The Moon Lady

The moon is so round tonight.

No werewolves though, just a lady and her rabbit. Oh and the tree. Her husband probably wished that he had shot down the moon instead. None of the stories explained how the rabbit ended up on the moon and it just occurred to me today to ask. Nobody knew. Darn Chinese myths and their loopholes. It's going to keep me up all night.*

But now that the moon festival is almost over, I'm officially instituting my own celebrations for crab season. I've begun mapping out all my crab routes. Still trying to decide whether investing in my own eating tools will be worth it though.

We dug up some old albums in our fireplace last night. Apparently when I was nine, I took meticulous notes on Cody's birth and baby milestones. I obsessed over how much Cody fed and even documented how Mom's Christmas wish was for Cody to poo because he hadn't done so for 9 days. And it was obvious that little me was sort of jealous because I wrote how "to my concern, . . .  everybody likes Cody." But I did wrap up that up with a little flourish, generously saying that "it is an honor to have Cody in our home." I guess I still treated him as a guest and expected him to leave at a more convenient time.

Somehow, he just stayed.

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* Apparently Wikipedia knows what the rabbit is up to.  I've never heard this version before.

101 Chinese Nights

I told a story today about Miss Kallie Strawberry, Miss Sisi Potato, Mr. Porter Banana, and Mr. Andrew Watermelon. We all masqueraded as berries to infiltrate the strawberry gang. Together, we stopped a fruit and vegetable territorial war just in time.

The kids loved it. They even kicked their parents out of the room so I could finish my story. When I was done, the six year old little girl grabbed my hand and asked me to sleep over.

My earlier stories of trading bread with golden bars inside for visas from consulates weren't as popular. Maybe I'm getting better at making up stories. Or perhaps the kids just don't understand that getting a visa is a lot harder than winning a food war.

---

My phone is half-way broken. I can't hear anything on it. I was originally hoping to wait till October to get the new iphone so I could play fruit ninja. But then I also kind of want an android just so I could hear "DROID" all day long. I miss it.

Any suggestions?

The Chinese way of choking on a fish bone

I choked on a 2 1/2 inch fish bone last night.

My friends made me drink a whole bowl of vinegar because apparently that would soften the bones. Some even tried shoving rice into my mouth to make me swallow it. But it was still there, burning my throat. I alternated between gagging and gasping for air. Eventually, one friend insisted on taking me to the ER to pull it out.

The doctor at the ER was not thrilled that we came in because he was going to get off work in 20 minutes. He checked and told me that there was hope because he could see the bone. Then he put his hand on my shoulder and said, "It will be 31 RMB ($5 USD) and you'll have to pay up first."

I gasped some more. As I was about to hold out the money, he stopped me and said that he was sorry because the IT system just crashed, which meant that he couldn't print out the pay slip. Without the pay slip, I couldn't pay downstairs. Without a payment receipt, I could not receive treatment.

I offered give him a deposit. I offered to give him a little extra. But I still had to keep choking for forty minutes while he hung out with the IT guy. He even told me not to worry about it because I wouldn't die. After the IT system was up and running, he seemed to remember me and then pulled the bone out in two minutes. Perhaps because of the delay, the lady downstairs gave me a 1 RMB discount. Great.

That said, I was lucky. While I was sitting there, another lady hurried in because she swallowed a fish bone too. But apparently she tried to eat too much rice and did too great of a job pushing it down -- now she had to get a tube stuck down her throat. Or do a mini operation.

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p.s. I went on my first work trip to Shanghai today. So interesting!

Dinner Partiers

Government officials rule China - one over-priced dinner and seven bottles of red wine at a time.

Businesses scramble to pay the bill.Because everybody knows that unless you grease the wheels, nothing will ever get done without a nod from the local official.And so people smile and play ridiculous drinking games with each other. And sometimes the girls come in and play as well. At the end of the night, you end up with very drunk old men who flatter each other incessantly, very young girls who laugh at all the inane jokes, and probably very little value in the actual business that actually got discussed.But that's business as usual.

My boss typically tries to shield me from such company dinners. He's a non-drinker himself, so he'll need a subordinate to drink on his behalf. Besides, he doesn't think that I should be exposed to those scenes.

But tonight was different. When official Tang* said that it was not necessary for my boss to bring an assistant to translate, my colleague casually mentioned that I was the new girl. And so I was asked to go. Because official Tang apparently liked  new girls.

But Tang was tame though. And no girls ever came in. Probably because his boss was sitting there, reminiscing about his Vietnam War days and talking about the corruption in Chinese national sport teams.

