BenBang Cai - Shanghainese local food... sweet and sour

So my aunt Catherine - who has taken a youthful interest in China since visiting here just two months ago reminded me of what is called BenBang cai - or the shanghainese local food. It is typically a bit sweet, and usually not spicy. I've been to a few and I think, like everything in China (or everywhere) there is the authentic and the perverted version. One was a really dingy place with little to no seating. our friends booked a table for becca and i a week in advance and we ate up on the third floor. you had to climb up stairs that were more like a string of ladders and the ceiling, which was nearly touching our heads was covered in grime from stir-fry. the room we ate in had a large window looking down on the street, which was suprisingly quiet - except for two men that were fighting over the price of fruit. food was great - and we even found some decent veg dishes.
the other place i went to was called 'shanghai uncle', and it was much more upscale, very clean, and expensive. i thought the food was awful, and i'm willing to bet the first ingrediant in each dish was sugar. we had some pork ribs that were doused in what amounted to sweatened ketchup, and their specialty - a $10 plate of crunchy eal - tasted like cardboard covered in carmel. This is ironic because a running joke in china, especially among westerners, is that a lot of the low-cost eateries may try to pass off a mix of pork and cardboard as real food. This high-end restaurant, has a clientelle that is mostly western or high-income chinese, so reputation seems to be much more important than actual quality: I've never found the street food to be as disgusting as what we got at 'shangai uncle', and usually you can watch them prepare it.
I'll be posting more pictures from Becca's visit to picassa. We had a most wonderful time together.

Springtime

I'm going to say it : it's finally really spring. After a few weeks of stable 50 degree weather (which actually wasn't that enjoyable because it was so wet), and now 60 and 70 and even 80 degree weather, I'm finally feeling comfortable with the temperature. Unfortunately, in another month or two it will be nearing 100 degree weather, with 100% humidity. So I'll try to soak up the good weather while I can.
Flowers have been blooming here. Two weeks ago marked the opening up of cherry blossoms, which the Chinese say are here one week and gone the next - they're mostly gone now. And last week the peach trees were in bloom. Most of the magnolias bloomed 3 or 4 weeks ago, although it seems the purple ones are just finishing up. Also red-buds are in bloom or finishing up - this reminds me of home. Finally the great sycamore trees that line almost every street in Shanghai are finally budding out. To me this is most significant, as they have been a looming naked presence, reminding me that it was in fact still not quite spring. So since they're willing to open up I will too.
It's also tea season and the first crop of tea came out two weeks ago in SuZhou and HongZhou (the two cities near Shanghai). I have a small bit of what is called qingming tea - the cream of the crop - or the smallest leaves that have just shucked thier outer buds. On Sunday I got to witness and play a part in this whole process. Two friends an I traveled first by train to Suzhou, and then climbed onto a packed bus where we spent the next two hours jostling for space and some sort of handle to keep ourselves upright amid unannounced stops and sharp turns. We finally arrived on the third of three islands that skip out into Tai lake - which is an extremely large lake that a number of cities feed off of. We found the farmer that had been recommended to us by a local we met at the train station and then sat down for lunch at a large inn that hosted both men, women and animals. The chickens were mostly kept in a caged area. The food actually wasn't the best, even though it was extremely fresh and locally grown - he liked his oil and sugar just a bit too much.
Afterward we headed to the tea fields where we we're instructed on how to quickly pick with our forefinger and thumb. The owner came with us, and showed off his lightening fast picking style which he had cultivated over the last 30 years. He had what I call the 'black thumb' because of it - a blackening just below the face of the thumb that is caused by the natural dyes in the tea leaves. I imagine they probably have some sort of tea owner's guild and the black thumb is a prerequisite for entering.
After we labored, for an hour or so in the fields we went back to roast the tea in a huge wok especially made for the tea. There are three steps - the first is to just roast the tea in the pan while churning with your hands (wearing gloves), this step is actually called 'kill green' because it gets rid of the really fresh green look... as a side the green actually returns when you brew your tea and magically the tea leaves look almost the same as when you picked them!!! The second step is actually very similar to kneading of bread and it rolls the tea while also pushing our moisture. Finally the last step is more rolling between your two hands to give the tea a wirey look ... at this last stage the hair of the tea become apparent. The tea from Suzhou is know for its hair which is really just natural fibers in the tea which only become really visible when it dries to a certain degree.
so that's Suzhou tea..... Other tea's like LongJing or DragonWell in HongZhou require a different process and therefore taste completely different. Pretty amazing.

