My posts have slowed down a bit because of Chinese New Year aka the Spring Festival which, rereading this post, I didn't actually write much about. Even though I was actually quite busy most of the day eating, drinking, visiting relatives of my friend, and lighting fireworks Chinese New Year in China is a hard experance to describe. While I can tell you that I ate four large meals, started drinking at noon, tried not to blow my hand off with cheap Chinese fireworks, and watched the CCTV New Year's Gala, it loses something in translation. What I can say is it is a rather crazy holiday, if you wanted to you could do Spring Festival from dawn till dusk. During Spring Festival it seems like every old Chinese lady in the country is in a constant state of cooking and every old Chinese man is giving the foreigner some of his special medicinal corn whiskey out of a terribly large plastic bottle. I can confirm, the food is on point. Interestingly enough, I think many of the dishes are made to be recycled into new dishes. Pig's foot noodles breakfast becomes a protein at the major lunch meal which becomes a soup base for late night dumplings. My friend's father-in-law was especially proud of the wild mountain bees served fried with chillies, apparently they are both expressly expensive and rare. They tasted pretty good actually. One of the major activities is visiting other people's, mainly relatives, houses, all of which serve more food and alcohol. While the food can be refused, your new host will fight you to stay and eat. I ended up eating a second lunch because my friend's brother-in-law put the food out on the table before we could say no. The most iconic image of Chinese New Year is the fireworks, legal without a permit only on the New Year's holiday. They are fun but it is important to note that the fuses are so short they might as well not exist and not all fireworks actually work well. We got a few duds in our batch, this is something you just have to live with. The fireworks are also constant, it is as close as I ever want to come to becoming a resident of Aleppo. Overall I enjoyed my first real Chinese New Year, even with the craziness.
2 Comments
For those of you who don't know, Hunan Province, the province who's capital is Changsha, is the home of Chairman Mao Zedong. Mao was born in a village about an hour away from Changsha and graduated from Hunan Normal University in Changsha. It is only fitting then that one of Changsha's major sites is a massive bust of a young Chairman Mao. Forentually, this bust is located on Orange Island (橘子洲), basically a large park on an island, within walking distance from my hotel. The walk might possibly have been nice in warmer weather, but alas it is a chilly 43F in Changsha so it wasn't that nice of a walk. I did notice that the Changsharen are much more interested in me than the Shanghaiese. I caught several people openly talking about me (I guess under the assumption I don't know any Chinese so couldn't understand them talking about the 外国人), more people quietly pointing me out to their buddies, and one little girl who just openly took pictures of me. Obvious foreigners are still a novelty in Changsha, unlike Shanghai who gets a large amount of white folks passing through. After my long walk I went to get some lunch. Octopus is one of Changsha's kings of street food and I must admit the spicy grilled octopus I had was very good. I actually had two versions, one which was spicier dry rub and the other was a smokier sauce. I also had these doughnuts that were most like Israeli Chanukkah Sufganiyot without any jelly. I would also like to note that Hunanese stinky tofu, the other king of Changsha street food, is less appetizing then Shanghaiese stinky tofu since it is black, in addition to reeking of death. I will never understand why in a country with such good tofu do the locals insist on eating the tofu that smells like sewer. I then went to Walmart to pick up some gifts for Chinese New Year. If you are worried about American companies, I can tell you Walmart of Changsha is having no problems getting customers in the door. Walmart is kind of like McDonalds in that they can adapt their business to any environment. Unlike the Walmart of Huntingdon, PA, which is the kind of place where you can pick up bread, a radar detector, and a shotgun, the Walmart of Changsha feels like any other Chinese grocery store. I picked up some gifts, a small bottle of nice baijiu, and a small bottle of Chinese brandy. I really didn't want the baijiu though, a local girl insisted on helping me pick Chinese New Years gifts in the alcohol section with myself being unable to tell her I was buying for myself. I am having a harder time with the language here then I thought, but I refuse to take responsibility for this. The locals don't seem to speak standard Mandarin and aren't use to foreign accents. It didn't prevent me from doing anything, it is just a bit annoying.
