Milestones

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A very important milestone occurs today: I haven’t seen my mommy in a year! This is the same person who I saw every day for the first 16 years of my life and who drove 2.5 hours each way every month to see me at high school and college, just so she could take me out to eat and buy me clothes and stuff. Now the last time I saw her was at the crappy airport in Kunming just after the Labor Day holiday, a year ago.

I can’t believe she let so much time go by without seeing me.

Ahh, the pitfalls of growing up and moving away. I can’t wait to see both my parents again! The countdown, which officially began some two months and 29 days ago, has resumed with a more manageable number: three weeks!

My new pink bike!

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Spring — it’s happening, finally. The mornings are still cool and crisp, while mid-afternoons can actually be hot if the sun is beating down on you. It’s been fairly windy recently, which means it’s cooler than it could be, but also clearer. Not-too-chilly, bright blue sunny skies … only one thing could make this time of year better: a bike.

I’ve been thinking about getting a bike for a while now, ever since I moved to the east side of town. Everything was closer — the bars, the restaurants, my hair salon, friends and, finally, my office. But Beijing’s rather inconvenient public transportation meant it would still take a while to get somewhere, and often I found myself thinking, “If only I had a bike!”

So this morning, bright and early (on a Saturday, no less!), I woke up and met up with my friend (he has two bikes!), who hauled me to a place with several shops. I was hoping to get a Giant, but they are pretty pricey and I wasn’t wild about many of the colors or styles. With bike thefts being pretty common, and considering how I might get attached to a Giant bike and not want to leave it when I eventually move back, I decided to go with what can only be a Chinese brand. There were a black chrome, dark blue chrome, yellow and pink one. Guess which one I chose!

What do you think??

Weekend fun: Playing with pandan (a picture story)

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I love pandan. There, I said it! I’ve loved it since I was a tiny little girl. It was one of those things that would appear into my life as some delicious jelly or steamed cake and I’d be reminded of how much I liked this mysterious green thing. Then, just as quickly as it appeared, it would disappear into the depths of my digestive system… Anyway, it was the Mid-Autumn Festival of 2010, and I was eating a mooncake with an unknown flavor. I bite into it — it’s pandan in a glorious mooncake filling version! And determined to never let it get away from me again, I finally looked up what it was called. Pandan, apparently.

Fast forward 1.5 years. By now, I even know what it’s called in Chinese — 香兰叶 (xiang lan ye, which translates to fragrant orchid leaf, which is not what pandan is). The pandan offerings of Beijing are minimal, though probably not any less so than most cities in the U.S. And, my mommy has given me a cupcake maker. What is there to stop me? Naturally I’d see what I could do with what is apparently giant blades of grass. I got myself a kilo of the stuff from (where else?) Taobao, China’s version of eBay.

A kilo of pandan!

I think that’s about 50 or so leaves, and it only cost me 66 kuai ($10.44) total to have it overnighted from somewhere down south.

Naturally, I got to work right away. I read up on how to get the pandan extract from the leaves, and I even saw one recipe that called for pandan syrup. This is how:


Tie pandan in knots, then boil it in water and sugar!

And then this is how you extract pandan’s essence:

Chop pandan into tiny pieces, add a tiny bit of water and take a blender to it!

It should look something like this:

Nasty, whacked up pandan!

And when you squeeze all the water out of that, you get:

All that hard work for this?

And then that gives cupcakes a greenish tint and pandan-y flavor! While I consider these cupcakes a failure, they definitely got the flavor. Unfortunately, the cake was a bit dry and not as fluffy as I’d like, and I screwed up on the coconut buttercream by adding too much coconut milk. But this is exactly why I bought a kilo of pandan leaves! More pandan fun!

Pandan cupcakes!

China update

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Exciting time for China right now, with the annual two sessions kicking off today. Here are loosely related tidbits of news, which I hope will form a composite of modern China for you:

  • The National People’s Congress, one of China’s two legislative bodies (i.e., the ones that are meeting right now), is a shining example of democracy in China, according to Chinese state media. What I find ironic is that the article does not itself contain the word “democracy,” nor does it provide details on how these officials are “elected.” Plus, I’m pretty sure “democracy” carries with it some kind of disdain and irony in China, so I’m not sure why Chinese media still try to promote the image that China is democratic.
  • China’s most outspoken economics weekly, Caixin, has declared state capitalism to be “incompatible with … socialist market economy,” “outdated” and “threaten[ing to] Chinese prosperity.” Preach it, sister. China’s economy began its rapid growth under the market principles of Deng Xiaoping, culminating with the break-up and privatization of many of SOEs in the 1990s, before stalling under Premier Wen Jiabao. What you get, in my limited observations as a peon in the state publishing industry, is a colossal amount of waste and idiotic decisions made to impress and boost the egos of clueless higher-ups.
  • American leaders may be wealthy, but Chinese leaders are WEALTHY. American leaders are controlled by corporations, but Chinese leaders control corporations. Both systems lead to corruption and cronyism. Which system is worse?