Family come and gone - but I am still here

So there has been a lot that has happened in the last month since I last wrote, but I don’t think I’m going to get to all of it…. First my parents and Aunt came to visit during the last week of February, which was pretty exciting. They brought lots of reminders and tastes of home with them – including three floyds beer, hafner wine, California cheese, coffee and chocolate. Somehow nothing lasted long though…. The wine was more or less finished in one day, and the beer took 2 days. But it provided immense pleasure. We tried to supplement the great western treats with equally satiating Chinese edibles… we weren’t always successful and I think sometimes I walked them to death before any sort of carrot was reached, but all in all we had a decent taste of Chinese food. Of course dad claims that the best meal he had in all of China was when we just cooked at home but a severe prejudice against anything not homemade…

We spent most of our time in Shanghai and Hangzhou, took pit-stops at cafes and tea houses to dry from the rain and visited the restaurant recently featured in the New Yorker. I personally thought the experience was one of the best culinary experiences I had, but very different from what you would expect in a western venue.

Finally we went to Beijing, saw the great wall and the forbidden palace, and met up with one of my former Chinese teachers. She treated us to one of the best meals we had while in China.

The day after everyone left I went to Hong Kong for a 4 day Fulbright conference. It went well and gave me a chance to meet all the other Fulbrighters, and see how their work was coming along. My only complaint was that they over-scheduled us with extremely boring lectures. Even the historians in the group found the content miserable. They also took us to Macao, which is now the world’s largest casino location, but what I found fascinating about Macao were the small communities that were far removed from the glamour of the casinos. We walked through areas where the shop owners all spoke Portuguese, and little else. Amazing considering more than 95% of the people that live in Macao are Chinese. We also enjoyed some really good sea food in small two story restaurants, tightly packed with tables.

Since then I’ve been finally getting some work done. On Monday I visited the company that we’re helping develop a TB diagnostic with. I was absolutely amazed by the sophistication of their technology, the positive attitudes of their employees and the willingness to collaborate of the company owners. We’ll be helping them design new methods for collecting sputum from patients and then process it (meaning clean it more or less) for diagnosis. This is actually one of the major hurdles for developing a diagnostic that can reach rural clinics or even patient's homes (point of care), because the collection and processing of sputum requires lab equipment and can negatively affect diagnosis. Hopefully we’ll have something working by the end of my time here.

I also started a small cooking class for my lab mates. It’s not only an opportunity to eat some good food but I also make them speak English so that they have an opportunity to improve a bit. Each week I usually prepare a dish and then ask one or two of my colleagues to prepare a dish as well and teach the rest of the group in English. This week I made a mix of Indian and Chinese stir-fry, one colleague made a meatball soup, and another made a certain dried fish that is a specialty of his home-town. It was a bit crowded but we made it informal enough that as dishes were prepared and finished we could begin having samples.

That’s the short story of what’s been going on the last month. I’ll hopefully get another post out this week that will fill in some details or at least give you a closer look at my week.

Routine... Kind of

I guess it's been a bit too long sense I last wrote, and a lot has probably transpired... but you wouldn't know because I didn't write it down. Well I guess I'll start with today then.
Life is slowly moving into a routine. I woke up arou 830, had a breakfast of zhou (which i think we call congee), which is a pretty rich meal of (in this case) rice (different kinds if you're feeling a bit crazy) and I through in some beans as well (small red beans). Then you cook it like you would rice, except you use a lot more water... I use chicken stock because it makes it so much more tasty. It's actually very similar to the Italian dish risotto, except a lot easier because you just let it simmer for an hour letting the stock slowly seep into the rice (and beans). Then you can top it with veggies or some meat. This morning I just added some pepper/salt and some spicy oil. But I had it again tonight for dinner and added some heated Duck confit (which also easy to make and good - duck cooked and stored in its own fat!!!). So it's a pretty easy but tasty and potentially diverse dish.
After breakfast I went into the lab where I'm working. Right now I dont really have any labwork but am helping write a few papers and doing some background research on potential projects that I may be initiating. We're working mainly on diagnnosing TB and because of my relatively amazing skills in English (actually everyone in the lab has pretty amazing reading and writing english skills), I get to be apart of a lot of different projects, helping to write up reviews and analysis of data. I personally want to work with a company that has been developing with potentially our help a new TB diagnostic for under-served populations. It looks pretty promising and I'm hoping to help them analyze it and redesign if necessary.

