China Revisited -- 2013 [#10]

Little Faces

The young waitress who wanted to be photographed with us was one of many memorable young faces that are now China to us. As I did during our months in Korea in 2011, I found the face of babies and children to be endlessly fascinating.  I suppose it is the grandfather in me, but I also find them endlessly endearing.

"Grandfather" is as close as I can come to analyzing this interest, although I can describe the phenomenon.  For one thing, as we all seem to know without being told, the very young are unabashed; they have not yet learned to hide their curiosities and emotions.

These two boys were being walked around Luhe by their older sister and grandmother on the afternoon we arrived from Shenzhen to see the village. They were, I imagine, not sure of what they were seeing.  It is likely they had never seen a non-Chinese before. I stepped closer to take another picture and had to back away since they were clearly becoming frightened.

This little girl in red was riding on the back of a scooter.  Her mother was driving, weaving in and out of traffic, and a younger sibling was riding on his mother's knees. We often saw four on a scooter at once (mother, father, two kids). Donna counted six on one scooter, which was a record for us.

This little girl is the daughter of Edward's cousin.  He would say the 1st daughter of the 1st daughter of the fifth uncle on his father's side. We met her at the family apartment building in Luhe.  She was quite frightened of me at first -- well, for the first day at least -- so it was hard to get a photograph. Eventually she seemed OK to have me in the same room, but she never exactly warmed up.

We found this little boy in Edward's mother's home village. He, too, has a family connection, although I can't set it out for you now. He was more than willing to let me photograph him.  But his real friend on our visit was Yujia, who took his hand and sometimes carried him along our walk.

These little boys were playing at the edge of a rock pile in Edward's mother's village. Like kids everywhere, they entertained themselves with what they had at hand. Their parents (or mothers, at least), no doubt, were around; but since they played out in the open, they were easily watched and cared for by the whole village.

In Edward's father's village, on the day we went to celebrate the opening of the senior citizen's center, we saw two children in particular who hung around to see what we were up to.  One was this little girl, whom I have written about before, who demonstrated her English skills for us.

Another was this little boy, who sat or stood beside his grandfather at the table under the big tree where the adults were exchanging information and then asking us questions. This little boy watched for the better part of an hour without fidgeting or, apparently, losing interest to the adult chatter.

He watched us with keen interest but without apparent concern or fear. He and his grandfather clearly had a congenial, respectful, and close relationship.

At one point, his grandfather had him raise his thumb to say Okay after we had complemented him on his good behavior and long attention span. His little jacket, like many we saw, showed the influence of American culture (Mickey Mouse) and the common presence of English.

The little boy in what looks like black and white pajamas was the only person we saw on our visit to the Hakka village, an abandoned ethnic compound on the outskirts of Lehu.  He watched us when we drove up and while we were getting out of our cars. But when I got my camera up and ready, he would not look up from his game.

Perhaps my favorite picture of all was this picture of Ye Wan Ping, the 14 year old daughter of another cousin. When we visited her home after our brief visit to the Hakka village where we saw the little boy above, she greeted us at the door with an extended exchange in perfect English.  She wanted to meet the American teacher who had meant so much to Edward and Yujia while they were students in our own small village in western New York.

"What is your favorite subject in school?"  Mrs. Zoller asked.

"Oh, English, of course!" she responded with no hesitation.

For us it was worth the 18 hour plane flight just to meet Ye Wan Ping.

China Revisited -- 2013 [#9]

The Store-Front Restaurant

From the Yuanshan Temple we drove a total of three minutes through the center of town to a restaurant. The street was narrow and clogged.  The storefront was already crowded with parked scooters, which had to be moved so that we could park. Two men attended to this task, one older than the other by a generation. The younger man moved the scooters, the older one kept him hopping. Some things are the same everywhere.

Edward's father had already arrived in his car and made arrangements both for parking and for lunch.

Through a store-front with an opening about the size of a double-car garage, we entered the restaurant. To the right were a few round tables and a staircase. To the left, the restaurant's menu, laid out like a buffet to display food choices -- some of it already cooked, but most of it raw.

Edward's father and mother had already made selections for our lunch; but if they hadn't or if we had come on our own, perish the thought, we would have been expected to choose from this array of options. Then, given our language skills, rather than bartering or negotiating menu and prices, we would have pointed and nodded and repeated "Xiexie" (thank you) optimistically.  Crude, I admit, but I am certain we would not have left hungry.

