New Year's Competition

In the middle of December I got a call from a guy I met through a teaching interview, asking me if I wanted to judge an English competition in Ya'an on New Year's Day. A driver would pick me up on New Year's Eve around 6:30, I would stay in a hotel, judge the competition the next day, and they would drive me back that night. Ya'an is a town about a two hours' drive from Chengdu, famous for its elaborate covered bridges, high quality tea, copious rain, edible fish, and beautiful women (there's a pun in Chinese about the last three). That was about all the information I could get.

On New Year's Eve, around 9:00, a van drove up to the gate. There were already four people inside plus the driver, and before leaving Chengdu we stopped to pick up one more. I sat in the middle row next to a young couple, and we chatted for a while. I tried to ask them if they were going to the same competition, but I couldn't understand the answer. I thought maybe they were honeymooners or something and this was one of those unofficial cabs that take multiple groups at the same time.

Once we got onto the freeway I dozed, and when I woke up we were driving along a wide river. We turned down a covered bridge, at the end of which was a huge, perfectly shaped tree silhouetted against some street lights, the air around it glowing orange. Some people were strolling along the bridge and river bank with big red paper lanterns.

We went through a gate into a courtyard and got out of the van. Some other people were there waiting, but they left with the driver and the couple who had been sitting next to me. I stood by the van with my bags, wondering if someone was going to tell me where to go.

After what seemed like twenty minutes, a woman who had been sitting behind me in the van motioned for me to follow her. She was walking with two other guys toward what turned out to be the door to the hotel. Inside the deserted lobby she gave me a key. I tried asking again what was going on. Finally I learned that these three were also here for the competition. The woman, Aileen, was a singer; one guy, Liu Xiao, was a dancer, and the other guy, M_____, was a professional MC. I started to feel slightly under-qualified. They helped me find my room and said they would come get me the next morning at 8:00. It was then about 10:30.

The room was considerably nicer than the hotel room in Chongzhou (not that I'm complaining! There are worse things to suffer than being put up in an imperfect hotel room). The bathroom was big, clean, and didn't smell like sewage, the heater worked well, and the wallpaper was only peeling in one place. I put on my pajamas, but I didn't want to go to bed right away since it was New Year's Eve. Fortunately, I had anticipated this scenario and had brought some DVDs. I was just about to watch one of them when the door became the source of a knocking sound. "How did you become the source of a knocking sound!?" I asked. Actually, I think I just called out "Hello?" The voice from the other side of the door belonged to the other judges. I opened the door. They had come to ask me if I wanted to go eat something with them. I ran back into the room and threw my clothes back on, and we went.

At the entrance were a man, a woman, and two cabs. The man and woman were introduced as friends. We took the cabs across the river to a restaurant on the shore. The place seemed to be made completely of weathered wood, with gaps between the floorboards and stairs that creaked alarmingly. It was mostly empty, but we were led up the stairs to a little nook directly over the river. If not for the darkness and fog, I think it would have been quite a view. The waiter then put up a theater curtain, turning the nook into a private room. The darkness, wooden walls and furniture, little windows, and that we were sitting above the river made it feel almost like we were in the cabin of an old ship.

First beers were distributed, and "soy milk" for the ones who didn't drink ("soy milk" in China means a combination of soy and cow's milk). Then dishes quickly started appearing. My clearest memory is the chicken feet--a plate of five or six long, gnarled claws covered in brown scales that glistened under the hanging light bulb. There were also skewered vegetables and meat, sliced meat, stir-fried meat, and just meat. But there were some things I could eat, like corn, stir-fried greens, and tofu. The tofu had an interesting flavor and I asked about it. The man who had been ordering and seemed to occupy the head of the square table said it was stinky tofu (chou doufu), but it tasted nothing like the overpoweringly pungent stuff I had in Taipei.

I also got to experience Chinese drinking culture again. Even after the first toast involving everyone at the start of the meal, it's considered impolite to drink by yourself; you either have to toast someone else, or be toasted. But it's hard to break the habit of drinking whenever you feel like it when that's what you're used to. Once I caught myself doing this, but luckily, I made eye contact with someone across the table and was able to avoid a faux pas by shouting "Happy New Year!" before we both took sips. At one point the waiter brought us a big pitcher of some kind of steaming yellow liquid with flowers and vermilion things that look vaguely like walnuts. Is that tea? I asked. They told me it was beer. It tasted kind of like Dimetapp. Near midnight everyone had pretty much finished eating. I was still picking over a plate of home-made potato chips, dipping each one in a plate of powdered chili pepper and MSG. Everybody seemed to be half focused on whatever conversation was happening around the table, and half focused on text messaging with their phones. At midnight we all stood up and had another toast.