For lunch I had some small wontons (pasta wrapped meat, like dumplings, in a simple broth), and some steamed dumplings (which are basically like wontons without the soup). After that I took one of my lab friends to a cafe to give them a taste of my work ethic - which during my Northwestern years involved many hours at Peet's coffee. Although the coffee shop was not quite Peet's it had it's own flavor. In fact it's owned/run by a young Chinese man that I think just loves coffee and wanted to start something unique. It is American or European in coffee only but represents a Chinese spin on the small cafe that we see (although more seldomly) back home. It's in an old shanghai neighborhood of completely brick houses that were likely built by the british in the 1930s. Down one of the alleyways in thsi neighborhood there is a small sign that reads 162. It only differs slightly from anyother address indicating set of numbers and I'm not really certain that it has any other meaning than an address. But it distiguishes the shop from residences around it and that is the only way I find it evertime I swing by. Inside is just one room large enough to fit a small barista bar, a couch one large table and two small tables. The large table is usually occupied by a large group making cookies, which is the breilliant bit about this cafe. Because Chinese do not typically have an oven the cafe offers groups the chance to come in and make cookies using an oven that they placed in a retrofitted shack outside the cafe. Brilliant really. So that's where I like to go when I have a bit of computer related work to do.... Its a taste of home through the coffee but authentically china.
Dad, Mom and Aunt Catherine will be here on Friday!!!! Should be pretty fun!!!

Bombs Bursting in Air

I’m sitting in my kitchen waiting for my stew, made of practically every remnant of food that I had laying around. Actually not quite as spontaneous as it sounds. I had some hongshao duck (dug legs stewed in a aromatic soy sauce base), a potato, some duck wings, half of a small bright orange pumpkin, some threaded chicken and chicken stock… that combined with some salt pork I bought and some big white beans (and other odds and ends) is going to be my supper…. Hopefully it turns out… As it stands now it’s a bit too sweet…but full of flavor. But I guess that’s Shanghai style… My hope was for a rough Chinese-style cassoulet – the French would not be happy.

Last week was the Chinese new year – the year of the Ox (or cow as I’m more fond of cows and the word in Chinese could go either way). I spent the 24^th and 25^th at a friends house in Northern Shanghai. Her parents were kind enough to let me crash the family celebrations and the mother of the house let me hang out in the kitchen while she prepared the New Years eve meal. Reminded me of home. She continually commented on her particular technique - why she cut the fish the way she did, how to fry the shrimp etc. and also why she didn't use MSG. MSG came into use shortly after the 'Great Leap Forward', when Mao sent rural farmers into factories to make China an industrial superpower. Everyone was forced to eat at large cafeterias, where simple food with basic dietary requirements were dished out with robotic expediency. Unfortunately, because farm efficiency and production dropped China experienced a horrible several year famine where whole towns were decimated by starvation. I believe that i read somewhere MSG started in this era where it gave a meaty taste to an otherwise tasteless meal. So not only were lives lost during this period but also a cultural heritage of eating and cooking. Restaurants were seen as a luxary of the upper-class and were closed or forced to serve basic meals to the masses. Luckily not all of China has forgotten the culinary style of the past.

On the 26th I got to see an old roommate of mine Lily who is from Shanghai and was visiting during the holidays. Her father cooked us a meal with several dishes, but the highlight was stewed pork and tofu, that was slowly stewed throughout the whole day. I actually first met her family 3 years ago on my first trip to China and they nursed me through one of the worst bouts of food poisoning I've ever had - luckily her father is a doctor and gave me special privileges at the hospital he works at. Dont let that scare you about the food though, I haven't been sick in China ever since.