The richest 2 percent of the NPC — 60 people — had an average wealth of $1.44 billion per person. The richest 2 percent of Congress — 11 members — had an average wealth of $323 million.

It's made of trash!

Weekend fun: Gingerbread cupcakes with lemon frosting

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So I baked cupcakes over the weekend!

For my mommy, who doesn't eat them so I can eat them alllllll.

The cupcake craze landed in Beijing right about the same time I did, way back in 2009. Now, there is a gourmet cupcake shop near my office, two bakeries that deliver cupcakes to your door, and a trendy cafe that specializes in cupcakes.

Like everywhere else in the world, they are expensive little mofos, costing from 22 kuai ($3.49). For less than that, I could get a bowl of beef noodles and two rou bings for a not particularly healthy, but filling, dinner. Cost of living, folks. I don’t know why I have to pay U.S. prices for cupcakes in China, but it has something to do with bakers who are unwilling to use inferior Chinese ingredients.

I’ve only made cupcakes a handful of times with this tea cupcake set my sister got me a couple of Christmases ago. How charming! Too bad they only come in cute numbers, like four, so all that hard work gets eaten in the span of two minutes. That amount of effort is only justified for a few occasions.

So I’ve spent more than two years looking for a cupcake pan small enough for my oven. Not just for cupcakes, you know, but also muffins. But my oven is so small that even half-sized pans for mini muffins were too big! So I have mostly just been buying cupcakes.

An Easy-Bake Oven for not-quite grown-ups.

But now, I don’t have an excuse to indulge in these delightfully sinful treats anymore! My mommy solved all of these problems in one go, and got me this appropriately pink cupcake maker for my birthday! I was finally able to test it out this weekend and made a batch of blueberry muffins and gingerbread cupcakes. This could be the start of something very exciting, like cupcakes every weekend!

Long nian kuai le, and other stories

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Winter. It’s boring and cold, especially in Beijing, which turns into a giant windy freezer box for a good four months. I blame the cold for everything, including my disinterest in writing.

But I have actually been up to stuff, such as:

  • Looking for an apartment. Man, what a hassle! Especially in the cold. After going, in the cold, to see a crappy apartment, you just don’t feel like looking at anymore. Instead, you feel torn about whether you want to go back out into the cold or stay in the crappy apartment, which is dirty and decorated weird, but is shielding you from the cold. Nevertheless the real estate agent, who speaks to you in a jarring voice that could only be described as soothing robot voice, drags you to see another apartment anyway, which is too expensive. And crappy.
  • Finding an apartment. Wow! Boyfriend and I totally lucked out. We found a huge apartment for a great price and it’s opposite a park and not much further to the office than old current apartment! And we didn’t have to pay an annoying, unhelpful agent for it.
  • Getting tired of Chinese New Year festivities. Can it be? After two years of month-long firework extravaganzas, I was growing tired of the spectacularly loud and colorful displays of exploding gunpowder? Hmm. Maybe not tired of, but not as impressed and enthralled by. Or can I chalk up my malaise to tighter government regulations?
  • (Speaking of fireworks, I cannot NOT get giddy and excited when I see colorful explosions in the sky. But how come Chinese people look bored when they set them off? Is that what decades of setting off fireworks does to someone?)
  • Buying pet dragons. It’s the Year of the Dragon!
  • Going to the Philippines. I went to five of them, in fact. I did not detect any hostilities remaining from the hostage deaths incident of 2010. Nope, they were very friendly and servicey. Unfortunately, there were also a lot of Chinese, who I presume were also taking a break from China. Still, I nominate it for Best Holiday Ever.
  • Getting tan, parasailing, bananananana boating, falling into ocean, playing badminton and beach volleyball, driving a motorbike, taking boyfriend on motorbike ride, staying in a bungalow, staying in a resort, staying at a bed and breakfast, being an extra in a movie, snorkeling, wading through shallow waters to get to a boat, climbing into one boat from another boat, getting sunburned on a boat with a 5-pound coconut.
  • Watching three of my teams lose in the same week, all from last-quarter/minute/extra time comebacks. God, how depressing. (The last one was just Sunderland in a non-important match, and I only care about them because boyfriend gets upset if they lose, but man, unnecessary. The other teams shall remain unnamed.)
  • Moving. I’ve never hired movers before, but they are so efficient! I hadn’t even finished packing and they had all my shit in the truck ready to go. Jesus. They make me WANT to move. Then, boyfriend and I spent the past weekend scrubbing and cleaning and unpacking and organizing and rearranging. Now that most of it is out of the way, we can go furniture shopping!

So that was the last 5.5 weeks in a nutshell.

The unreported food shortage

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There is a food shortage going on right now in Beijing. I went to three different restaurants for lunch today and they were all out of food.

Restaurant 1: Wild Honey

Boyfriend and I sit down, ready to try something new. It was 1 p.m., admittedly on the late end for lunch, but the small cafe was still full of diners. I chose a tuna sandwich; he went for some kind of pizza with nachos. The waitress (not even kindly) informed me that they are out of bread. Seriously, bread. A pretty staple ingredient for more than five things on their menu. Fine, croissant, whatever. We wait. Ten minutes later, waitress comes and tells us that they are out of nachos! But why did it take them 10 minutes to discover they were out of nachos? We left.

