Stuck On You

(Elvis Presley or Lionel Richie, take your pick.)

Didn’t sleep well last night.  Probably too much tea late in the day.  Got up late (8 a.m.) and the temperature outside was 7^o F.  It’s almost 3 p.m. on New Year’s Eve and the temperature has soared to 27^o, the expected high for the day.  Gonna chew up my new electricity units in a few days rather than a few months.

Yesterday I made my monthly sojourn to the big supermarket Metro, 3 bus stops away.  I stocked up on a few necessities and searched for a few Western luxuries.  Supermarkets tell a lot about a culture.  In France there’s this supermarket chain called Cora.  The first aisle you encounter upon entering Cora is the cheese aisle.  This aisle is about as long as those in a Giant grocery in Virginia.  This one, though, has a refrigerated, glass-enclosed case on each side, running its full length.  Inside the cases (both sides) are cheeses.  Just cheeses.  Hundreds of different kinds.  At the far end, as an end-cap, is a refrigerated case with about 30 different pâtés in their original baking dishes.  For me, this is close to heaven (heaven being the adjacent wine section, of course).

It’s slight different here in China.  Here are a bunch of women (mostly) searching the bin of fresh ginger for just the right specimen.  I took a bit of a gander myself, being both a keen observer in general and moderately knowledgeable about most foods, but I could discern no physical difference among the pieces of ginger.  Still, these people continued to pick up pieces, then put them down in favor of another.

There is no photo of sour cream in this post.  I have spent hours perusing the dairy sections of this and 3 or 4 other food stores and have yet to stumble across sour cream (for my world-famous stroganoff).  Sour cream also is an essential ingredient in mashed potatoes.  I made these for some friends a week or two ago.  Not only was the selection of potatoes quite dismal – only baking potatoes, no Yukon Gold – but I had to make them without sour cream.  In a feeble attempt at a substitute, I sequestered some of the mashed potatoes (already flooded with butter, of course, and speckled with chopped, yellow scallions) and added a little plain Greek yogurt.  The result was not as tantalizing as I had hoped, so I tucked away the rest of the yogurt in the fridge.  (I tossed it away in yesterday’s 5-minute cleaning frenzy.)

My guests were wonderful about it, though, and they ate plenty of the potatoes and assured me they tasted very good.  Ah, but only if they could taste my REAL mashed potatoes, with sour cream and much more garlic.

Speaking of yogurt, this country must be crazy about it.  At least 2/3 of the aisle-long refrigerated dairy case is full of yogurt, only a small portion of it semi-solid.  Chinese people seem to prefer yogurt that can be drunk from a small bottle or a squeezable plastic bag.

Here’s a quincunx of the flavors I picked up yesterday:

(Sorry for being pretentious.  I had to show off my word for the day.)

In all my shopping over the last 4 months, I have not run across milk in anything larger than half-gallon containers.  As in Europe, most milk is sold in room temperature, rectangular cartons with a much longer shelf life than milk sold cold in plastic bottles.  Much milk is sold in small, individual serving-size cartons.  Here’s a milk you don’t find in most U.S. stores:

Chinese people are big on having everything individually wrapped, possibly because they don’t go through the sweet stuff nearly as fast as Westerners do.  Here’s the contents of a box of almond cookies.

Here’s an individual serving of 3-4 hazelnuts (note the expiration date)…

…and another of 4-5 large, sweet, purple beans.

This package of lotus seeds (very tasty!) is a little larger and can be shared with companions.

Speaking of individual wrappings, I still have about 20 mooncakes left over from October.  I wonder if they have expiration dates.

At Metro I picked up a couple boxes of what looked like Oreo-type cookies.

The one on the left clearly shows tropical fruit (mango and orange), which gave me a hint as to the flavor of the goop between the chocolate outers.  The one on the right, however, had no such self-illuminating art, and thus I deduced it was either mint or green tea.  Though logically hoping for the former, what emerged were green tea Oreos.  (No comment.)

Incidentally, inside each box were three separately wrapped packages of the cookie in question.  I needed a knife to open them.

GLUE!!  That’s it!  The third item on my problems-with-China list.  In Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado, the Lord High Executioner sings a song about how important it is to “have the punishment fit the crime.”  Adhesives in China are neither all too weak nor all too strong; rather, the strength of the glues employed don’t seem to be appropriate for the situation.

Let’s start with cereal boxes.  Here’s what a box of Special K looks like every time I open one.