Just beyond the kitchen with its food display were three or four small round tables to the left, and a separate room to the right where we would be served.We were nearly always taken to a room out the main area, not so much to keep us hidden, which might have been a wise decision, as to follow the common practice in China. All of our restaurant meals were taken in rooms that were either private or semi-private.

In this as in many restaurants our eating space was simply an undecorated square room with a round table. For the sake of distinction, I will use the American term "family style" to describe these restaurants.

The little appliance in the corner behind Edward and Yujia is an air-conditioner, not a heater. This restaurant near the temple we had just visited, like most buildings in southern China, is not heated, and the front door -- in this case, a wide opening -- remains open during business hours, which may have been 16 or 18 hours every day.  Everyone wears a coat indoors.

For the sake of keeping our diet adventures up to date, I noted what we were served. The dish in front of Yujia is won-ton soup and the the dish on the lazy-susan is roasted peanuts. Sometimes these peanuts are boiled instead of roasted.  Either way, you pluck them one by one with your chopsticks, which I usually did straight-away to establish my chopsticks-cred.

We were served bitter melon soup with clams, oyster pancakes, pig stomach with almonds, broad flat noodles with bean sprouts, white fish with peppers and greens, fish dumplings, beef (in strips, of course) with green peppers, chicken soup with almonds and squid, and vegetable (swiss chard, I think).

A side note, as a reassurance of "freshness" we were told that the cow for our beef dish had been killed just the day before at 3 p.m. You have to admire that kind of precision, I think.

We were also told that the chicken for the chicken soup was killed just for us when Edward's father ordered the soup dish. Too much information, I suppose, for the average American restaurant goer. But a welcome bit of information nonetheless.

A further side note, this one in the faux pas (i.e., cultural blunder) department. The bowl is for eating and the little plate for bone, not the other way around.

When the dinner was done, one of the teenaged waitresses asked to have her picture taken with us.  So we posed with her while her friends recorded the moment on their little cameras.

I know it would be easy to over-imagine this moment of celebrity.  But as a story teller, I am interested in whether (or how) that moment plays out. This young waitress is, now, a small but important part of our stories of China.

I wonder how -- or if -- we figure into hers?

China Revisited -- 2013 [#8]

Smaller Roads

It's fair to say that the China we hoped we were coming to see, the China that --in our imaginations at least -- significantly  predates the modernization of the last quarter century, began for us when we left the expressway heading northeast from Shenzhen. Immediately, we found ourselves weaving along smaller roads.  Our first stop was at a temple in Lufeng city in Jieshi.

The temple was actually a complex of Buddhist worship centers that covered the side of a hill, beginning at the center of the town where a gate permitted access and ending at the top of the hill. I am under the impression that many temples like this one had been shut down or, at least, that public worship had been discouraged following the Maoist revolution of 1949 and only permitted to resume during the Deng Xiaoping era, years after the Cultural Revolution.

Perhaps that view is too simplistic, as many of our views of China have been.  At any rate, Yuanshan Temple is now an active worship center.

The temple grounds were filled with people, many of whom were involved in burning incense. Bundles of smoldering incense sticks were held between the palms in a prayer-like fashion while the supplicant bowed in the direction of the altar or of a particular statue. Then the sticks were stuck upright and left to smolder in sand-filled urns. Many supplicants also bought papers, single rectangular sheets or small stacks, some gold colored, which they waved in the direction of the shrines before tossing the papers into kilns to be burned. There were many of these papers lying on the ground as well.

Every so often firecrackers would pop and bang rapidly, like automatic gunfire, shattering the quiet for minutes on end, littering the ground with unburned red wrappers.  Between the incense, the kilns, and the firecrackers, the smokey air was heavy with the smells of burning.







At several points food, fruit mostly, piled onto plates, was being offered as part of these worship activities.  Sometimes the food was left on the ground in the main temple area; at other times, it was left on altar-tables.  In several places we saw older women on their knees throwing tiles onto the ground.  I was told these are called jiao, although my efforts to track down the word has led mostly to discussions of Chinese currency.  The jiao looked like pieces of  a broken ceramic bowl, irregular, curved, about the size of a child's palm. When these little tiles are thrown onto the ground, they land with the curved side up or down and in relation to one another. We were told these practices probably originated from local beliefs that pre-date Buddhism. The jiao are used to foretell the future.

I had been taking a lot of pictures until I spotted a sign in English that said No Pictures Inside.  That bit of information made me reconsider how I took pictures outside too, especially of people going about the business of their worship activities. The fact that it was in English clearly made the prohibition hard to ignore.