The next day, after a breakfast of cold vegetables and steamed buns (mantou), hard-boiled eggs, and milk (no coffee or tea!), I was ushered into another car. A girl got into the front seat and introduced herself as Mary, my interpreter. She was a student at the local university. Then a woman in a neon orange overcoat drove me, Mary, and the MC to a slightly dilapidated school building not far away. There we met up with the "honeymooners", Y_____(f.) and Z_____(m.), who were actually also judges. Mary, Y_____, and I were shown into one of the classrooms. All of the desks were pushed against the far wall, except for three set in the middle. We sat at these desks.

Up until this point I had an extremely faint idea of what I was supposed to do. I had pictured myself sitting at a judges' table near a stage and holding up signs with "9.7", "8.5", "9.2" printed in big numerals as crowds booed and cheered. I wasn't really sure how this empty classroom fit into the picture. I wanted to ask Mary about it, but I didn't know where to start.

A small child walked into the classroom and started giving a well-rehearsed speech in Chinese. Y_____ made a few notes, asked the child some questions at the end, and thanked him. A little girl came in and gave another speech. These children were almost offensively cute. "Am I supposed to be doing anything?" I asked Mary. She said that the English speeches were later. The English speeches turned out to be about 20 children later.

They mostly acted out stories, or gave monologues about a particular park or school or something. Most of the children from the same school had learned the same speech. And not only were the speeches the same, but they were told with almost identical intonation. At the end of each speech I was supposed to ask the children questions (that was the extent of the guidelines I received), so I usually asked them their names and ages, and then I tried to test comprehension of the stories they had told. I was disappointed that most of them seemed to have a very foggy idea of what their monologues were about.

To be continued...

Yak Butter

[edit: I can access blogspot again! Woohoo!]

As of today, my living room has graduated from "rustic" (3 out of 5 on the living room homeyness scale) to "comfortable" (4 out of 5). A friend just went out of town and generously let me keep her bookshelf and couch. And I have even gotten around to acquiring such civilized articles as a plant, a non-eye-frying, non-headache-inducing light bulb, some real speakers, and a bowl of fruit. And the fridge is perfectly situated so that no matter which of the two couches you sit on, you can open it and grab a drink without standing up.

The other night I got together with my friend Aileen for dinner. She's one of the people I met at the New Year's Day arts competition I judged at, and she's a professional singer and singing teacher. We went to a Tibetan restaurant in the Tibetan part of town, where we met another of Aileen's friends, J____--who also happens to be a kung fu teacher--and a friend of his, T_____, from Tibet. I think this Tibetan friend must have invited us, because he ordered and paid for everything.

We shook hands in the parking lot, and then T_____ handed Aileen and me each a long strip of white, silky cloth. Aileen put hers around her neck, so I did the same thing. Are these scarves? I asked. Everybody laughed, leading me to conclude that these were not scarves. The ends were frayed and the material had a tendency to get wrapped around things, so pretty soon there were little strands of white fiber clinging to everything. Eventually I gathered the cloth might be a Tibetan holiday tradition. A Tibetan tallis?

The restaurant was in a 3-story complex with a lot of statues, instruments, and art, and the interior was made to look like an old wooden building (I think this was carried out pretty well). As I sort of expected, the meal was not centered heavily on vegetable matter. I broke my normal rule by drinking some of the salty yak butter tea. Tasting like liquefied buttered popcorn, yak butter tea somehow manages to occupy that ambiguous space between a soup and a beverage. I also tried some kind of pita sugar sandwich, and an extremely crumbly, maroon-colored cake of tasty but mysterious contents that in terms of texture seemed closest to wet sand. At the end of the meal we played rock-paper-scissors/"stone-scissors-cloth" to determine who would have to eat the last three pieces. The main dish was a big plate of beef cubes (or was that yak meat?), and there was also a plate of meat dumplings. And we were each served a bowl of yogurt. I don't usually eat yogurt, but I ate it this time, and while I can't say I exactly "liked" it, it wasn't a bad experience. Finally, I think my friends were feeling bad that I couldn't eat some of the things on the table, because halfway through the meal the waitress brought out a heaping plate of french fries with ketchup.

