Longlife Noodles

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Birthdays in China are always celebrated in unorthodox ways. This past weekend celebrated a friend’s birthday with delicious Yunnanese food, a few Belgian beers, a visit to a local skateboard store, and a  marathon of Taiwanese desserts. This smörgåsbord of celebration started at Southern Barbarian, great Yunnanese food on Jinxian Lu. Wasn’t a big fan of this place the first time we went there — anyone who can mess up goat cheese usually doesn’t deserve a second chance. But I gave it a re-try and this time it was a success. Yunnan is a province in China’s southwest so their food is Chinese bordering Central Asian. Grilled meat kebabs, fresh spicy mint salads, tomato basil eggplant, and of course mashed stuff — potatoes, peas, you name it, they mash it. But the big draw of this place is their choice selection of beers. I usually judge a place’s beer collection on whether or not they have Kwak. They do.

Afterwards swung by a local skateboarding store on Changle Lu. Ever since we went to the Asian X-Games I’ve been having dreams in which I’m oh-so-suavely navigating the streets of Shanghai on a sweet new longboard. This will never happen. But a girl can dream. Learning from one of the people there how to skateboard next week. And asking them how they manage to dodge all the trash in the streets.

At the end of the night, we ended up watching the US World Cup match at one of my faves, Taiwanese restaurant Charmant. I’ve actually never tried their food — but their desserts are to DIZZLE for. A peanut smoothie so creamy and peanuty, your eyes are required to roll back in ecstasy with every bite. Plus it’s gigantic. My birthday friend is Taiwanese-American so of course she required the Taiwanese shaved ice dessert. It’s basically an enormo mound of shaved ice covered in an assortment of red beans, green beans, pineapple, tapioca balls, and sweet condensed milk. Super Chinese. But despite its odd appearance not too bad.

Last birthday celebrated in the mainland? Maybe. But at least now I’ll be able to celebrate birthdays with normal cakes instead of lifelong noodles. The Chinese tradition is to eat a super long noodle. If you can manage to slurp the entire noodle up into your mouth without it breaking once, you’ll have good luck for the rest of the year. Fun tradition. But not much can beat handmade baked goodness from home.

picture a day… a little late.

I swore to myself to start posting one picture a day on this blog. So far I’ve succeeded in taking one picture a day… but posting them has been another story. Here is my life over the past few weeks.

Shanghai Summer… beautiful.

My students on the day we learned “SCARY.” They think they’re sooo funny.

Yes, I went to the Asian X-Games. No, I did not see Tony Hawk or Rob Dyrdek. Yes, I would like to learn how to skateboard now.

Learning to cook Chinese food. Inspired by Julie and Julia? Maybe. Check out the food blog for more.

Obama Mart. Products tested and approved by the man himself.

At the Shanghai Museum Monetary Exhibit, which has coins traded on the Silk Road. This coin has an inscription on the back which reads “made in the year 618 in Ghazna, the ruler of rulers… the grandest… the most rightful… Genghis Khan.” What a pimp.

After our 8 dollar massages. Heavenly.

Eating Zong Zi for the Dragon Boat Festival. Pork and glutinous rice lovingly cooked in bamboo leaves. Best paired with a 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon holding subtle cherry notes.

Around the World in 5 Hours

Fact: There are only 4 to 5 thousand living dragons left in the wild. I learned this and many other curious facts whilst wandering through the Indonesia Expo pavilion last week. After the initial befuddlement at finding out that not only are there dragons alive and well in Asia (a long-kept secret suspicion of mine) but that there could actually be 5000 (!!!), I sadly realized that this statistic referred to komodo dragons (oh come on, they’re just lazy lizards with gigantism). Nevertheless, I found myself simultaneously amused and educated by the Indonesia pavilion – something I hadn’t quite anticipated. The cultural displays, the distant sounds of tribal drumbeats, the delicious curry-ish scent floating around, and the assertion that Indonesia is in fact the “Potpourri of Life” – all these things left me with an urge to Google trips to Bali that night.