Fireworks have been going off for the last 2/3 weeks. A hallmark of the new year, they are becoming quite annoying but should be over soon. For some reason people think it's a good idea to shoot them off all day but especially at 6 or 7 in the morning! Doesn't make a whole lot of sense because they spend a decent amount of money on extravagant, professional grade fireworks and then shoot them off in the day when you can't see them....

New Years Eve was a most exciting display of the power of firworks but also of private over public funds. As it turned over to the new year at midnight the frequency and number of fireworks and fire-crackers reached a level that was almost unbearable. There are 20 million people in Shanghai and I would imagine there were very few who did not take part in the celebration. I lit a few fire-crackers with my friend and her dad, but quickly returned to the apartment in fear of being consumed in the colorful madness. Instead I stood on the 6th floor balcony watching the spectacle explode around me. Every alleyway and street is fair game to create your own fire-works display, and as I walked out the next morning, I fond the main street near their house completely covered in the read wrappers and colorful boxes that had been decimated in the display of fire-power wielded by every day citizens. I'd love to see how much money is spent on fireworks every year by the Chinese.

It's been a little warmer here, and I think today some of my colleagues will return fromt he holidays, which is good because I'm getting a bit bored. Then it will be time to do some work!

The New (niu or cow) Year and some carpets to muffle the noise

My last lab mate will be leaving today, so we’re going to have breakfast to send her off and then I’ll be on my own. In case I didn’t mention it before it’s coming up on Chinese New Years, the year of the Cow, and since I’m quite fond of cows I feel this new year will be a good one. There are large red and gold cows all over the city. Paper cut-outs sport multiple floors near the shopping districts and banners, lights, and slogans are draped along streets competing for attention against the backdrop of the thousands of pairs of drying clothes that always seem to be present. I wonder how the Chinese would feel if they only knew that across the border, the Indians (from India) do a much better job with the cow decorations, allowing real cows to walk and wonder the streets (see the picture that tops this page). India probably makes the Chinese feel a little sheepish about their worship of the cow, but I guess you do what you can with the resources and society you’re given.

I’ve decided to stay in Shanghai for the break, partly because I just got here and also because a friend Lily who was one of my roommates in undergrad will be coming to visit her parents, who live in Shanghai. It will be nice to relax a bit and not have to worry about travel, but also get to experience a little bit of tradition. So on the 25^th which is the day leading up to the New Years I’m going to have dinner with my friend Jenny’s family (who are also Shanghainese) and then the 26^th, which is New Years, and probably a few other days I’ll be with Lily’s family.

I recently bought a small hand-made rug from a small shop that I discovered. Actually I’ve been to the shop before to chat and have tea with the store-owner. So two days ago I stopped by and told him it would be lovely to have a small carpet to put in my room, so I gave him my price and we picked one out. I came across his store while walking the neighborhoods and almost decided not to go in but I had never really seen quite a carpet store like this before. The store was a bit small for the number and size of carpets he had, and attempting to roll out a carpet to show a customer was a bit of a challenge. In fact on entering I again almost left because the door seemed to be locked, but the lively shop-owner quickly moved carpets out of the way freeing up the path of the door and it quickly swung open. Carpets were strewn everywhere, so that it was impossible not to try them out a bit and stomp around. Hanging on walls and in piles above on second floor loft were more beautiful carpets. Aziz, the owner said that eventually he wanted to move to a large place where he could have an area to sit down and drink tea, the windows, walls and floors would all be decoratively displaying carpets and customers could come chat have tea and buy carpets if they chose. It turns out Aziz comes from Xinjiang, which is the western semi-autonomous region of China where there have been some crack-downs of supposed anti-government terrorist organizations. One of the main Muslim populations the Uighers are mainly targeted in these anti-terrorist campaigns and recent laws have limited the length of services at Mosques and the gathering of Muslims. The Uighers are actually probably a lot more Turkish than anything of Chinese decent, in fact a recent discovery of human remains dating back to the pre-Roman area suggests that it was not the Chinese that first entered this area but was traders from the West. This research is very controversial because it invalidates the historic claim to the land that the Chinese maintain control of. While there is little information about what is actually going on in the West, it does appear that there are some violent pro-independent factions that the government probably does have reason to be silencing, but I still don’t agree with the measures that infringe on people’s right to practice religion and customs and live relatively normal lives.

