I attended a large gathering of mostly Americans last night, with a few British, Australian, Canadian, and Chinese thrown in. Whether living here or just passing through, the word got out that there would be a 4th of July barbecue and some fireworks.
I made a giant bowl of potato salad, starting with 3 kilos of potatoes. With all the other stuff added in, I’m pretty sure we had at least 2 gallons of the stuff. I thought it needed more salt; nobody else seemed to notice. It disappeared within an hour of my arrival.
The fireworks were fun, but required us to explain to some of the locals what the big fuss was about. After all, fireworks are for the lunar new year. They nodded, but of course I have to wonder if they understood at the same level as we do. I want to say more, and my VPN makes it look like I’m posting this from Hong Kong, but I feel like I can’t post what I really want to say if I want this stupid little blog to remain accessible within China. After all, some foreigner just got deported for his actions on the internet, though he was clearly a bit of a stalker and a total nut. It sets a precedent. I hope that my reluctance to say what I want here speaks volumes, though I don’t want anyone to get the idea that I dislike everything here. I just hate the glaze of dishonesty that covers much of the official communication, so that one never really knows what’s going on.
P.S. For a happier ending to this post, imagine a handful of last night’s partygoers singing at least a few bars of our national anthem while the fireworks were going off. There was no all-encompassing chorus of patriotism, but a few were inspired, including myself.
The hubs just walked in and handed me a baked potato. I almost got teary-eyed while imagining it was covered in sour cream.
Some people have expressed interest in seeing pics of our abode. Before I post these pictures, I must remind you that we have ONE ROOM in this house. It’s pretty huge, and I’m glad I don’t have to clean all of it.
I have a surprisingly easy time most days avoiding gluten, but the past couple have been rough. Something bothered my stomach, and I don’t know what it could have been.
Two nights ago I stayed up until about 2am. I had finally gotten the new update for my Kindle which allows books to be placed into collections, so I labeled all my books then stayed up even later reading. Without a small lamp to read by, I have to have the big bright room light on so it’s easy to stay up. The result was that I slept through breakfast, which was probably going to be butter tea and roasted barley flour (tzampa) anyway. So I pulled out my bag of emergency gluten-free oats given to me by my brother-in-law prior to the trip, boiled some water, and readied the honey. It was to be my first oatmeal since Kunming.
Yesterday morning I learned that rolled oats can go rancid, and no amount of honey hides this flavor.
I was later gifted with fresh yak yogurt, but without a clean spoon to dunk back into the honey, it was too sour to eat plain. If you think plain cow-milk yogurt is too sour (I don’t) then this would be unbearable. I suck on lemons, and I couldn’t eat this. It explains why I can’t find unsweetened yogurt in the store though.
Today, I woke at a reasonable time because I cut my reading off around 11:30, but breakfast was (wait for it) butter tea and tzampa. It looked like the cook had fried up some rice, possibly for me, but all that remained was a dirty pan.
The bean cake fryer.
I filled up my mug with butter tea, (the electricity just went out as I was typing this) grabbed a metal food tin, and headed to the square for some street food. My favorite guy was there, and still setting up for the day. Luckily for me, he got his fires going and his food cooking before bothering with the tent and benches. Today my breakfast was liang fen, which is starting to become a delicious habit for me.
Liang fen is a cake made of bean starch. It wobbles a bit like jello and is usually white or sometimes yellow. In Kunming, I had it sliced into sticks and served cold with cucumbers and various seasonings. In Shangri-la is is a repulsive, delicious grey, served fried, mushed up a bit, and covered with hot peppers, green onions, cilantro, vinegar, some oil with what looks like crushed peanuts, and some hua jao (Sichuan numby peppercorn). It still requires a bit of attention though, since they have a big jar of soy sauce sitting there, and they want to use the ladle for every liquid on offer.
Half in my stomach, half in my bowl-thing.
Despite knowing that it gets dipped in everything for the other customers, I tell myself that if I don’t see them do it, it’s ok. Today I had a spoon with me so she used it for the liquids. One of these times, I’ll have to take a friend to explain to these nice people why I panic when they mix the spoons. I know enough Chinese now to keep them from adding the soy sauce, but not enough to explain that it’s more than a preference.
To wrap up, delicious breakfast for about $0.40, and it didn’t poison me. Now I wait for the electricity and/or the water to come back on. 
*I had to use that title since I was banned from making any Seoul Man jokes while we were there.
Oh, Korea. You and your respected traffic laws, delicious kimchi, active temples, and old and new friends. Why must you perplex me with your not-really-cheese-sticks, official lack of homosexuals, and actual lack of trashcans?