I have a tutoring session in half an hour, so I'm just going to add a picture from my first teaching experience, on Dec. 27th, in Chongzhou. Christmas lessons!

Getting as much ultraviolet light as possible

It is sunny and 21 degrees (69.8 Eastern Orthodox) here in Kowloon Park, multiple birds are making funny sounds with their throats, and leaves are gently waving around in the air.

Yesterday I boated to Lantau Island, and then took an exhilarating bus ride to the giant Buddha statue. The name does not lie; the size of the thing is a little startling. It reminds me of a Harvey Birdman episode (Harvey Birdman is a former superhero who became a lawyer but still retains his super powers [which he only uses occasionally], his costume [which is now worn underneath a business suit], and his big blue wings [which he also usually doesn't use]). The episode starts with Harvey sitting at his desk, writing something or doodling. He sits there for a minute or two, and then he rotates a little bit in his swivel chair, and his wings move out of the way to reveal that his "sidekick", Peanut, is standing right behind him. Harvey jumps out of his chair. Glancing up and seeing this giant Buddha statue sitting above me was kind of like that.

I also visited the Po Lin Monastery, which has a few vegetarian restaurants, a lot of large incense pots, a few temples, and many areas under construction. Around that are the obligatory expensive tourist shops, cafes, and restaurants with "Gourmet Oriental" cuisine. I didn't stay very long.

Last night after dinner I met up with my friend Annie for tea. Afterward on the way home I stopped at the 7-11 near Mirador Mansions to get some water, but to get to the water aisle I first had to get past the huddles of people who were standing around drinking beer and wine out of little paper cups. "7-11 party?" I asked the cashier. She told me it was for their regular customers, but I was welcome to join anyway.

Hong Kong is warm.

Sleeping in a room with no windows can be very disorienting. But when I opened the door to the inner courtyard walkway and was greeted by the bright sunlight bouncing off the white walls across the way, and the sounds of people and animals and cars down below, I immediately felt grounded. This is the first really sunny day--and the first day when it's been warm enough to wear only a jacket and a shirt--that I've seen in a while.

I walked up Nathan Road, away from the harbor. A short way up, big, snaking banyan trees line the road, the concrete sidewalk turns to brick, and the seedy tailors, money changers, and gift shops are replaced by expensive yuppie fashion stores, jewelers, and cafes. For a minute I actually imagined I was on State Street in Santa Barbara.

For breakfast I wandered onto a narrow street lined with little Chinese restaurants and got a table at a place that was so jammed I ended up sharing a tiny, two-seat table with a middle-aged civil engineer. In addition to Cantonese he spoke some English and Mandarin, so he helped me order a bowl of hot soy milk and a big green onion pancake, which I will henceforth refer to as a "Chinese Latke". A bowl of dòu jiāng in Chengdu costs exactly one yuan (15 cents). At this place it was more like a dollar. The Chinese Latke was also a dollar. After breakfast (and some hassle having to do with adaptors not working, etc.) I went to a big chain cafe (where I am now) to use the internet, and a cup of regular black coffee cost me three dollars. That is approximately twenty-two bowls of soy milk.

Back in HK

I'm about to run out of batteries so I'll make a really quick post. This evening I arrived back in Hong Kong. Originally I was planning to take the train again, but then I realized that would entail spending more time on the train than in Hong Kong proper (if you consider the train out of and into Hong Kong an extension of Hong Kong's essence). So I flew. The flight was only a little over two hours (compared to 30 hours!) but it still felt like a long journey after the cab, the delay at the gate, the long bus ride from the Shenzhen airport to the train station, and then the long train ride from the border to Hong Kong. For old time's sake I had dinner at that "tea house" in Shenzhen where I whiled away the night a couple months ago. This time ordering was a lot easier.

In the bathroom at the train station while I was relieving myself I looked down and saw two small pink things on the floor next to me. On closer inspection I realized that they were fingers. It made me think of all the other scandalous and/or horrific things that may have happened in places where I have been, before I arrived.