As for Aziz when I asked him about his situation, he claimed that he came here for work, after spending a few years in Shenzhen. He married an Itialian and opened his carpet store in the French concession of Shanghai. The art and craft of carpets have always been a passion of his and willingly explains the meanings of different symbols and styles. Many of his carpets are from Afghanistan (he joked that I should join the army so that I could get some nice carpets! bad joke), but he also has some from his home in Xinjiang, which is what I decided to buy. They are a little more simple than those from Afghanastan but have a rustic feel that which may represent the dry dessert area of Xinjiang. (I’m probably delusional though).

An interesting and unfortunate aspect of life as a Chinese citizen is that is often hard to switch your official residency or hukou. Aziz owns a house in Shanghai, is married, and owns a viable, legal business, but he still does not receive any benefits of being a Shanghai citizen, including certain health rights and schooling for children (I believe he still has access to health and education but it is not covered by his residency). Therefore his attempts to travel with his wife to Italy have been impossible because he cannot get a passport. Because different regions have their own governmental bodies he has to apply through the Xinjiang government which he claims is non-functional. Being from Xinjiang, likely doesn’t help with his efforts to convince Shanghai or National government bodies to help him, as people from Xinjiang are usually associated with drug-dealers and thieves. In fact Aziz himself reiterated this position to some extent – saying that many of those from Xinjiang that come to large cities get involved in illegal business’. In fact my experience with people from Xinjiang has largely been positive. They usually man roadside meat kabob shops that while questionable in hygiene are extremely tasty. So it’s tough to tell what to believe. However I do think the stereotype has truth behind it, but like any stereotype it cannot be extended to all from Xinjiang (i.e. Aziz himself).

I told Aziz I'd likely be back, although I will probably not buy another carpet, your welcome for tea anytime he said and he also invited me to come by the Mosque to enjoy the scenery and the many different types of food that have integrated themselves into the life of the Mosque. And I hope to go to Xinjiang someday, so I might tap Aziz for suggestions. As I left the shop I greeted him happy new year, and he replied in a tired look : I dont know how I'm going to make it through this new year, it's too too loud... at least these carpets will muffle the sound. This just shows how different Xinjiang actually is from the Han majority Chinese. In bed that night I was startled by loud explosion and colorful lights... now I new what he meant. The new year has started... I'm actually a little excited...

Lively chickens and a cold but bearable kitchen

I’m sitting in bed under covers and a lovely warm cup of peet’s coffee. Next to me is a radiator I bought recently, which gets my room to a bearable temperature. I’m actually getting used to it all – the cold that is. Yesterday I made some soup, and found that at least in the day light the kitchen temperature quickly warms with both the sunlight and the heat of the pan. The night before one of my colleagues took me to the local fresh foods market – like a farmers market but found daily from sunrise to sundown in every area of shanghai. Not sure how they’ve changed since big supermarkets likes Carrefore (French) and it’s Chinese competitor Jiadeli have moved in. Maybe I’ll turn it into a side project of mine – to understand where food comes from in China, particularly the food sold by these fresh food markets and small informal vendors that spot the city. The chicken I bought was a small, young male – looked healthy and the lady told me he’d be good in a stock. She grabbed him as he squawked and fluttered pointlessly and then as he calmed down quickly weighed him, brought him to the side of the room and over a bucket away from costumers quickly and cleanly snipped the neck with a pair of scissors and sent his lifeless body away to be cleaned. The process wasn’t without some gory bits, because as she handed me my change I got a small piece of bloody flesh hanging onto what seemed to be baby feather. After I was given my once very lively chicken, now stripped of his clothes and all individual characteristics, we grabbed some very nice looking vegetables, including leeks, fat healthy carrots, scallions, and some tasty shitake mushrooms. My colleague now friend shared small bits of wisdom about how her mother picked certain ingredients – how the shitakes must not be pulling away from their edges revealing the underside ribs, how ginger is better when it’s old but with very fresh almost transparent skin, and of course her favorite type of chicken. There seems to be a great difference in chickens. The chickens you buy at the fresh market are of course alive, but they also have many different types, which at this point is lost on me, and color of the meat and fat is completely different – yellow fat and more pale brown never completely white flesh. I’m guessing it has something to do with the process, the diet, environment etc. The fact that we produce millions of chickens, who have probably been genetically modified or at least selectively breed, in factories may be the biggest difference. In supermarkets like carrefore you do not find the fresh market chickens, only the prepackaged very white and sterile chickens, with choices of tote sized bags of wings or just legs, and sometimes the whole bird. I’m not saying one way is better – because although my stock was amazingly delicious, I wasn’t sure the meat tasted any better – but there are certainly differences.