We’ve actually been back in China for a week now, but had 2 nights in Beijing (that made me think I might be able to really like Beijing), a day and a half on a train to Kunming, then the night train/bus combo that got me back to Shangri-la…where I immediately contracted yet another cold and lost my voice for about a day and a half.
One of the things that stood out about our trip is that I’m a total dork for subways. In Seoul, we used them to get to where our hosts wanted to take us, but in Beijing I purposely planned my free days around places near the subway lines. It was easy, cheap, and I got to zoom around in underground tunnels like a mole on speed. What could be better?
Our arrival in Seoul was on a Friday around lunchtime, when our friends were both at work. They had given us directions on how to get from the airport to Insidong so we could entertain ourselves easily. We found lunch (kimchi stew!) and wandered down the street to the old palace and nearby folk museum. It was easy to see that building wooden palaces made it too easy for the Japanese to burn them down; this was also the case at the old summer palace in Beijing. In a wide open space that used to be occupied by houses for concubines, we met a lot of magpies. They’re huge, funny birds that like to hop around, and I’ve heard that they are rather mischievous. It seemed fitting that they had taken the place of the concubines. The folk museum was our next stop, and I really wish we had had more time there. The displays were well kept-up, and the English on the signs was both correct and informative. In China you tend to see a lot of physical descriptions of an object on display, but no information on how said object was used or why it’s in the museum at all.
As we waited to meet up with an old HS friend of the hubs, I wandered into a little convenience store to check out some Korean snack food. I emerged triumphant with a little bottle of plum juice and what looked like a cheese stick. The hubs eyed it warily and thought it might actually be some sort of bizarre white sausage. After running back to the store to get it snipped open by the clerk, I walked back towards the hubs with a big grin, peeling the wrapper off the top. As I took a bite, he watched my face take on an expression of absolute horror and he laughed as I ran around looking for a trashcan. I had to settle for a large sack of trash sitting in a corner. It wasn’t cheese, it wasn’t sausage, and it shouldn’t have been called edible. I briefly recalled the clerk’s smirk as I was paying for it, and tucked away the rest of it so I could ask our friends about it. I pulled it out shortly after meeting them, and before I could even ask, their expressions simultaneously turned to panic and they shouted “Don’t eat that!”
In all, the trip was great. It was great to meet an old friend of the hubs’ (G) and his fiancée (M), and absorb teaching tips from them. I got to visit a very large yarn market, and was finally able to pick up buttons for the coat I’m making. It was also interesting to discover how much I had in common (including internet friends) with M, and we enjoyed taunting the men about how they were essentially partnered with the same person. She even brushed up on her glutenny vocab to help me figure out what was safe to eat and found a bottle of safe soy sauce for me to bring back. Lastly, their apartment had one of the most amazing features I’ve ever encountered in a house—sub-floor heating. It eliminates the nasty problem of walking around with cold feet, and radiates up to warm the whole place. The only downside was that we were sleeping on a guest mattress on this floor, so it actually got TOO hot at night.
In the middle of all this, I got to have 2 lunches and visit a temple with a Korean friend from my TESOL course. As she took us around, she kept mentioning how she had never been to certain places even though she was from Seoul. We were tour guides for her in her own city! The temple was really interesting too. I’m so used to temples in other Asian countries being tourist attractions. The one we went to in Seoul obviously had a large congregation, as they had a few thousand lanterns hung for the Buddha’s birthday celebration, and were doing some sort of ceremony for children when we were there. The place was packed.
As mentioned above, we left Korea and spent 2 nights in Beijing. Since the hubs was meeting with folks, I had the city to myself. I spent my first day wandering around the old summer palace, which has extensive grounds and both smashed and burned ruins. On day 2, I ventured out to find a store called Jenny Lou’s. It’s a well-known store stocking all sorts of imported goods from around the world, and I read online that gluten-free products were available there. The location I chose to try was in the section of town that held all the embassies, so I got to walk past a lot of well-guarded, identical buildings. I paused to squint in front of each one just to see whose it was, and noticed after a while that the guard in front of each one was picking up his radio when I stopped. I imagine there was something said about a nosy girl with a green bag, and I decided that taking pictures was out of the question. I never saw the US embassy, but did eventually find Jenny Lou’s. My purchases there were limited to tortilla chips, a grody avocado dip from Australia, fake nutella, and two of those Happy Cow 8-piece cheese wheels. Out of the 16 pieces, only 2 made it back to Shangri-la with me.
Me and cheese. We are friends. Unless you’re Korean “cheese”. We are not friends.