Many people will describe the Buddhist rituals not as worship but as "showing respect." Given the earnest postures and attitudes of those we observed in the temples, it is hard for me to see any real line distinguishing one from the other.











We wandered ahead of the Yujia, Edward, and his parents until we found ourselves quite far up the hill at a point where people were handing money to a temple official. As we had no Chinese money at this point, we decided to turn around and find the others. We had thought to bring them up the hill to the point where we had turned back.

But we never got back up the hill.  When we found them -- or they found us, Edward said,
"We've been looking for you.  It is time to go!"

China -- Revisited 2013 [#7]

The Last Day of the Year

On the day after the day after we arrived in China, rested and weathering the colds we had brought from New York, we climbed into Edward's BMW for the drive to the villages where Edward's father and mother grew up and where much of the extended family still live.  We followed Edward's father and mother, who were riding in another BMW.

City turned to countryside.  We left the city streets for an expressway that resembles an American Interstate, smooth, fast, in excellent shape.

About two hours in we stopped at a rest area to gas up, use the restrooms, and get something from the McDonald's that was part of the complex.  Edward bought a hamburger, but we declined.  I didn't go in, thinking, surely, that it was too early in our trip to crave something so essentially American and familiar. Now that the experience is over, I wish I had gone in to see how it differed from American franchises. 

The most interesting and unusual thing about that rest area was not the row of outdoor sinks for the bathroom facilities, but the display of wrecked cars close by the parking lot.  Sobering.  The signs warn of the consequences of speed and drunken driving -- at least, that is what I was told.  But the mashed cars speak a universal language. I wonder whether a similar exhibit would work in American Interstate rest areas.

From the expressway we passed high speed rail tracks that run north and south, elevated above the farm land that extends toward the mountains on one side and toward the ocean on the other.  At one point we saw the ocean. At another point we were told that we were driving as close to Taiwan as one could get on the mainland.

We saw no police anywhere, but we were told that there were speed checkpoints equipped with cameras and radar.  Speeding tickets arrive in the mail.  It is an interesting system, one that cuts down on high speed chases.  When I asked for more information, Edward noted that motorists knew when the speed cameras were coming up.  By law they had to be marked. That explained the periodic slowdowns in an otherwise fast journey.

Once we turned off the expressway, the countryside and the road itself changed. Four lanes became two. Traffic moved in both directions at varying speeds. Two lanes became three or even four when one needed to pass slow vehicles.  The variety of vehicles increased exponentially from the mostly high-end cars and long-haul trucks we saw on the expressway to cars, trucks, farm vehicles, scooters, and various hybrid conveyances.

Stores appeared almost at the roadside.  Construction in various stages of completeness or in-completeness appeared everywhere.

Of enormous interest to me is the use, both in China and in Korea, of bamboo for scaffolding.  So very, well, so very Asian.  Although we were, relatively speaking, only a short drive from Shenzhen, it was as if we were entering yet another China -- not the world of tourists but an older, more provocative place, one we could never have imagined.

For us, it was a world both compelling and endlessly fascinating.

China -- Revisited 2013 [#6]

On Soups, Meatballs, and Tofu

On the evening we arrived in China after 24 hours of varied wakefulness, 18 hours of which involved flights and airports, Rochester to JFK to Hong Kong, followed by transport via car from Hong Kong to Edward's family home in Shenzhen, including two border crossings and a "random" but extra stop to have our luggage X-rayed, we were greeted with enthusiasm by Edward's dogs.

The whole Zhang family turned out, actually -- father, mother, grandmother, brother, house maids -- with apparent enthusiasm for the American guests. Maybe the brother did not look as thrilled as everyone else, but who noticed.  At that point we were thinking bed, mostly bed, simply bed. But the family, hospitable as ever, was thinking dinner.

Dinner is a specific form of hospitality, a welcoming gesture in most cultures, and China is no exception, so dinner it was.

Our first dinner in China consisted of snails, shrimp, beef, tofu (raw and cooked), three or four kinds of greens that included spinach and lettuce of several varieties in chicken soup, octopus, potato, a vegetable root with holes, beef meatballs and fish meatballs. The potatoes, root, and octopus were in the soup.  Maybe the meatballs were in the soup, too, but my notes don't report that detail.

Sadly I have very few pictures of the food we were served.  I knew I would regret the absence of photographic evidence, but my efforts, especially at the beginning, were aimed at avoiding cultural missteps that I would regret later. Better to err on the side of sensitivity and respect.

This molded fish, swimming among pineapple chunks, was made of something like tofu with a sweetness to it -- not sweet in the American way, but sweet-ish none-the-less.  (It came, actually, as part of our last dinner in Shenzhen rather than our first night.)