I’m off to try something out in the kitchen and then head to work.

Back... physically... trying to find a warm community in Shanghai

So it's been a month or so since my last post (my friend Jon pointed this out from Uganda), so if you do actually like to read my scattered thoughts, I'm sorry....

I’m back in Shanghai, not settled – neither mentally or physically – and hopping from café to café searching for a place to access the internet, get work done and rest out of the cold in between my walks through Shanghai neighborhoods. Shanghai has turned out to be a lot colder than one would expect. Or maybe it’s just the experience of the Shanghai cold. Although the coldest days only ever slip into the high 20s it’s difficult to ever find a place where you can thaw out. Your body is constantly in life-saver mode, neglecting the extremities so that fingers become num and lose dexterity. I’m over-stating this of course, but even now as I type away in a supposedly heated café, a feeling of Russian Siberia has seeped into my brain (and fingers). I’m still wearing my large winter coat, under which I have two layers of long-sleeved shirts, one a thick woolen sweater. I warm my hands every so often on a glass of hot water and slowly sip on a coffee (although not to slowly otherwise it will turn cold). I have visions of Ivan Denisovich, scratching away (or in my case typing) at a cold piece of paper chronicling his days activities. Ok, so I’m not jailed in Siberia and my walking, apartment shopping, and researching is not quite as tiresome as what Ivan discovered in the labor camp, but by being a little dramatic I might just give you a picture for how cold it can feel.

As for apartments, I did finally find one and moved all of my stuff – two big heavy bags worth – into a completely empty but extremely spacious apartment this morning. I am far from settled – there are still things like beading, furniture, cookware that need to bought, and then cleaning to be done, but I’m looking forward to being a little more dependant. I just need to get some internet and then I’ll be nearly satisfied. I did buy a 2500W electric heater that will hopefully make me less conscious of my breathing which is currently very visible. My worry is that the apartment, which is very drafty, will not be able to contain the heat, that it will all just float away out of the porous walls and doorways. Enough of the negative lens though. The apartment is actually extremely spacious and relatively cheap. In a city where space is limited and prices are among the highest in the world, I really lucked out. It’s in an old retiree community, speckled with some younger families. I soon found that foreigners either like the new high-rises where they can live in a world much like the one they came from, or in re-buffed European style housing that was constructed by the French or English back in the colonial days (for Shanghai this was the 1930s). I was looking for some quaint old house, because they are quite cute and cozy but discovered that demand had pushed the prices up a little too far. So the best bet if you actually want to live in a Chinese community that still has a feeling of community is to find a 小区 (xiaoqu – literally small area/community but meaning neighborhood) built in the 60s or 70s. These consist of 5-6 story apartment complexes that while not designed for optical pleasure are havens for Chinese community life (at least from the brief perspective of a short-sited foreigner). Ever morning the elderly walk about, some practicing taichi, other chatting or yelling at each other, but most doing daily chores. The buildings and telephone wires are nicely decorated with hanging/drying clothes, and public spaces quickly fill up with a vender or two, a poker table, a small make-shift garden, drying vegetables, hanging/curing meat… etc. (I’ll add to this list as I get more familiar). So like any good community, it’s not the architecture or beauty that makes it livable, it is the people. My hope is that I can truly become part of this community (to the extent that a very different ‘other’ can). As I dragged my very big black travel bag through the middle alleyway that serves as the entrance and meeting place of the community it was hard not to notice the stares and suspicious glances that I received. Not sure if this will ever not be the case but maybe someday, I will walk through and receive one or two hellos. A final thought – as I walked towards my apartment for the first time as a card-carrying tenant I noticed that I was following an all too large rickshaw filled with condoms which then stopped at the small community service station to unload. Just a few years ago this site would have also been followed by questioning, suspicious eyes. Change is possible, and luckily I have my own voice to use in changing the minds of my neighbors.