I got very little sleep Wednesday and Thursday nights, though Thursday I got myself to sleep with a few drops of Rescue Remedy. The anticipation of my first class on Friday led to some pretty typical (for me) anxiety that was pointless in the end.
I teamed up with the teacher who has been working with a few of them for an hour in the evening, which helped to make sure they understood my directions. She can speak Mandarin and is happy to team teach with me for the 2 weeks she has left here. It will be a nice transition. The students are eager to do whatever we ask, which is pretty awesome given that the typical Chinese classroom involves a room full of silent students staring up at a jabbering teacher. The last half of the first class involved my students standing up and pairing up to practice introductory small talk, with an emphasis on various responses to “How are you?”. Two students were a bit lower than the others, so I coached them a little bit at the start. After 3 or 4 minutes, the whole glass was grinning, mingling, and exchanging vigorous handshakes. It WAS a bit ridiculous since they’ve all known one another for months at least, but they got a kick out of it. I loved it too, and it really helped me relax since, of course, the “technology” was acting up.
For the second class, I didn’t use the large whiteboard on the wall much, since it involves standing on a raised platform behind a large desk while the students sit on the floor. Instead, the other teacher and I pulled out cushions for ourselves and sat in front of them with a smaller whiteboard between us on the floor. I’m not sure what the students thought of it, but it was WAY less weird for me. At my height, I’m not meant to tower over anyone.
So Monday I resume teaching them, and Tuesday I start helping out at the local primary school where the English teacher doesn’t speak English. It should be interesting, and I hope I can convince the teacher or her school to pay me for private tutoring. Eight months of seeing me once a week might be a little helpful for the kids, but improving the teacher’s English will hopefully have a more lasting impression.
Dealing with this gluten-intolerance thing has made me a less adventurous eater while traveling. Without the language skills needed to make sure food is safe, I get scared when I’m fending for myself.
This was the situation I found myself in yesterday — the hubs was off making vital connections, and I was hoping some people would meet me at one of the cafes for a little yarn play. Lunchtime rolled around (nobody showed) and I decided to walk to one of the foreign megastores to look for a couple of imported necessities. I left the cafe (which offered the safe option of a cheese omelette) with the full intention of stopping at a noodle joint or something along the way. The further I got from the area where foreigners tend to congregate, the less sure I was of finding safe food. Eventually, I recognized where I was, looked to the right, and saw Wal-mart. I cringed, since this was not the foreign megastore I was intending to visit, but where there is Wal-mart, there is surely KFC. Where there is KFC, there are…french fries.
So my very first meal without my lovely husband’s help was a large order of fries and a strawberry sundae. It was also 3x the cost of a far more filling meal at any of the restaurants I passed on my way there.
I continued my walk toward the central square where I was told a Carrefour loomed large. It’s a beautiful area with lots of landscaping and some welcome shade, mostly provided by the triangular New Era hotel. I got my shoes shined for 5 kuai, but passed up the blind masseurs since I can never remember how to ask “how much?” and my usual gesturing wouldn’t have worked. I don’t know why, but I never found the Carrefour. While speaking to the hubs on the phone, I told him where I was and he told me to turn around. Perhaps I should start giving massages in the square…
That night, we ventured to a restaurant near the apartment and ordered a dish called Grandma’s potatoes. It’s been said that there are as many varieties of this dish as there are grandmothers, but we were thrilled with the version we got: fried, half-mashed potatoes with ample spice. Add steamed eggs and a cold rice noodle dish (yes, I know…pictures. Sorry) and we were both stuffed. The hubs declared it the best meal he had had so far this trip, and the restaurant delivers!
Note to my mum-in-law: They had a waving cat.
I haven’t begun teaching yet, and haven’t been able to pick up any temporary gigs here in Kunming. I generally spend my time split between reading and crocheting, and while this is nice sometimes, I need something else to mix it up a bit.
Upon our return from Jiangxi, I started putting out feelers for places to learn the dialect of Tibetan I’ll be learning once I get up to Shangri-la. My third feeler turned out to be a hit. I was directed toward a restaurant about 20 minutes from my apartment on foot and told that they aren’t very busy during the day. We ventured out there on Sunday for lunch.
It’s a beautiful restaurant on the 2nd floor of a building that includes (in addition to the main dining room with a stage) 3 banquet rooms. One is decorated in a Tibetan royal style, one more middle class, and one is an actual old-town Shangri-la kitchen that was taken apart and moved there. We spoke (er, the hubs spoke…I smiled and nodded) to a woman named Lamu who grew up near Shangri-la and indicated that she was willing to teach me. After negotiations were made (no pay, but a vague hint that some English in return might be appreciated by some in the restaurant) we had a fabulous and expensive lunch. We noticed her teaching Mandarin to a musician while we ate.