I had a rather enjoyable time, except I hardly ate anything because I was busy translating.

My takeaway at my first dinner with government officials?

Two officials don't make it right. But they sure do make it better.

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* This super common last name has been changed to another super common last name to ensure the anonymity of the official. If there's any resemblance to another official Tang,then I guess it validates my point about Chinese government officials in general.

Thesis? Check

12582 words, 53 pages (45 pages of text, 8 pages of works cited), and a year later, I'm finally done.
 
My visiting teachee, Risa, compared writing her dissertation to giving birth. I totally agree.

It's absolutely a labor of love (or Mormon-approved curses). 

There have been so many nights when I fell asleep sitting up. A few times I even felt like throwing up because I was so tired. I had different food cravings at different sections of my thesis. And don't even mention mood swings.

That said, it's been oddly rewarding as well. It's touching to see how my friends and family have supported me. And I positively glowed with love and pride in the stack of papers as I submitted them.

Now that it's over, it didn't seem that bad anymore.

And guess what?

It's a boy.

The urban myth of graduation

Graduation is a loaded word for me. On one hand, it means accomplishment and completion (or not because I'll stay for spring to finish up the thesis). On the other, goodbyes and full-blown adulthood.

Last week, the only thing I was really excited for during graduation week was the Tucano's luncheon that I've planned for my family. Emotional eater much?

But today, I woke up and thought: I'm so excited about graduating!

Well actually, the exact thought was whether we would get to do this:

Throw our caps.

Back in high school, when I was on the student council, I suggested that we should get cap and gown for our graduation. Ultimately it was shot down because the idea was too American (I went to a British school).

I've seen this done in movies so many times. But I've always wondered if it's real. Do people in America really just throw their caps in the air at the same time? Or do people just walk around under a cloud of thrown-up caps all day long? How do they really achieve that kind of hang time? How do you find your cap afterward? Should I put a sticker on mine so I can get it back?

Maybe it's just an urban myth. Evidence: Chelsea's cap didn't leave her head once during her graduation.

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(update) I just remembered this:

I still haven't ordered my cap and gown. 

Epic fail.

Digesting Memories

Growing up, I've always hated eating boiled eggs. The yellowish-blue ball of hardened yolk would lodge in my throat and had to be washed down by gulps of water. When I left for college, I swore that I would never touch another boiled egg except during Easter. But every day during the summer in Beijing, I would wake up to sugared tomatoes, steamed buns, chewy wooden ears . . . and two boiled eggs. Waipo would faithfully repeat the secret to her father's longevity (he died in a traffic accident when he was ninety), and watch me patiently until I squirmed and ate everything on my plate.

But after the summer, when I returned back to America and had to figure out my own breakfast every morning, I would always reach for the eggs and start boiling my water. I still grit my teeth when I ate them, but somehow I wanted to keep doing it. To show her that I hadn't forgotten.

When Chelsea left for college, I also took it upon myself to continue her idiosyncratic habit of mixing cereal with yoghurt, even though I used to tease her about it.

Other times, I was obsessed with baklava, barbeque chicken pizza, subway chicken teriyaki sandwich and co. because each bite was a way of holding onto them and pretending that they're still there to force me to eat those things.

And right now, I would really like some Pear and Gargonzola.

I should be writing my paper right now, but . . .

It's so ironic that I'm writing a paper for my OB class on how to motivate Kaplan employees . . . and yet I'm not at all motivated to finish this paper.

Perhaps it's because of the three hours of sleep I had tonight and the four hours last night, I'm just not feeling the miraculous motivating power that is supposedly going to spring from goal setting, efficacy, and expectancy theories. I am powering through though, just because I am looking forward to my soft-boiled egg, honeydew, and homemade wholewheat toast, slathered with Land O Lakes butter.

Instead of writing this paper, I should just write the textbook company and tell them to add breakfast to their categories of motivation tactics.

You Are What You Eat

Letter home to friends and family on July 26, 2010.

"Sheep penis!" I nearly choked on the chewy, translucent meat in my mouth. The men in their white aprons and chef's hats cackled and made some obscene gesture to further illustrate what I was eating. They must also have looked up that word in the thesaurus because they had some impressive variation. My friend Matt and I looked at each other and blanched. We had eaten it innocently, thinking it was snake meat that was wound around a kebab.

This was how we found out what it really was.