I refuse to be coerced into using a sharp knife to open a box of cereal.  Now, approaching this scientifically, one could hypothesize that it’s not the glue that’s amiss but rather that the cardboard is weaker.  Worse, one might even be so bold as to suggest that I have become less adept following retirement from teaching.

So let me add to the coffer of evidence.  The cereal inside is packaged in waxy paper as it often is in the U.S., but I need knife to open it.  Inside my small box of Cheerios are two foil-wrapped bags of the cereal, and never have I been able to pull apart the seam with use of a knife.

Yeah, I know; this doesn’t help my case.  But this does:  here are my two mops hanging from the walls in my bathroom.

The left, orange one has never pulled down the white hook that adheres to the wall.  The green one, on the other hand, which is only slightly heavier than the orange one, 4 times has pulled the hook from the wall, despite the use of copious amounts of “super” glue.  (Now THERE’S a misnomer.)

Ah, but here’s the pièce de résistance:  I finally bought a small sauce pan yesterday and soaked it for 24 hours in hot, soapy water to remove bar-code label.  No luck.

Now that I’ve frittered away New Year’s Eve day, I have to decide whether to go to the potluck tonight with the other foreign teachers.  All I have here that I could bring is a pot of pasta, but the worst thing is that it starts at 10:30, with the aim of seeing in the New Year at midnight.  I’m usually in bed by 8 or 9, so, at the moment, I’m thinking I’ll celebrate tomorrow at 1 p.m. when it’s midnight in Virginia.

Thinking of staying awake until midnight has me yawning already.  Maybe I have been weakened by retirement.

OK, enough frivolity for one holiday.  Here’s hoping I can be seriouser next time.

Happy New Year, everyone.  I’ll toast you with a glass of sherry either tonight at 9 or tomorrow at 1 – or both.

Sufferin’ Succotash

After the New Year’s gala last Saturday, I assumed groups of people would be going out to dinner to celebrate, but everyone was so worn out, all my friends just went home to sleep (or at least that’s what they told me J).

By the time I got back to my apartment with my booty, it was too cold and I was too tired to go back out to the cafeteria for dinner.  Scrounging around my fridge, I found some stuff in the freezer I had forgotten about.  Seems like my low energy level combined with my poorly stocked larder dictates that old standby:  pasta with garlic, olive oil, and anything else I can find.

I threw some frozen peas and frozen corn into my only pan with a little water and “steamed” them until they were not quite done.

While that was going on, I found some ancient shrimp in the freezer…

…that I thawed under warm water and mixed with the steamed corn and peas.

After drying the pan, I added the mixture and a little olive oil.

I sautéed the mixture while the pasta cooked.  When that was done and drained, I added the contents of the pan and added salt and pepper.

I put some in a bowl and topped it with Parmesan cheese that was undoubtedly grated fresh about 2 years ago, just before being sealed in a green cardboard container.  You can’t see the salt because it’s white and mostly dissolved anyway.  You can’t see the pepper because I have only white pepper; black pepper was not to be found at Carrefour.

Next career:  television cooking show for university students, using my former TJ students, one or two at a time, as guests.  Sponsors:  Bird’s Eye and Red Bull.

And the Angels Sing

For the past 3 weeks or so, various groups of teachers have been practicing 8-10 hours per week on group dances for performance at the school’s annual New Year’s celebration.  All teachers are required to participate.  The groups are based on which year you teach and in which subschool.  I’ve been whining about this preparation for these weeks because the practices greatly interfered with meetings I wanted to have with individual teachers.

This celebration, which took place yesterday afternoon, evidently is one of the big two events of this kind at the school, the other being the Teachers’ Day already held in early October.  The entire faculty and staff attend.  Here is the audience awaiting the start of things.

The principal (far right in red jacket) introduces all the deputy principals, who recite in unison a short New Year’s greeting.

Some of the acts were cute and used modern music…

…and others were elegant and used traditional Chinese music.

One particularly nice performance was turned in by none other than the cafeteria staff.

In the photo below, note that the chair in front of me is empty.  The translator took off temporarily and thus I don’t know for sure what group this is.  From their shirts (“Running”), I deduce they are the physical education staff.

At almost the last minute, Li Jing and I decided to perform, and thus, with only two rehearsals, the second early on the morning of the event, Li Jing sang a Chinese song and I accompanied her on the piano.

Li Jing took screen shots of the music online, and pasted them into a document that I then printed and taped to some cardboard.