And this pavilion, out of the hundreds at the World Expo, is apparently one of the more average ones.

So what exactly is this World Expo, you may ask? Well you may know it better as the World’s Fair and probably associate it with that massive gold ball in Knoxville… but the concept of World Expo is actually very interesting. Hosted by one country every so often, countries and corporations are given a chance to build pavilions at a fair ground in which to showcase new architectural and technological innovation, present their culture to people across the world, and more recently to show off their efforts towards environmental sustainability (the Portuguese pavilion is made entirely of cork and Spain is made of wicker. Nifty.). It’s basically a (debatedly) cooler version of Epcot… with Mickey Mouse replaced by Haibao, a goofy looking Gumby knock-off.

After debating for weeks whether to go or not (lines in China are deadly), I was finally reeled in last week. We decided to go at night when the tickets are cheaper, the lights turn on in the buildings, and most of the tourists leave after having been there since 7 AM. It turned out to be… awesome. We spent more time meandering around the park and munching on frozen yog than actually visiting the insides. But merely looking at the outsides of the buildings was impressive. Yeah there were some that were inherently doomed to be pitiful (aww hang in there, Algeria), but most were really amazing.

Another benefit of going in the evening is the chance to see the nightly performances. The Euro stage was hosting an energetic German electro-pop band that even managed to get the middle class Chinese tourists to trow day hands up. Maybe because they enthusiastically shouted “WE MAKE DA YOUNG PEOPLE DAAANCE!” every few minutes.

We ended our night at the USA Pavilion, which has a rather lackluster series of videos about environmental sustainability, diversity, freedom, blah blah. The most exciting moment was when the audience was misted with water to simulate a rainstorm… Great, now I’m less patriotic and damp. Thanks USA.

Rankings of the pavilions I’ve visited so far (a pathetic list)– USA: 3. Nepal: 3. Indonesia: 4. Don’t know why we chose those three. We’ll have to try harder next time.

Pavilions I want to see– China. Duh. It’s the biggest, the most interactive, and the longest line. You have to show up promptly when the park opens to register for daily tickets. Spain. I’ve heard there’s a colossal baby inside. UK. Because it has a massive fiber optics building called the Seed Cathedral? Africa. All of the African nations combined into one. Japan. Because it looks like what you get when you put a marshmallow in the microwave.

For more cool Expo pics– Check out this site.

ChickaChickaCHUAN. and other chicken parts.

你怕辣吗？Ni pa la ma? This is a frequent question I receive when I tell curious Chinese neighbors or my numerous tutors that my favorite Chinese food is Chuan Cai. Being a culture that is obsessed with eating (the common greeting here is not How are you? but Have you eaten?), I am always being asked whether or not I like Chinese food. That questions always leads to the next inevitable topic — Which kind do you like? Now you have tread carefully with your answer here, because the person inquiring is gonna judge you based on your response and proceed to lecture on China’s Eight Different Cuisines for the next half hour. My favorite, and the fave of most foreigners with spice-hearty taste buds, is Chuan Cai — food from China’s Sichuan province. Smack dab in the middle of China’s belly, Sichuan is known for its laid-back lifestyle and spicy spicy cuisine. I’m a personal fan of clearing out my sinuses during meal time — if it’s gonna make me cry, I wanna eat it. So when the question Ni pa la ma? or Are you afraid of spicy? comes up in convo, I say… bring it on. When one of my Chinese friends heard this answer, she excitedly told me that she had lived in Sichuan during college and that she would love to teach me how to cook some mouth-scorching Chuan Cai this weekend.