In that same evening, my friends and I had eaten fried scorpions (not bad except for the pieces of legs stuck in your teeth), grilled starfish (charred and bitter), and gecko hide (burnt, crunchy mess). We did end up eating the snake meat (I was sure this time) and snake skin. The snake meat, seasoned with red pepper flakes, was absolutely fantastic. It was all part of a glorious attempt to eat what the locals eat and live up to our "When in Rome" policy.

 Scorpion.

(Me, Natalie, Anne)

Got to love Anne's seductive I'm-about-to-eat-a-starfish look.

(Me & Matt)

Back when we still thought it was snake meat.

 The crew

The triumph was short lived though. My coworkers hooted and slapped the table when I recounted our gastronomical adventures the next day at work. Apparently they had never eaten any of that. My next-door cubicle neighbor said that that was especially for foreigners who would shell out big bucks to eat what nobody else would eat. On a more serious note, he also informed me that I better watch out for my health because as a woman, I had just eaten too much "maleness," or yang, and I would not be able to handle it.

Sure enough, I got sick the next day. Despite my insistence that I already had the sore throat before eating all that stuff, my cubicle neighbor shook his head and blamed it on the overwhelming yang. The lady across the hall, looked at my hands and informed me that it was because of my diminishing yue ya, the milky semi-circles at the tip of your cuticles. Apparently one needs at least eight to be classified as healthy. She instructed me on pressure points to massage daily and sleeping habits to adopt in order nurse my precious yue ya back to their previous glory.

After I got sick, I became part of an experiment among the neighborhood ladies. As I laid moaning on my bed, I listened to my wai po pick up phone calls from her friends with advice on foods to cook me. Their solution? A lot of ginger, black fungi, congee, and nothing cold. One morning I came out of my room, bleary-eyed, and saw that my wai po was reading her food chart intently. She looked up at me, stuck her tongue out, and grinned, "I think I nearly poisoned you!" According to her chart, there were certain foods that will hurt your chi, or your life energy, if you eat them together. Apparently what I was having for breakfast, shrimp chips and watermelon (it's the Vitamin C), formed one of the fatal combos. When I looked skeptical, she quickly hid the watermelon from me.

While I still laugh at some Chinese food theories that seem bizarre to me, I now approach the subject with an added measure of reverence. I occasionally look at my tongue in the mirror to monitor my yin yang balance and constantly check to see whether my yue ya have edged back. But I'll admit, when my wai po isn't looking, I still eat my shrimp chips with my watermelon.

 Waipo and me

Dinner Time

The famous snack street.

Octupus balls. My favorite.

冰糖水果。Carmelized fruits.

Lamb Kebabs.

Seahorses. Cicadas. Scorpions. Geckos.
I ate fried cicadas once for a dare. But that's a different blog post.

Star fish. More scorpions.

No idea. But something protein-rich?

Waipo lessons: #1: Eating a fish head

I'm living with my waipo, or my grandma, in Beijing right now. Everyday I hang out with her in our little kitchen and try to learn a thing or two about Chinese cooking. Today we made fish head tofu soup, deep-fried shrimp crackers, and this leafy vegetable dish. While the cooking was fascinating, the eating was a little harder.

I had made a pact with her that I would learn to eat anything as long as it is good for my health. Inevitably though, everything I ask her about she claims that it is good for me. Especially the fish head.

She taught me how to suck all the flesh and juices out of the pieces of head. When I was awkwardly playing around with it in my mouth, she stopped me and said,"Your tongue is the smartest muscle in your body. If you can learn to speak English, then learning to eat fish head is so easy." With that boost of confidence, I braved on. I did draw the line at the fish eyes though.

You see, my American friends, you are already one step ahead of everybody else when it comes to eating fish heads.

p.s. The secret ingredient is a little bit of vinegar. It makes the fish bones soft.

Like a kid in the candy store

I admit, I went a little overboard today. I don't even care if I eat it. Looking at my secret stash just makes me happy.

Starving college student

What I ate today:

A piece of toast slathered with chunky peanut butter

An Asiago cheese bagel

Ten dumplings

Sticky rice

BBQ Pork

Twix Bar

A chocolate chip cookie

Tuna Casserole

Right now I'm absolutely starving - and it's only 6:30 p.m.!

Tofu

I have some tofu that I want to use. So I tried looking up recipes for it. Here are some of the recipes I found:

Tofu Shakes
Curry Tofu Salad
Sloppy Tofu
Chocolate Orange Tofu Pie
Tofu Jerky
Maple Glazed Tofu (instead of Ham)
Tofu Cheesecake

Here's a photo of the Tofu cheesecake. It was submitted by somebody whose username is "skinnychef4ever".


Tofu Jerky baffles me. I can't imagine what you'll have to put into it to make it chewy. Ew.