Because the written music was too simple, I wrote the corresponding chord names above the staff and played whatever chords and arpeggios I felt like that would fit with the notes she was going to sing.  As you can see, it’s not the most difficult piece of music I’ve had to tackle.

Here I am getting ready.

Note the chair.  The day before they had a standard piano stool.  This chair was much too low and it was weird playing.  Also note the little microphone at the top of the piano.  Two bars into the song I realized it was causing feedback, so while I continued to play with the right hand, I had to move it to the floor with my left.

Li Jing came in on time and, considering the circumstances, it went quite well.

The piano microphone was for me to sing the repeat of the chorus – in Chinese, phonetically.  With the microphone now on the floor, Li Jing improvised by bringing her mike to me.

Thus at this point I was looking at the chord names, playing arpeggios or whatever, and reading the phonetic Chinese words so I could sing them.

Not bad for two rehearsals, eh?  (Thanks, Suzi O.!)

The whole celebration reminded me of International Night at TJ without sitar music…

…with every act ending in a celebratory formation.

I know these photos aren’t the best, but I have an excuse:  I was videotaping with one hand and taking stills with the other.  Neither turned out great.

After all the acts were completed, they drew names for prizes, as well as announcing what other prizes attendees would get according to the color of the slips of paper they received in an envelope when they entered.  This sequence of events keeps everyone there to the end.

If most of the people in this photo don’t look Chinese, it’s not because of clever make-up.  They asked the foreign teachers to do the honor of drawing names.  All in all they pulled 240 names from this box, but, despite my stuffing the box with hundreds of pieces of paper with my own name on it, my name wasn’t called.  Still, according to the colored slips of paper I got upon entering, I received an electric tea kettle and tea pot…

…and a pressure cooker.

A clever eye out there in blog-land will notice that both items are manufactured by Sansui.  Interesting, or simply a coincidence?

The Lamps Went Out In Europe

Saturday, December 29, 2012

If you read my last post, you’re not gonna believe what happened this morning at 11.  Really, you can’t write novels as good as this:  I lost power.  Not physical strength (although that seems to be declining, too) but electrical power.  While sitting at my computer, happy as a lark (hmmm, how does one measure a lark’s happiness quotient?) everything went off:  my big monitor, all lights, and worst of all, heat.

Speaking of heat, this is reportedly the coldest winter in Beijing since 1967.

The timing was awkward, as I was expecting a teacher (let’s call her M) any moment.  M was coming to transfer a file to my computer.  Fortunately, battery power was on full.  I wanted to to be the first person to inform Kate-the-building-manager of our problems, so I called her.  She said, “So, you have no power in your apartment at all?”  I replied no, so she came down immediately.  No slum lords here.

M arrived at the same time.

First, Kate showed me that the lights were on in the hallway.  Probably could have done that all by myself.  Then checked the breaker switch box in the kitchen.

Strikes me that I probably could have done that, too.  She showed me that the main power switch had clicked off and would not stay on.  So the three of us paraded out into the hallway, down the hall about 5 yards to a meter that apparently is for my apartment.

She showed me that the red lights on the meter read “0000”all the way across.

Cut to the chase:  I’m supposed to keep an eye on this meter (which is 5 yards, or is that meters) farther down the hallway than my apartment door) to see when the number gets low.  When it gets to about 100 units, I have about 3 weeks left, depending on how cold it is outside.

That’s when I’m supposed to stick my “electricity card” into it and replenish the electricity units.  “What ‘electricity card’?” I asked.  Kate said she assumed someone had given me the standard electricity card when I moved in.  I reminded her that SHE was the one who checked me into the apartment and showed me “everything I needed to know.”  She grinned sheepishly and took off down the hall, cheerfully calling that she’ll be right back with a card.  Meanwhile, M and I retreated to my apartment where we began transferring the file (a large video clip).

File transfer completion and Kate’s return occurred simultaneously.  The three of us then went back to the hall meter and Kate showed me how to put in the card to transfer units from the card to the meter.  When she put the card in the meter, I humbly pointed out that nothing was happening, upon which she herself pointed out that I had to add units to the card first.

And how do I do that?  I had to take the card to a bank, pay them money, and they’d add electricity credits to the card.  I looked questioningly at M as if to say, “This is a joke, right?”  But in a rare instance of commonsense, I held my tongue as M confirmed Kate’s instructions.