When I got to Hong Kong the things that struck me most were the narrowness of the streets and the abundance of bright signs sticking out from the buildings. Next to Chengdu's wide, perpetually-under-construction boulevards and relative drabness, Hong Kong feels both venerable and vibrant. But then after you've been offered your 15th hand-tailored shirt this vibrancy can start to get a little bit annoying (though this only seems to happen in Kowloon). The first thing I did after checking into the guest house (the same one as last time in Mirador Mansions, although I got a different room; the last one was 160 HKD a night for what I thought of at the time as "four walls and a bed" and a bathroom the size of a closet. This new room is 120 HKD and is literally four walls and a bed, and the bathroom is shared this time. But that's OK.), and after stocking up on bottled water and tea and having a second dinner at the vegetarian Indian restaurant nearby, was try to log onto Facebook for the first time in two months. Unfortunately, the internet wasn't working in my room. Fortunately, there is an internet cafe two floors down that has good internet (which is where I am now). Unfortunately, my battery has run out so this is the end of this post.

A Vegan Epic

Tonight on the way home I bought a couple pounds of mushrooms, a head of broccoli, a red onion, almost a kilo of pea shoots, and two green peppers, all for less than $2. The supply of vegetables seems inexhaustible, and for this I feel really fortunate. Protein sources are a different matter. I sometimes eat fish or eggs when I'm with company, but by myself I'm essentially vegan. The only good vegan source of protein available at most shops is tofu, which comes either wet or dry (smoked). These are great, but I think I remember hearing somewhere that it's good to vary your protein intake and in any case not to rely too much on soy. One time I bought some black beans at the grocery store, but the black beans here must be strange mutant beans; after at least five hours of boiling they were still crunchy.

And so it was that one day a few weeks ago I decided it was time to try making seitan, the legendary wheat meat. The first thing I did was head to the grocery store for some vital wheat gluten (wheat flour purified so only the protein/gluten remains). Supposedly, seitan was invented by vegetarian Buddhists in China thousands of years ago. So vital wheat gluten has to be a staple on every grocery store's shelves, right? I went to at least three different places, and no one knew what I was talking about. I looked up the translation for vital wheat gluten on every site I could find, and still got nothing that anyone recognized. Then I got a tip from another expat that I should try the vegetarian restaurant in one of the Buddhist monasteries. I had been there once before, and at the front of the store there was a vegetarian-oriented grocery section that I'd forgotten about. I biked there for dinner one night, and indeed, they were selling seitan and other fake meats in vacuum-sealed plastic bags and in a freezer. But these were already made. What about wheat gluten flour? I asked. Blank stares. Dejected, I sat down in a comfy chair to order my delicious vegan dinner.



Fake fish with mushrooms and spicy peppers, Sichuan style.

I was about ready to give up when I remembered that there was an alternative. When I looked up seitan recipes before, they sometimes mentioned an alternative recipe that involved more work to make the seitan from regular wheat flour. I had always ignored that part, but now I returned to it. Surprisingly, the recipe was easy and the first batch turned out reasonably well. But although wheat flour is not impossible to find like vital wheat gluten, it is also not a staple item in Chinese grocery stores, which meant I had to buy it from the much more expensive imported goods shop. Luckily, the second time, I tried the same recipe on white flour, and it worked!

An advantage of making seitan from regular flour is that it's cheap. One challenge with making seitan this way, however, is adding flavor. Using vital wheat gluten, you just mix soy sauce, garlic, nutritional yeast, or whatever else into the dough, and the seitan is automatically delicious. Making it from normal flour, however, requires washing the dough until all the starch comes out, which leaves a ball of raw gluten. It's hard to integrate new things into this ball, so the flavor has to come from cooking. This recipe is my first attempt to address that.

Simple DIY Seitan Soup - No Oil!

1. Make Seitan from regular or wheat flour.
2. Chop copious amounts of garlic and ginger, in a 2:1 ratio.
3. Boil some water--not too much.
4. Add the garlic and ginger, an onion, a tomato, a lot of soy sauce, and the seitan.
5. Simmer for at least an hour.

For all of the amounts, use your best judgment! When I made this I wasn't sure if it was going to end up being soup, or just flavoring stock for the seitan. I didn't chop the onion and tomato, but just cut them in half. As a result the broth stayed clear, and the onion and tomato pieces were more substantial.

