am not here to spread English all over town; I’m here to help my students in and out of class. How can I say, “No,” or “I feel a little funny about being asked that question,” or even lie and say “I’m too busy to make more friends.” The stranger is usually so…intense and absolutely insistent that I befriend them that it just plain weirds me out. My American tendency to be polite usually leads me to say I don’t remember my phone number, which is pathetic and true. “It’s OK,” they say, “Put my number into your phone and then call me.” This has happened several times, but thankfully, the next day, the stranger is shy again, not drinking any more, and doesn’t call. And I feel like a heartless jerk for being so relieved.

And so, we stay in a lot. I try to write on a regular basis, which sometimes actually happens. I cook on our one-burner electric stove. I got to the gym. I plan and teach my lessons. Next weekend, I am going to go to Beijing to look into getting a wedding dress made there. Thankfully, Candace, a fashion-minded Bostonian, wants to go with me.

We all look forward to spring, when sidewalk barbecues will last all night.

Shanghai

Here are some pics we snapped over our vacation. We got to travel for over several weeks, during which time we were stuck in the biggest snowstorm to hit China in a half century. On the bright side of that, the experience seasoned us to the point that we will never feel overwhelmed or upset by a delay. Ever. The below pictures are from Shanghai. We traveled 20 hours on a train to get there and stayed for five days. It’s a city of 15 million people…overall, it felt too big and too commercial, though I might have been in a bad mood due to really rainy weather. There were touts (people trying to sell you crap) at every turn. But we had fun traversing the city by ultra modern subway, eating great food, and enjoying good company

Is this a trick?

I have not had access to wordpress.com for a solid five days. When I typed it in to my browser, the page took too long to load, and then gave me a “Connection timed out” message, which is code here for: aw hell no, sucka! So I did some research via PCworld.com and was about to download something to help me circumvent my problem with the internet po po, as many bloggers have done before me. Before I did this, I checked wordpress.com one last time. And all of the sudden, it was accessible again. The same sort of thing happened with youtube.com. When we first arrived, we could get it. It’s currently blocked, which is annoying. But perhaps it will be back again.

Today is Halloween. I have been dining profusely on the chocolate mother lode my family kindly sent in the mail. I’m in paradise: Peanut M&M’s, 3 Musketeers, Twix, 1000 Grand-they sent the works. There goes any perceived weight I’ve lost from cutting out dairy and wine! I don’t care; chocolate is always worth it.

I also ate pumpkin today, which is as close as I got to carving one. I call the dish pumpkin fries and wish I knew its Chinese name-something like ean huang guanan, which I’m sure is spelled completely wrong. The pumpkin in this dish is cut into strips, like french fries. The strips are tossed in egg and salt and then fried. Mark hates it; I love it. It is sweet and salty at the same time. However, the combination of chocolate and pumpkin fries is not sitting well in my stomach, as you might imagine. Not much is these days. And I’ll stop there!

As I teach, I often have a strange, disembodied feeling, like the words coming out of my mouth are not mine, but those of some wildly geeky imposter. Working people everywhere must experience the same duality, that between their “Work” and “Home” selves (Or I’m just crazy, which is entirely possible also). When your Work-self is giving a presentation, for example, perhaps your Home-self is making fun of Work-self profusely and wishing they could both just watch a movie and get drunk together instead. My Home-ju, who can be really bitchy, by the way, rolls her eyes a lot at the Work-ju counterpart. Such was the case last night, when I explained Devil’s Night and Halloween to my oral English class. Home-ju listened to Work-ju’s explanation of Halloween and determined that it sounded completely absurd. Especially when Work-ju said, “Devil’s night is for tricks, Halloween is for treats.” Who talks like that? Why don’t you just go put on a vest brightly adorned with cross-stitched pumpkins and ghosts? Home-ju is really a smart ass sometimes.

Well, anyway… I then said that, “In poor communities, Devil’s Night hi-jinks can be a real problem. Youngsters sometimes light buildings on fire and shoot guns.” I paused. Great. They already think America is violent. What have I done? “But, this is not common,” I tried to recover. Then I explained less sinister Halloween rituals: bobbing for apples, children dressing up in costumes, Trick-or-treating, and carving pumpkins. It all sounded so bizarre. I suppose most traditions sound this way, out of the context of their own culture. Just as I sound strange to myself, in this new strange, territory, that of “teacher.”