Restaurant 2: 钰花溪 Tangka

So this spicy ramen place seemed to be out of everything we tried to order. Out of six things we pointed at, they had two, which is what we ended up with.

Restaurant 3: Not really a restaurant

I went to check out an herbal tea shop to see if they had bubble tea. They didn’t. Not that they were out of it, they just don’t have it on the menu. Anyway, I tried to get a coconut sago thing instead, which they were out of. At this point, I just gave up trying to order anything.

Actually, it’s quite common to go to a restaurant and, upon ordering your favorite dish, be told they are out of it. Oh, geez, you wonder, why didn’t you tell me that at the beginning, like they do in the U.S.? But you grudgingly move on and try to order something else you like. That’s when you realize why they didn’t tell you what they were out of at the beginning — because they’d be reciting so many dishes.

Restaurants in China serve giant book-fulls of dishes, which means they need to stock a shit ton of raw ingredients. However, they don’t, and bad management/planning means that they don’t stock enough of lots of things to meet demand. I wonder if their lack of respect for demand stems from their Communist days.

Well, it could be worse. There could actually be a food shortage.

One China, multiple views

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Sometimes, you can read a really interesting and informative post about China that takes a more nuanced approach to figuring out what exactly China is and isn’t. For an example, see this blog post about the slew of punishments handed out recently, over the holidays, to political activists. It argues that China isn’t necessarily cracking down on dissent more than before, as claimed in the Western press; rather, it could just be following its own policies regarding repeat offenders.

At the same time, you can read super superficial crap in the New York Times, of all places, about all the wonderful offerings of China, written by a recent transplant who sticks to many, if not all, of the stereotypes related to the lost little laowai who couldn’t hack it back home. Teacher? Check. Loves China? Check. Learned a lot? Check. Actually didn’t learn much? Check.

There are just no nuances in that article at all. Here are some of the stupid things he wrote:

  • “China wants you. Job prospects are abundant.” No. China does not want you. China wants your English-speaking and -writing abilities (they don’t even necessarily have to be great!) and your foreign-looking face.
  • “The effects of the Great Recession of 2008 may be felt in the United States for years, but they barely scratched China.” No. China over-corrected for financial crisis with the most giant stimulus the world has seen, and now it is facing rapid inflation and a real estate bubble that has many people (including me) reeling and feeling an impending sense of doom.
  • “China is a nation that unapologetically rejects Western democracy — and yet I am surprised to find that Chinese citizens and the news media have as much freedom as they do.” No. People and media can criticize the government and protest. And they do. But the concept of freedom in China is very tricky to define within a short rebuttal, but suffice to say that it’s much more complex and different than Americans’ simple, idealistic vision of it, which doesn’t exist even in the U.S.
  • “Pollution is bad. Beijing, like much of China, is often enveloped in what local residents euphemistically call ‘mist.’ But there are nice days, too, more than you might think.” Yes, there are nice days. But the point about the pollution is that it’s particularly bad when it’s bad. For days.

Look, there are many reasons to come China (and yeah, the job opportunities are a pretty big deal). I’ve given up on trying to figure out why I wouldn’t want to leave it even if I found a great job back in the U.S. But I’ve settled on this explanation: It’s an extremely complicated society, with some parts that have been explained over and over, and other parts that lurk under all those explanations, and this amalgamation of parts that make up China give so much food for thought and give you a chance to see into a world that is so vastly different than the one you were raised in. The point isn’t to understand why the Chinese, or China, are the way they are, or even to accept the way they do things (which, unfortunately, is what they want — “Zhe shi Zhongguo!” is their favorite way to tell off foreigners unwilling to put up with their bullshit). Rather, just observe and marvel — at their destruction, at their hope, at their chaos, at their absurdity, at their cynicism and optimism — and in the process, refine your own beliefs and truths.

When China meets rural America

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Insight into the decline of America’s heartland in the Atlantic by Stephen Bloom, a journalism professor at the University of Iowa:

An interesting sidelight to the outflow problem is the rapid influx of Chinese students at the University of Iowa. The university vigorously recruits Chinese undergraduates, and has even set up an office in Beijing with the express purpose of attracting Chinese to study in Iowa (no other recruiting office exists anywhere else). Almost all come from well-heeled families, who pay full tuition for their children to attend college. Few speak passable English, almost all congregate in majors that require little English (math, biology and actuarial science), and many drive around town in brand-new sports cars. It’s a strange sight to see in Flyover County — dozens of Chinese students moving together en masse, the girls chattering away in Mandarin, always holding each others’ hands. These wealthy, ill-prepared bonus babies are seen as the future of the University. If Iowa has fewer and fewer young people each year to fill the University’s cavernous lecture halls, and the state is still a tough sell to coastal American kids, then it’s China that’s the next frontier as state support for higher education dwindles.