While I was washing the seitan, I saved a couple bowls of the starchy water, which was so cloudy I would have thought it was milk. And I used it for another recipe:

Extremely Simple Vegan Cream of Mushroom Soup

0. Make seitan from flour and save some of the milky starch water.
1. Dice a lot of garlic and onions, and a lot a lot of mushrooms.
2. Sauté the garlic and onions in a pot with some vegetable oil for a minute or two.
3. Add the mushrooms, turn down the heat, and cover. Wait until the mushrooms cook down and the contents of the pot are substantially liquid.
4. Add the starch water and salt to taste. Cook for another couple minutes while the starch thickens.

Lately I've been pining for the fare at the Wayward Cafe, so I made a tofu scramble for lunch today.

Tofu Scramble v.1





(as usual, amounts are just approximate)
- one block of tofu, chopped into 32 cubes
- two tomatoes, chopped
- four large cloves of garlic, diced
- 2 teaspoons Herbes de Provence
- 2 teaspoons turmeric
- 1 teaspoon hot pepper
- 2 tablespoons soy sauce
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
- toast

1. Sauté the garlic in the vegetable oil for only about 30 seconds.
2. Add the tofu, hot pepper, and turmeric, stirring quickly at first so it doesn't stick.
3. Stop stirring and turn down the heat. Cook for several minutes, or until some of the moisture from the tofu has evaporated.
4. Add the soy sauce and stir again. The tofu cubes should start to break into chunks of various sizes, so that it looks slightly like scrambled eggs. Cook for another minute or so.
5. Add the tomatoes and Herbes de Provence, stir regularly and cook for another few minutes.
6. Eat with toast, or, if you're in Chengdu, put on top of one of those naan/pizza dough things from the Uighur restaurant down the street.

have not yet learned Sichuan cooking

Japanese-esque Eggplant:

- 1 eggplant, cut into cubes or your favorite other shape
- 1 green onion, finely chopped
- 2 cloves of garlic, coarsely chopped
- soy sauce, several tablespoons
- vegetable oil
- water, several tablespoons

One great thing about living in Sichuan is that it's cheaper than ever to experiment with cooking vegetables.

The flavor of this dish surprised me (you can tell because I'm posting the recipe on my blog). I can't put my finger on it exactly, but it reminds me of the sauce that usually comes with tempura, or maybe miso soup a little bit. I think it might be the combination of green onion and soy, and the sweetness which I'm guessing is the result of the way the soy sauce and eggplant are fried. Something like that. I almost never measure things, so I can only give rough amounts and times. If anybody wants to actually try making this, just use your best judgment. I hope you do not regret it!

Directions:

Mix the soy sauce and water and set aside. Heat a frying pan on high. Add a liberal amount of vegetable oil once the pan is hot. Add the garlic and stir immediately to make sure it doesn't stick. Add the eggplant and do the same thing. Keep stirring the eggplant around the pan until it soaks up all the oil, and then wait until it starts to brown on one or two sides. The pan should now be dry (because the oil is all soaked up) and extremely hot. Before the eggplant actually starts to burn too much, pour in the soy-water. There should be enough of this that it fills the whole pan to the depth of a millimeter or so, although a lot of the water will quickly evaporate. Wait for about a minute. Sprinkle the green onions on top. Wait for another minute or whatever amount of time feels like a minute. The eggplant should have cooked down a lot by now. Stir everything for another minute or so, or until you think everything is done.





And below is a picture of the outside of my apartment building (my door is the second on the left). It's a nice place to live because even though it's close to the main streets, you go through a gate into this sprawling courtyard space (this photo shows one corner of it) where it's much quieter. As you can see, people like to hang up their laundry outside, and there's a little "park" in another part where old people often play cards at a little table. Speaking of which, today on the yellow ginkgo-lined side street just outside of this apartment complex (opposite the busy street), there were at least seven green felt tables set up in a little open-front tea house (which is really just three walls and a ceiling), on the sidewalk, and even in the street, where old people were playing Mahjong (má jiàng). I've seen this setup before, but I think the number of tables today was a record. My goal is to one day sit down at one of those tables and play with them. But so far I have been unsuccessful in finding a Mahjong teacher, and I do not have enough confidence in my Chinese--not to mention my Sichuanhua--to try to learn the rules from them.