As Kate waved goodbye with a “Good luck!” on her lips, M kindly offered to take me to the bank and show me how to do this.  I took my usual 20 minutes to put on my shoes, long-johns, two sweatshirts, and my broken jacket, and we headed out the door to the below-freezing air with a wind.

Two long blocks later we arrived at the China Construction Bank, the nearest financial institution.  Closed.  M said they must be closed due to the upcoming New Year’s holiday and that we’d have to head over to the ICBC bank a couple blocks farther on.  I said, “Won’t they be closed, too?”  M said they wouldn’t.  The China Construction Bank can afford to close because they are big and powerful and can afford to shut down for holidays.  ICBC isn’t and can’t.

We loaded 614 units onto the card at a cost of 300 RMB (about $48), which, I’m told, should last until the end of March.  I was grateful to M and offered to buy her lunch at my noodle place.

As we ate, M decided to confide in me about some personal problems.  Uh, oh.  I listened intelligently and offered sage advice.  This has already happened several times here because, I think, (a) I’m an outsider not permanently ensconced here, (b) my usual reticence is misconstrued to be patience, and (c) I clearly have that certain je ne sais quoi.

Lunch was cut short because we both had to hurry back to school and get ready to perform in the New Year’s celebration gala.  More on that later.

Water, Water, Every Where

Yeah, you guessed it:  …nor any drop to drink.  Got back to my apartment after class at 4:30 today.  Had a snack of a couple microwaved frozen rolls and relaxed for an hour before getting down to the big decision of the day:  what to do or make for dinner.

Light snow has been falling and it’s cold – a little colder now than before the zipper broke on my new jacket.  But I’ll get to that.  So I decided to make my improvised version of pasta primavera:  pasta with lots of garlic and olive oil and any reasonable vegetable I could find in the fridge.  I found some frozen peas and frozen corn (oh, joy), so that was going to be my dinner.  It was either that or go out in the wet, cold night and walk 150 meters to the cafeteria.

But when I went to fill my paper-thin aluminum pot with water for the pasta, nothing came out.  I tried the faucet in the bathroom, then the shower.  Same story.  I called Kate the building manager, and I didn’t have to say anything other than “Hi, Kate” before she told me that a water pipe on the ground floor froze and burst, and that the repairmen had to turn off the water in the building.  The earliest we’d have water again would morning – maybe.

So I put on my broken jacket and went to the cafeteria.  Like everyone else this time of year, we all sit and eat with our jackets on.  I’m one of the few who has a hat, which I leave on, also.

Coincidentally, I mentioned to a teacher visiting me yesterday that I sure hope we don’t lose power in this dorm building; it would be really cold in here.  He said “Impossible.”  I should have said something about water, too.

Not everything in China is great.  (Duh.)  I think I’m going to start a list.  At the top will be brooms.  I know I’ve mentioned this before, but it still befuddles me, everytime I see someone sweeping, which is almost every 10 feet, why they don’t have decent brooms in this country.  It’s not due to a shortage of wood or plastic.  Everywhere they all use either these tiny plastic brooms (like the one I have in my apartment) or really short wooden/straw brooms.  In both cases, the user has to bend almost in half to sweep.  Even the wooden snow shovels they’re using now to clear the sidewalk are short-handled.  What is it with these people?  Do they like having bad backs?

Number two on the list will be zippers.  First, let’s talk about direction.  You know the slanted pockets for hands in some sweatshirts and jackets and how some have zippers?  Well, all my U.S. ones of this type close by moving the zipper from the upper position down.  In my Chinese jacket, however, it’s the opposite.  You may not think this is a big deal, but God is in the details (and everywhere else, of course).  It should be pointed out to any perfectionist that:

1. It takes more effort to close a zipper than to open it.
2. If you close it top to bottom, your shoulders hold the sweatshirt in place, and you can close the zipper with one hand.
3. If you have to open this same pocket, you can use your bottom 3 fingers to hold the jacket while using your thumb and forefinger to pull up the zipper.
4. If you have a jacket made in China, however, the zippers go the opposite directions.
5. This means that to close the zipper, you have to pull UP, and it’s much harder to do that one-handed.

Now let’s turn our attention to the main zipper.  In men’s jackets made for the U.S. market (I won’t go so far as to say actually made in the U.S.; that would be ridiculous, as you know), the pulling mechanism is on the right side.  In my Chinese jacket I bought for $50, it’s on the left side, which, I believe, is how U.S. women’s zippers are.  But, no big deal, I’m a flexible guy and I can adjust to such trivialities.