I’m ashamed to admit that I haven’t done too much cooking while I’ve been in China. When there are dozens of great restaurants around your block where you can find much better Chinese food than you’ll ever cook (with much more MSG than you’ll ever want to know about), why would a little white girl wanna cook dinner at home? Well I’ve been trying to remedy that lately by buying a wok and asking people their best recipes for some good Chinese grub. This weekend definitely proved a good crash course to some Chuan Cai — and while I don’t think I’ll ever be able to replicate the scrumptious spicy gloriousness someone used to cooking with chopsticks can make, I at least learned a few interesting things about cooking Chinese-style. One — as a general rule of thumb, when you buy family-size meat in China, you buy the whole gosh-darn animal. We started cooking by marinating the meat generously in sauce, and being able to catch a glimpse of every body part I would be consuming later was a little scary.

I informed my friend that, in America, I wasn’t used to ingesting the feet and heads of animals. She just laughed a lot and told me that, in China, you eat every part of the animal. Then excitedly said that she’d save me all of the weird parts at dinnertime so I could try them. Greaaaat. So later that night I got my first taste of chicken feet — something that’s actually a pretty common snack in China. Besides having to dodge the sharp toenails, it actually wasn’t too shabby. It’s kind of the equivalent of gum or sunflower seeds here — more something to chew on than actually eat. You just munch on the skin off the feet for a while and try not to think about where that foot had been a few days earlier. Later, she fished around for the chicken head and kindly opened it up for me so I could eat the brain. Not quite as tasty. I have no idea why people eat this — it’s a really disgusting mushy texture and it takes a long time to find in that small head. My friend told me about all the different animal brains you can eat in China — no animal appeared to be exempt from the list. Including monkeys. According to Stephanie’s boss, eating a monkey’s brain while it’s still alive is considered a delicacy in southern China and also a great topic for dinner conversation. Hmm I’ll pass.

While being forced to eat strange body parts was a little different, I did learn a lot about cooking some good spicy food that evening. I learned that pretty much any and all Sichuan food is made with Douban — a spicy bean chili paste that’ll light you up. Her husband said that you can make any dish “Chuan cai” by just adding some add Douban. I also learned that super fancy wok technique where you flip the veggies up in the air and look super awesome. That’s a prerequisite for any Chinese cooking course.

In the end, it was great to have a good homecooked meal and sit around the dinner table with a family for the night — even if our table conversation was all in Chinese and centered around monkey brains and NBA players. Can’t wait to get home and try out some of these dishes — heard the Atlanta Asian food market is like a beautiful piece of the Middle Kingdom transplanted in the ATL burbs.

Downward Facing Duck

Making Chinese friends always leads to receiving an inordinate amount of Chinese gifts. I guess in China it’s a custom to bestow upon new friends an excess of presents. My Suzhou friends were always giving me little goodies, and the people I have befriended at my tutoring place all feel the need to dump gifts on me too. While this has its benefits, it mainly just leaves me with a sense of deep indebtedness to these people. Like eventually down the road I may have to give them some cool American trinkets or teach their children how to read. Either way, one of my tutors in particular has decided to go overboard with the gift giving. First treating me and my friends to dinner, then bringing me a pound of strawberries he hand-picked, next bringing me a cellphone holder that his girlfriend painstakingly cross-stitched… I feel like I owe this dude a green card by now. Well this week he gave me something especially interesting… Nanjing’s specialty salt water duck.

I didn’t take a picture of what was inside, as it was more horrifying than the picture on the bag made it out to be. It kind of reminded me of one of those animals from Ahhh! Real Monsters. Scary. And not really all that tasty. So I’ve determined that I need to start drawing the line with this gift-giving thing. Or at least limit it to cross-stitchery.

Feed Me.

Steph and I are constantly finding new excuses to eat more. This has been one of our more productive ones:

http://feedmeshanghai.wordpress.com/

Check out our recent epicurean journey through Shanghai.