So today was my first day, and I went alone. This surprised and rather exasperated her since she expected to have a translator. After a quick phone call between her and my hubs, we began with some basics.
Lamu still relied on a bit of Mandarin throughout the lesson. I apparently have greater knowledge of that than she has of English, so we managed. I wrote down some greetings and common small talk, family words, numbers, days, months, and some colors. When she looked a bit stuck, I got to practice some of my teaching by miming things like “good morning” and “good night”, drawing a stick-figure family (that got a laugh), etc. It really made me see the value of pictures, and I think I’ll pick up a magazine or two before I return on Thursday.
Occasionally, she had to do some actual work, and the other women there started to get curious and wander over. Two had studied a little English, and one may even be high enough to be called a beginner! Since they didn’t seem to interested in teaching me (or maybe they spoke a different dialect) I started working with them.
Using the calendar I had drawn to label in Tibetan and some hopefully useful gestures, I started using sentences like “Today is Tuesday. Tomorrow is Wednesday.” Later while setting up my next meeting with Lamu, one of the women wandered up and exclaimed “Today is Tuesday!” They all giggled when I praised her a bit.
Brief Reflections
The calendar is something I’d like to use when I have a classroom. It should be familiar to the people I’ll be teaching, and it seems like a good way to begin a day. I recall my mother incorporating weather into her morning calendar lessons, so that’s something I can expand into later as well.
Since the women there (besides my teacher) seemed like they wanted to learn a few things, I’ll come prepared with a little bit next time. I’m still wavering over whether I should try and give them a little homework. Since Chinese students often have greater reading and writing skills, I’d like to fish around to see if that’s the case here.
So now I know a little bit about what it feels like to be an absolute beginner. There’s a lot of initial confusion, but things do start to click little by little. I went quickly from thinking she was asking me if I wanted to order food or have more tea to realizing that she was teaching me the word for eating. As I progress here, I hope to get more ideas for my own classroom.
In short, it was mostly great. You know that saying about guests and fish starting to stink after 3 days? Sometimes it applies from the perspective of the guest as well! Unfamiliar styles of hospitality can be overwhelming, though at the end of 6 days, I had actually begun to adjust better.
The view from the 2nd floor, on our first morning in the village.
We were staying at the family home of my husband’s friend “Sam” and his sister “Joyce”. It’s in a village about a half an hour outside of Ji’an in Jiangxi province.
The hubs and I have arrived in Kunming as of this afternoon. My first non-airplane meal was tiger-skin peppers and Japanese-style tofu, and I am currently reacting to the soy sauce in the peppers that John instructed them to leave out. Once I figured out it was in there, it was too late, and WAY too good!
I will begin updating more regularly soon, but I just wanted to let people know that we are here and safe, with all body parts and luggage bits intact.
I have eleven days before I actually become The Broad Abroad, and tonight my husband and I are hosting a going-away party for all of our Madison friends. Yesterday was my last day of work, and it was nice that it coincided with our Family Fun night. I got permission from a few of the parents to take pictures with their children to show to my students in China, but I won’t be posting those online. Suffice it to say that last night was a lot of fun, and I have pretty high expectations for tonight! The white elephant gifts are always a hoot.
My lovely husband is making Chinese dumplings, of course, and is getting some rice paper to make egg rolls for me. I love it when my dumpling makes dumplings.
I am making a Greek dish called Revithia that I learned from a professor whose name ended in -opolous. The recipe went something like this:
Him: “You start with a lot of onions.”
Me: “How many onions?”
Him: “I don’t know…five?”
The amazing stuff he served us didn’t really seem to have onions in it at all. It was the most amazing grey slop I’ve ever tasted in my life. It’s apparently traditionally baked in a pot that has been sealed with bread dough and stays in the oven for half a day. To me, this screams “CROCK POT!” And so this morning I began chopping 3 gigantic onions. They filled my (very large) crock pot halfway, but I ended up having space for everything else I needed – chickpeas, some herbs, tomatoes. Massaging the chickpeas to remove as many skins as possible makes the chickpeas practically melt after few hours. Failing this, use an immersion blender
It’s such a simple recipe, but you have to have the resolve to just leave it alone. This makes it the perfect thing to prepare while you pack everything you own and stick it in storage.
You can find my recipe for it here on Tasty Kitchen. Since we ate it all before I got a chance to take a picture last time, I’ll be snapping a few tonight to add to the recipe.
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