Like yesterday, today I basically walked around Luang Prabang seeing what I could see, an activity that took up basically my day. It started with the National Museum of Luang Prabang on the site of the former royal palace. As strange as it might seem from my pictures, Luang Prabang was once the capital of Laos, an independent, albeit weak, city state, and the capital of the powerful Kingdom of Lan Xang Hom Khao or the Kingdom of "Million Elephants and White Parasols". The Royal Palace was actually a very livable building, the King still had a gold throne in a room covered in mirrored mosaics depicting Lao life (that I couldn’t take a picture of) true, but most of the building while very comfortable was a place I could actually see raising a family. I then walked around and visited several different temples, or wats (hence the pun). While some were more impressive than others all were pretty cool. What is nice is that most were functional religious sites. They had real monks who did real rituals for real worshippers. While this is something most Americans take for granted, China in particular is famous for having tourist trap temples with fake (not ordained) monks preaching to people who don’t believe any of the theology but want to look cool. The smart people in Luang Prabang, tourists and locals, wear slip on sandals because Lao tradition dictates that you can’t wear shoes anywhere respectful, like wats or people’s homes. I spent a good bit of my day tying and uniting my shoes. I also didn’t relize how hard it is to walk barefoot until I had to do a lot. I basically hobbled around the temples thanks to my flat feet. Finally I crossed the bamboo bridge by my hotel (since Luang Prabang actually has two bamboo bridges). While there is really nothing on the other side of much interest crossing the bridge itself was a cool experience. I think across the bridge is where the actual Lao people live, the little bit I saw looked like a developing nation not a weird tourist destination. Consequently, the bridge is actually used by real Lao people during the six months a year it is standing (the current are too strong in the rainy season to support the bridge). While the Lao residents cross for free the tourists pay to support the bridge, though the toll is about 5,000 Lao Kip or about 0.61USD at time of writing. I also got to try more of the Lao food, curry for lunch and beef larb for dinner. I really like the curry, it was that kind of coconuty Thai curry taste but a bit more watery. Larb is a beef based meat salad, though it can be made with other meats or fish, which is considered the unofficial official national dish of Laos. Basically it is heavily spiced hamburger with bean sprouts and mint. I kind of like it but I don’t think it is a dish I would eat regularly. The Lao people apparently agree with me on because, according to the Official Lao Airlines Magazine, is eaten on mostly special occasions. If I was a body builder or a hard core believer in the Atkins diet I would love larb, it is basically all meat with just enough vegetables to stay healthy. The restraunts here continue to amaze me. They all serve basically the same massive Western/pan-Asian/Lao menu; in one of two locations, the main drag or by the Mekong River; with one of two price points, more expensive main drag and cheaper Mekong River; and one of two opening hours, main drag actually open hours or Mekong Lao almost never open. I like the ones by the River a bit more since I can watch the sun set over the Mekong with my dinner, which is nice.
I forgot, today is Christmas and the anniversary of my Torah portion (Vayeshev). The most Christmas here is some decorations at the super touristy places, and a “Marry Christmas” from a person I met in Vietnam, a Luxemburgish guy who I had a conversation with because my hat, and a friend from ECNU. There must be another Jew in this city but I would be surprised if there is more than that. While Chabad has gone far Luang Prabang, Laos is still a bit out of their reach. Just for the record, the year I am studying abroad in China is the first year in some time I haven’t had Chinese food on Christmas. Today the ever unchanging color was red Comrades. I visited the Shanghai Propaganda Art Museum with a friend of mine. It is a small museum but quite interesting. It is in the basement of a normal residential building so it was a bit hard to find, it did I feel like quite the adventure though. While they did explain roughly what was go in each era and what each poster said, but they also assumed you already knew who all the guys in the posters were and why they are important. Still, They did have a lot of interesting Chinese propaganda posters. They also had some for sale, so now I am the proud owner of a small, framed, Red Guard poster from 1968. They also sold a bunch of other stuff but the mini posters really are the best buy. Apparently, even though a large number of posters were produced, Chinese "great man" propaganda posters are quite rare since Deng Xiaoping ordered the government's stock of propaganda posters destroyed shortly after taking power.