But a couple days ago I zipped up my jacket only to discover that it immediately had become unzipped all by itself (the zipper pulling apart).  Exclamatory oath.  I thus went out into subzero (Celsius) weather only partially attired for the situation.  While walking I pondered the probable location of the receipt for the jacket, all the while knowing such musing would be useless – either because I wouldn’t find it or because the grizzled sales guy at the double discount outlet on the nearby side street would laugh simply at the notion of replacing it, assuming I could convey such a request.

Thus upon returning to my apartment I decided to have a closer look at the zipper.

I quickly discovered that the moveable portion of the zipper comes out the top end.

I noticed that the spacing on this removed part was wider at one end than the other, and I deduced that the simple pulling on the zipper had bent the middle connecting metal a little.  Using my fingers, strengthened by decades of piano playing, I squeezed it, back to what I believe was its original position.  I replaced the zipper half and discovered that now the zipper worked perfectly.  Creative problem-solving at its finest.

Except that today I experienced the original problem again.  Examining the zipper half once more, I realized that this piece of metal is weak and must be a cheap alloy imitation of a real American zipper.  So I squeezed it together once more but I currently am not using it.  Much more bending and squeezing and the metal will fatigue and break.  Across the street at the university there’s a seamstress who may be able to replace this cruddy zipper with a slightly less cruddy one, and I want this zipper to be intact at the time I finally get over there.  Thus, until then, I wear an extra shirt (making 4 layers, including my long-johns), scarf, hat, and gloves, but I daren’t zip up my jacket.  Burrrrrr!

Look for the union label.

Irish Washerwoman

It’s 12 degrees out today, the coldest day of the season so far and, I’m told, unusually cold even for Beijing.  I would stay indoors in my now comfortably warm apartment except for the fact that I have friends coming over for dinner.  I have to go to Carrefour to buy plates, silverware, a salad bowl, and a few staples (no, not the U-shaped wire things).  Then it’s off to the outdoor market to get veggies, thence to the fancy (aka expensive) supermarket to get the best chicken breasts.  Over a mile of walking.

Thank goodness I have my thermal underwear (purchased on Amazon.cn).  They are navy blue.  Well, at least they were until I washed them with a towel.  Now they’re speckled.  Perhaps an improvement that I’d have had to pay extra for.

The menu will be salad, chicken piccata (thanks to the huge jar of capers I brought from the Fairfax Costco to here), mashed potatoes, and something green, with chocolate cookies and oranges for dessert.

I wash clothes every weekend, a load of white stuff and a load of colored stuff.  I’ve been putting them on hangers, then leaving them on the balcony to dry.  The last time it took almost 3 days for my jeans to dry.  Succumbing to the pressures of reality, I finally spent $20 on an indoor clothes rack.

As I’ve been washing clothes, I’ve noticed that they generally come out linty.  So I looked for a filter and saw this 6-inch tall blue thing that looked like a filter, so I’ve been wiping it off before every load.

Weeks later I discovered that it comes out, so I took it out for easier wiping and rinsing under the faucet.

Now I’ve just discovered that it opens up, and, lo and behold, look what I found!

I removed the 4 months of lint that accumulated there and replaced it in its receptacle.  Then, I saw that there was another filter on the opposite side of the washer’s basin.

Incremental improvement.  Only took me a third of a year.

You Can Dress Him Up But

Early this past week I was invited to the ICC Christmas party.  (ICC is one of the subschools here.  Most of the students will go to college in America or UK.  All of them come from wealthy – very wealthy – families.  Most of the teachers are foreign.)  I graciously accepted and was told that I could participate in the secret Santa gift exchange and, to do so, I should bring a gift costing 50 RMB or less.

The I informed the party’s coordinator on Thursday that I would indeed be joining the festivities, even though I don’t know the other attendees hardly at all.  None of my Chinese friends could join me.  They all had something to do, but I think the real reason lies more with the distinct isolation of this subschool and the almost complete separation of the teachers and staff therein from those in the regular school.

Yesterday morning I went to the mall to look for something suitable, gender-neutral, and cheap (about $8).  I saw a candle store, but the only thing in there in the right price range was a round thing you throw into tubs when taking a bath.  I saw a trinket store with lots of Disney Christmas tree ornaments, but the cheapest on was 200 RMB.  I kept walking and, as always, ended up at Carrefour.  Eureka!  I found a nice day calendar with a fake leather cover.