No wonder Americans don't like Tofu. Skinny chefs all over town are trying to make jerky-less jerky, cheese-less cheesecake, and ham-less Ham dish with it.

Subway

Habits comfort me. And eating at Subway for lunch is one of them. I was introduced to Subway rather late in my life but ever since I took that first bite, I was hooked. I go to the Subway at BYU quite a bit so much so that I recognize a new employee when I see one. I sort of know their shifts. I even know who is better at wrapping sandwiches and who is better at cutting the bread. When I reach for my wrapped sandwich, I normally can tell whether it would be tightly packed or not. I know that I need exactly three napkins if I have a cookie with my sandwich. And of course, I know just how much water to fill up in my cup so that I would have just enough to quench my thirst after my sandwich.

I used to pride myself on knowing my sandwich so well. There was this beautiful precision that I appreciated. But yesterday something changed subtly. I was just reaching for my wrapped sandwich when the cashier interrupted this familiar scene as she looked at me and said, "Wait, do you come here every day?" I mumbled a quick reply and turned away, embarrassed. I felt like my dad that one time when he walked into a Hilton hotel in Tokyo and the bell boy greeted him by name. All of a sudden, I realized that I have gone to Subway one too many times. Somehow, by wrapping around myself the comfort blanket of habits, I have become downright predictable and unadventurous. Over my 6-inch chicken breast on Italian herb and cheese bread that day (the same sandwich that I eat everyday), I resolved that I would do more to put myself out of my comfort zone.

Today, after an hour long of microeconomics, I unconsciously headed toward Subway once more. When the same cashier asked me what I wanted, I held my breath and made a quick decision: Roast beef on Italian herb and Cheese please! She seemed startled. There, I showed her. I could shake things up once in a while too.

5 Minute Chocolate Mug Cake

I got this fabulous recipe from Sis. Ferguson in Hong Kong. The first time my room mates and I made it, we were astounded. This is the perfect chocolate cake for college students since it literally took 5 minutes and the only dishes I had were one cup and a spoon!

5 MINUTE CHOCOLATE MUG CAKE

4 Tablespoons flour
4 Tablespoons sugar
2 Tablespoons cocoa
1 egg
3 Tablespoons milk
3 Tablespoons oil
3 Tablespoons chocolate chips (optional)
a small splash of vanilla extract
1 large coffee mug
Add dry ingredients to mug, and mix well. Add the egg and mix thoroughly. Pour in the milk and oil and mix well. Add the chocolate chips (if using) and vanilla extract, and mix again.
Put your mug in the microwave and cook for 3 minutes at 1000 watts (high). The cake will rise over the top of the mug, but don't be alarmed! Allow to cool a little, and tip out onto a plate if desired.

EAT! (This can serve 2 if you want to feel slightly more virtuous). Now we are all only 5 minutes away from chocolate cake at any time of the day or night!

Migrant Worker (N) : [mahy-gruh-nt wur-ker]

I randomly bumped into a friend the other day and had lunch with him. I casually mentioned that I have a job and all of a sudden he got really excited. He launched into a whole detailed description of his sociology research project in which he has to collect data on migrant workers. I listened politely, nodding appropriately throughout, all the while wondering why on earth he's telling me all this in so much detail. All of a sudden, he paused, looked at me and asked, "Sisi, I was wondering if I can interview you as a migrant worker."

I choked on a piece of onion that the girl at Subway had accidentally put in my sandwich. To be honest I was sort of offended. Smiling confusedly, I told him that 1. I'm not a migrant and 2. I'm not a worker. You got to hand it to him, he did not seem fazed at all. He persisted and reassured me that I fit the category completely and that I would be simply perfect. Always terrible at saying no, I found myself telling him that I would love to do it.

A couple of days later, I found myself sitting on the a couch, glancing nervously at the voice recorder. He sat across me and launched in a whole series of questions that I'm sure are very pertinent to migrant worker studies. Are you dating anybody right now? Have you dated/ considered dating a boy who is not of your ethnicity? What's your GPA?What do you like to do for fun? How many kids do you want to have?

The whole interview took two hours. Although at times, I found it kind of awkward, it was actually quite fun to talk about myself (how vain!). At the same time it is also kind of weird because a random boy has recorded all the details of my life and would probably have to listen to it over and over again for his project.

He insisted on taking me to dinner to thank me for my time. He bought me a huge Subway sandwich and as I bit into my delicious chicken teriyaki (no onions this time), I couldn't help but think that maybe being a migrant worker wasn't so bad after all.