After we finished, our mutual friend invited us to the Shanghai German Christmas Market. In order to export the Revolution to the Elven proletariat who are still under the rule of the bourgeoisie imperialists Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus, we accepted. German was a bit of an under statement for the market, it was the kind of place where the customers would look at you funny if you couldn't understand their order in German. I had a Havana Cranberry (Havana Club, hot cranberry juice, and simple syrup), a mulled wine with shot, a German sausage, and a Balkan hamburger (it was like a hamburger but freshly pressed with arugula on pitta bread), and a Belgian waffle with chocolate and whipped cream. The food and drinks were good, if a bit pricy. Most of the things for sale were food or alcohol but there was some ornaments and jewelry. It was packed, when we first arrived we had a hard time getting around. They did have a white guy dressed as Santa, if you wanted a drunken Santa picture. Well, I guess it is Christmas in Red China Comrades. Long live Chairman Mao, long live Maoist thought, and marry Christmas. This morning, I was woken up by a Skype call with my Mom who is actively at my family's Thanksgiving party in New Jersey. Because of how time zones work, even though it is November 25th in Shanghai, it is still the 24th on the East Coast of the United States. I enjoyed popping in for Thanksgiving, even if it was a bit confusing for not fully awake me. While this 12 or 13 hour (depending on day light savings time) is somewhat difficult to wrap your head around, fear not China has even more time zone weirdness if today also being tomorrow or yesterday makes too much sense for you. If hypothetically I was studying in Western China in cities like Lasa, Tibet Autonomous Region or Chengdu, Sichuan Provence the legal time difference would be the same 12 or 13 hours. Unlike many countries, all of China legally sets their clocks to Beijing's time zone instead of using the 5 time zones China actually covers. While this is ok for someone like me in Shanghai who would be in the same time zone as Beijing anyway, the significant difference between solar time and clock time poses a real problem for people in West China. Many just ignore the law altogether and use either what time zone they should be in or they adjust their schedules to compensate for the difference in solar time and clock time; hypothetically you would have lunch at 10:00AM when it is solar noon instead of having lunch at 12:00PM which is clock noon. This time zone oddness also means that the largest amount you would ever officially have to change your clocks by crossing one time zone is if you went from far West China (UTC +8:00) to Afghanistan (UTC +4:30). Afghanistan is one of a few countries to use a non-standard half an hour time zone. China also borders North Korea who, interestingly but kind of unsurprisingly, uses the non-standard half an hour time zone of UTC +8:30. If you really wanted to mess with your time zones and didn't care what countries you had to go to do it, an overland trip from Afghanistan, through China, and ending up in North Korea would be your best bet. I fully expect that Thanksgiving I won't have to deal with any of this time zone stuff, since I will be celebrating Thanksgiving from New Jersey, USA.
Unlike English, which tends to adopt foreign words to get new words, Chinese tends to gets new words by combining preexisting Chinese words. For example, the Chinese word for computer is 电脑; with 电 meaning electrionic and 脑 meaning brain combining to form the complex concept of a computer. Thanksgiving can be broken down into 感恩,meaning greatful, which can iteself be broken down into 感,feel or sense; 嗯,kindness; and 节,meaning holiday. Still, my favorite example of this is turkey, which in Chinese is 火鸡,from 火 meaning fire and 鸡 meaning chicken. While I am a fan of turkey and Thanksgiving, it would be significantly cooler if instead of eating a bird with a named after a country it isn't from for Thanksgiving we all sat around the table and ate a fire chicken! While it may be a funny literal translation with our pure white domesticated turkeys you can defiantly see the fire connection with some of the more while turkeys with their glistening feathers. Even though Chinese has a perfectly good word for turkey and the stereotype of China is that the people will eat any animal under the sun, turkey is rare in China. I am sure if I wanted to buy a turkey I could get one somewhere in Shanghai, but I believe it would be quite the quest.
|
AuthorI am a junior at Juniata College spending a year studying abroad at East China Normal University. Please feel free to join my on my journey to China and beyond. Archives
November 2021
Categories
All
|