Jue x 2

It’s no Orange Peel or Handlebar, but when it comes to live music in Shanghai, Yuyintang is the place to go. Is it super divey? Yeah. Does the number of people in there usually exceed fire safety standards? Probs. Have you had multiple strangers there tell you to “Just Pulse”? Oddly yes. It’s an interesting place. But the atmosphere definitely makes for the best concerts in Shanghai. And this weekend Shanghai was loaded with awesome musical acts thanks to the Jue Festival. We made the long journey out to Yuyintang twice this weekend in order to catch these awesome bands.

New Year Resolutions (Better Late Than Never)

Originally uploaded by monkeyking

Every morning Monday through Friday, I wake up bright and early to go teach English at my Kindergarten. From 8 until 12, my babies and I hang out, make cute decorations for the classroom, learn about different kinds of animals and talk about which one is the biggest, and if we get bored, I pretend I’m a bee and chase them around the classroom. Basically, I’ve turned into Miss Honey.

It’s a good, stress-free life here in Shanghai. Teaching only takes up about 20-30 hours of my week here. A lot less now that the holidays are over. So what have I been doing with my afternoons? Well after New Years rolled around this year, I began to ask myself the same question. (It’s too bad I don’t have a Liz Lemon-esque montage to enter into this blog right now – one that shows me laying around laughing at Chinese soap operas, dancing ridiculously to Taylor Swift, and eating a large bowl of noodles while google image-ing What is a blipster?)

Needless to say, I woke up on New Years Day with the feeling that I really need to do something these next few months. I mean, I’m almost halfway through my vacation year of teaching in China. I need to get out and take this all in! Live life! Learn new things! Enjoy this incredible experience while I still can! Unfortunately, it is extremely cold outside right now so I’m gonna hold off on the living, laughing, and loving until spring. But I have made one vital step in making my time here in China more profitable. I got Chinese tutors. Yes, not one, but multiple Chinese people to teach me. Here’s the scoop:

I recently ran across this great program called IMCPI. It’s a Chinese language school that has the lofty goal of “enabling four-fifths of the world population to speak Mandarin Chinese.” Good luck guys. But one great thing about this institute is that they provide “public welfare activity.” That translates into free Chinese classes. Yes, freeee. From 4:30 to 5:30 every day, they offer to the public free one-on-one tutoring sessions. You decide which days you want to go, you show up, and get someone to tutor you for an hour or so. While there’s usually a catch with these kinds of things, I started going a few weeks ago and have really enjoyed it. All of the staff are super helpful and friendly — every time I come in, they hand me a free cup of water. I’ve had a different tutor every time I’ve gone, which is kind of unfortunate (I think the whole point is to provide training for Chinese-teachers-to-be). I’d rather be learning from a set person， but at least this way I get a little bit of variety in my Chinese schedule. But so far all of the lessons and suggestions have been great. One of my proudest moments in China so far was having a conversation about the economic crisis with one of my tutors. ALL in Chinese. Go me!

So with these new Chinese lessons under my belt, I’m looking forward to the upcoming year. My resolution for 2010 is “enable Betsy to speak Mandarin Chinese.” Hopefully by the time I come back this summer, I will have turned into a fine-tuned Chinese-speaking machine. More importantly, I hope it’ll spice up my resume a little bit. With Advanced Chinese sitting next to TEFL-Certified and Double Dutch champion, what employer could turn me down?
Here’s to the New Year!

Guess. That. Meat.

I haven’t blogged much about my daily life here in Shanghai. And by that I mean I haven’t blogged much about what I eat here in Shanghai. With so much gooood cheap food to choose from, it’s hard not to be constantly thinking about where I’m going to get my next meal.
However, sometimes meals here can make a sharp turn from immensely satisfying to just plain weird. Take for example, the mystery meat we accidentally ordered the other night for dinner. Apparently asking the server what their favorite dish is doesn’t always turn out well…

10 yuan for whoever can guess what animal is on this delicious looking plate!

Season’s Greetings.

(Yes, I’m a little too obsessed with my students.)