Still, this gold fish was very good. No bones.  I ate it, head, tail and all. 

The snails were a special delicacy, a treat I'm sure for this special meal.

Meat always comes in strips and usually with other things, a vegetable, for example, or bitter melon. These may be part of soup or they may be added to the soup or they may be eaten alone. A whole piece of meat, like a steak, or meat cut into slices (like roast beef or slices turkey), would be a western thing rather than Chinese. We did have steak once, but I think it was provided as a kindness to the Americans.

Tofu, which has never interested me much, being predisposed like many Americans to dislike it on principle, can be fixed in a variety of ways.  It is quite good when it is cooked, bland when raw. Much was bland or mild; very little came to the table spicy, although you could make it that way if favor burning sensations.

Shrimp, too, are often favored.  I have at least one good shrimp story I will save for later. Octopus as we had it generally means little pieces of baby octopus, which I found easy to eat once I determined to eat without inspecting. The red octopus on ice in this photograph is for display.

"Vegetables" refers to a variety of greens.  They look a little different than American varieties of greens, especially lettuce, which the Chinese boil. I had never seen boiled lettuce before YuSi, our first Guangzhou home stay daughter, cooked it for us at home. The texture changes but the taste, or what there is of taste, stays the same.

The vegetables with holes tasted very much like potato. We learned later that it was lotus root. I couldn't have guessed.

Apart from the number of soup dishes, the real departure from American expectations are the meat balls. Over the course of the first three or four days we had lots of meat balls that were beef or pork or fish. Here again it is not the taste -- although I must confess I have not eaten fish meat balls anywhere else. The chief difference is the texture.

Chinese meatballs are dense little things.

American meatballs (that is, those of European origin) fall apart easily, sometimes with no prodding. Chinese meat balls or fish balls, on the other hand, stay together. They are solid as well as dense, and they are little -- about the size of a ball on a paddle-ball toy, with the consistency and mild taste of a round hot dog.  Pretty much like round hot dogs, if we had such things.  Often they are in soup, as they might have been on our first night in China.

Often, too, meals are served without tea or water. One simply drinks the soup.

I have recounted this meal in clinical detail because it proved to be typical of what we were served frequently. For the record, I ate everything that was offered in our first real Chinese dinner.

I was not able to say I always ate everything; but at the beginning I was determined to eat anything that didn't look back at me.

China Revisited -- 2013 [#5]

Real Chinese Food. Stage 1

Yi Dong -- or as he is known in China, Dong Yi -- one of our former homestay sons called Donna's Chinese dishes fake Chinese.

For Donna, who is widely recognized as a great cook and who has learned to make Korean dishes that taste Korean, Yi's pronouncements were puzzling as well as funny.

Now that we have been to China, we understand the distinction. Well, maybe it is more accurate to say distinctions, plural, because there are many ways that Donna's Chinese dishes are American rather than Chinese.

Anyone who has been to Chinese restaurants in America will know that there are several categories of food available, either identified by region (for example, Szechuan) or by the menu spice-meter (little red chili peppers beside the entry). In American-Chinese restaurants, generally, both geography and spicy-ness are factors that are multiplied and complicated in China, which is a huge country. Because it is huge, it has many regions and regions within regions; thus, it has many different foods and food styles that are all authentically "Chinese."

In order to get a real grip on how we understand this set of differences, we need to consider how American geography influences "American" food. Many of our food characteristics exist as remnants, no doubt, of our mostly European immigrant people groups. I am from meat and potatoes  people who arrived from Scandinavia and Germany in the 19th Century to settle in the upper mid-west.  My wife is, roughly, from English or Irish immigrants, the story depends on who is telling, who settled New England and made do with beans and franks (hot dogs) in addition to meat and potatoes.

Neither the Zollers nor the Deans moved far from these staple choices, all well within the bland range. The chief difference in our culinary heritages might include the occasional lobster (in her case) and sauerkraut (in mine).

Our trip to China was entirely in the south, near the coast -- Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and the Zhang family village all lying roughly within a short drive of salt water. Consequently, and not surprisingly, seafood is part of every meal, although little of it is spicy.

Every morning of our stay with Edward's family began with rice porridge, which is basically white rice soup. It tastes, basically and not surprisingly, just like boiled rice. It arrived at the table in a cooking pot covered with an interesting wooden top.

We might call this the base of the breakfast. It not only substantially fills you up, it also serves as your hot beverage, since you drink the juice (the soup). We showed our cultural awkwardness in that we were provided coffee and then, following our cold-sniffles, orange juice.