I didn’t see any wrapping paper, but I figured I’d solve that problem later.

The rest of the afternoon was taken up with my neuro class and meeting with a teacher.  Four of my students gave me a National Geographic book of aerial photos of China, decorated with paper flowers they made.

By 6:00 I had to get serious about going to this party, held at a nearby hotel’s restaurant.  I found a nice red box used for holding cans of tea…

…and put the calendar in it.

I used printer paper to wrap it, then one of the paper flowers from the book for decoration.

I put the present in a plastic bag, then donned my sport coat and slacks, and walked a half mile to the hotel.

The organizer told me to put my gift under this plastic palm tree with the others, so I did.

The food was the hotel’s standard buffet, just a little above adequate.  I sat with a few physics teachers that I know slightly.

Then came the gift dispersion.  The organizer picked up the gifts one by one, looked at the name, and called the recipient to come get it.  Here’s the catch:  I was never given a name to put on my package and didn’t realize I needed one.  My name wasn’t called.  So I went to the plastic palm, picked up my package, and put it back in my plastic bag.

I was the first to leave.

Zorba the Greek

I think the food I miss the most is Mexican.

In “Silver Bells” I described my foolishness at unknowingly spending $6 for an avocado.  About 25% of that perfect specimen went into Monday’s omelet.  That leads to the biggest question of the day:  What should I do with the remaining 75% of avocado?  Clearly, guacamole was out of the question; I calculated that my standard 6-avocado recipe would cost about $50.

I ended up deciding to make my version of a Greek salad, which has avocadoes.  I already had red onions, and I knew I had no chance of finding kalamata olives within walking distance of the school, so that left only the feta cheese.  Carrefour has a very limited selection of cheeses and I found only one item that had anything that looked like Greek wording on it.  So, to preserve the remaining 75% of my $6 avocado, I spent $6 on a mystery cheese.

Note that the actual cheese (white, to the left of the box) bears little resemblance to the picture on the box itself.  It turned out to be edible, and though I don’t know whether it falls in the feta category, it tasted OK, so I added that to my only baking bowl that already contained sliced mushrooms, finely sliced yellow scallions (substituted for the red onions), and quartered tomatoes.  I like to add a little fresh lemon juice to these salads before adding the olive oil, but the only strainer I have is a large one.

It did the job, and the end result was a pretty good dinner, even if it can’t really be called a Greek salad.

Now the only question is, what am I going to do with the remaining 85% of the $6 “feta.”

Silver Bells

I just returned to China from a short trip to the U.S.  It’s harder to adjust to the time difference nowadays, and I’m pretty unproductive:  groggy during the day as I try to stay awake, and laying awake at night trying to decide whether to get up and get some work done.  Fortunately, on Saturday I had enough energy to go shopping for refrigerator reinforcements – during the day, of course.

Because I didn’t get off until afternoon, I went to the Modern Plaza supermarket instead of Carrefour (which would have been extremely crowded).  Modern Plaza is the high-end mall, and the prices in the supermarket are significantly higher than those at Carrefour.  Still, I figured I’d just get some milk and a few veggies, and thus I would spend the extra dough in exchange for not standing in line for over an hour.  In my little hand basket I first put some milk, then some tomatoes, mushrooms, and an avocado.  But then I remembered that open-air market that was nearby and realized I could get most veggies there much cheaper.  So I replaced the tomatoes and mushrooms, but kept the avocado and milk.

I knew I wouldn’t find avocadoes at the market, and Carrefour doesn’t carry them either.  Avocadoes are rare in China, and I don’t believe the trees are native here.  The small production of avocadoes apparently results from a few, inferior seedlings introduced last century.

On my way over to the market (which, as you recall, consists of individuals sitting on wooden boxes surrounded by their particular category of vegetable), I passed some small stores and was surprised to hear “O Little Town of Bethlehem” emanating from an outdoor speaker.  Christmas is not an official, Government-sanctioned holiday here, but China is not the Godless wasteland Americans often envision.  On Sunday, as I was dropping off my shirts at the cleaners in the Carrefour mall, I heard more Christmas carols coming over the background speakers.  My karaoke group intends to sing at the December 29 New Year’s celebration, and though we haven’t decided what to sing yet, one of my Chinese friends suggested “Silent Night.”