To the porridge one might add something to give it some specific flavor, since boiled rice isn't spicy.  It fits well onto the bland end of the bland scale, too. These additional items are found in dishes placed on the lazy susan that one can pluck with chopsticks as needed. On the particular day shown in the photographs here, the additions include (left to right) ginger slices, garlic, "vegetables" (here, spinach), noodles with egg and sliced meat, and pork slices with bitter melon.

One might also have tofu, raw or cooked, boiled eggs (the Zhangs had their own chickens who produce pint-sized eggs), dumplings with meat or vegetable filling, and scrambled eggs with tomatoes. This is a partial list, of course, and breakfast in a restaurant is another matter altogether.

The breads that made their way onto the table by our second week were a concession to our American tastes, purchased specifically for us once Edward's mother discovered that Donna is a bread-eater the way some people are meat-eaters or potato eaters.

By the end of our stay, the only element of breakfast that proved challenging was the bitter melon, which does in fact have a bitter taste. I believe bitter melon is an acquired taste.

Now when we think of Yi's fake Chinese remarks it is with whole new appreciation.  Adjusting to Chinese breakfast was a mutual task.  In the end, both of Edward's Chinese mom and his American mom were happy.

China Revisited -- 2013 [#4]

WHERE ARE WE GOING?  WHERE HAVE WE BEEN?

In October when we were invited to spend the Christmas Break with Edward's family in China, we named a few places we would like to visit: Beijing, Xian, the Great Wall.  Tibet, via the week-long train ride from Beijing.

Beijing, come to find out, is a four hour plane ride from Shenzhen, where Edward lives.  It is very cold in winter, which would mean packing extra winter clothes, which seemed prohibitive. And the smog this winter has been intense and debilitating.

Xian, site of the life-size clay army, is far from Shenzhen, too, and also cold. Ditto the Great Wall.

Tibet on the train was a joke, although we'd have done it if Edward and his mother had agreed.

Since Edward was not going to plan the itinerary until he had gone home for the break (he attends Syracuse U), we also gave him some general ideas about the kinds of things we would prefer:  old over modern, country over city, the seldom-traveled over the much-trampled tourist meccas, people over most alternatives, traditional Chinese anything over global or western or "fusion" stuff.

Especially, we made a specific request to visit the "home village" Edward has mentioned many times.

With a proper understanding of Chinese and a very detailed map, it is even possible to locate his home village. (To give you an rough idea of where to put your finger on a map of China, Taiwan is approximately behind Yujia's elbow and Hong Kong is approximately behind Edward's.)

With these interests expressed, but no clear sense of where we were going or when or how, beyond the JFK to Hong Kong and the Hong Kong to JFK parts, we departed for China. You might say this was "learn as you go."

Eighteen hours later, most of it in the air and the remainder in line at immigration in Hong Kong, we found Edward waiting for us.

You've got to love a city with buses that carry "sincerity" and "eternity" signs on the back.  From Hong Kong we crossed the bridge and stopped for another border crossing to enter the mainland.

The border crossing is more involved than this toll station, but not a lot more involved. It is rather like crossing into Canada from Buffalo, New York.

We rested from our long flights at the Edward's home, then from Shenzhen we traveled north and east about three hours drive to see the Yuanshan Temple in Lufeng.

Then on to Luhe, the town near the villages we would be visiting. Edward's family owns an apartment building there. Like their big home in Shenzhen, this building has room for much of the extended family. In fact, his father's older brother and family occupies the second floor.

From Edward's family residence in this town we took daily trips out to see the mountains and the villages that his parents were born and raised in.  First his mother's village . . .

 Then his father's . . .

I will have more to say about both of these villages in later blogs; but for this thumbnail sketch they must just be points on the map.

After three days of town and village life we drove back to Shenzhen.  From there we went to Guangzhou, as we did during out 2011 visit, where we ate with a lot of people we know, toured several old treasures, and sat in traffic.

At this point we were nearing the end. We went back to Shenzhen to pack and then to Hong Kong for a day before heading back for New York.

Day to day we knew generally where we might be heading, but often we waited for Edward to say, "We're leaving now," which was sometimes preceded by animated conversation in Chinese and sometimes came out of the blue.  Gradually as we became seasoned travelers, we knew the drill: grab your coat, put on your shoes, and wait at the door.

There it is in a nutshell, a succession of surprises and priceless experiences. In retrospect, the trip that rolled out before us one surprising moment at a time looks straightforward and easy.

And far too short!