At the beginning of the market’s alley there was a small pickup truck filled with oranges.  I picked out a couple large ones, the guy weighed them, and I handed him a 10 RMB bill.  He mimed (and probably also said) that the cost was 20 RMB!  I thought this was outrageous, so I shook my head and walked away as he grumbled something uncomplimentary about me to his compatriots (partners in crime?).  I walked a few yards to a small “stall” and bought a couple other oranges, somewhat smaller, for 5 RMB.  [As I was writing this, I got a hankering for an orange, which I am now eating.  It’s sweet, juicy, and delicious, and I’ll be going back to that stall tomorrow.]

This is the time of year for oranges, and everyone is eating a lot of them, just as they ate apples the last couple months.  This reminds me of France (and probably most of the rest of the world, other than America) where people are satisfied with eating the vegetables and fruits when they are in season in their specific location and not insist on having them shipped from other parts of the country or world year-round.  I remember in particular one summer in central France when the white asparagus crop was harvested.  Every restaurant had a big sign in the window informing passers-by that new and clever menu items featuring white asparagus were now available – temporarily.  Incidentally, at that same time and location in France, the cavaillon were harvested.  These are without a doubt the best melons I’ve ever eaten.  I could move to the Auvergne tomorrow just for the fruit, vegetables, and cheeses – and earthy wine and lower level of tourism.

I sense that I digressed for a mo, so…  Back at the market, I bought a few mushrooms, a couple tomatoes, and something that looked (and tasted) like thin yellow scallions.  On Monday, I made an omelet with these items, plus avocado and sharp cheddar, of course.  Delicious!  The avocado was perfect, which it should be:  as I took it out of the fridge, I noticed the price and got real sticker shock.  This one avocado, wrapped first in Styrofoam netting and then plastic, was 38 RMB (about $6).  Guess I won’t be making much guacamole here.  Pits.

At the other end of the alley was a man and his wife working and selling something out of their tricycle that had a 2×2 flat bed on the back.  There was a little gasoline-powered motor linked to a square funnel by a rubber belt.  She was pouring corn kernels into the funnel, and, as the motor cranked, out of the side near the bottom came this tube of puffed up corn that one of my friends subsequently referred to as a kind of popcorn, though it tastes more like those puffy corn things without the pseudo-cheese coating.

The continuous tube fed into the man’s hands, and he broke it into 8-inch pieces that his wife stuffed into plastic bags in between funnel filling.  There was a pile of these bags in front of her and I inquired, with body language, as to the cost of a bag.  She said 3 RMB.  I handed her a 5 RMB note, which she tucked into her purse.  I stood there, waiting, and she looked at me now and then.  I was waiting for her to hand me one of the bags – I didn’t want to be rude and just grab one – and I think she was waiting for me to simply leave.  So I picked up a bag, waited a few seconds more while looking at her, then pointed to the bag and held up 3 fingers with a questioning look on my face.  She blandly reached into her purse and pulled out 2 RMB notes for me.

I’m sorry I forgot my camera that day; maybe I’ll see them there again.  In over 3 months of being here this was the first time in China when I thought someone was trying to take advantage of me financially because I wasn’t Chinese:  first the orange guy, then the puffed corn woman.  Not a perfect world – anywhere.

I returned to my dorm to find a small Christmas tree in the lobby, sandwiched between two other tree-like things.  What a nice touch.

There were a few other decorations on the central pillars.

Then, arriving at my door, there were 3 candy canes taped to it, as there were on all the doors.  Seemed like something Kaitlin K. (former student) would do.  (Hmmm.  I wonder if she’s in Beijing.)

The Two Tragedies

I’m assuming most of you know that there was a mass stabbing incident in China the same day as the shootings in CT.  Some interesting comparisons:

• Lanza apparently killed his mother before going to the school.  The Chinese guy killed an 86-year-old across from the school before going after the children.
• None of the stabbed children died, though some lost ears or fingers, and there was lots of blood.
• The official Chinese press spends more air time on the CT attacks than the China ones, correctly pointing out that there were so many deaths in CT because the attacker used guns (one of America’s blights).
• There does not seem to have been any compassionate statement given by the Chinese central government about the killings in China.
• Reportedly, when the press went to the local Chinese government officials for information, the officials said they had nothing to say and closed the door on the journalists.

I (as I’m sure you do, too) have more to say on this but as it doesn’t relate specifically to China I’ll refrain; I don’t want this to become a forum for general news, especially of this kind.