Week 2: Things You Won't Find in an American Grocery Store

We had hoped to write our blog this week about hunting for an apartment in Shenzhen. However, due to circumstances beyond our control, we don’t have an apartment yet, so we’ll save that story for another time. As anyone who has moved, much less a long distance or around the world knows (shout out to Nathan and Bree most recently), apartment hunting in a strange city is intimidating.

One of the things we want to do in our blog, is give you a small sense of the taste, smells, and feel of the place we live now. At times it is overwhelming, discombobulating, and intriguing all at the same time and in different and unique ways. Today we just took some pictures of things you won’t find in an American grocery store.

The first picture is of a Ramen bowl, those delicious soup and noodle concoctions that have sustained generations of American college students. Noodle bowls in Asia nothing out of the ordinary here. But look closer at the picture. First, some celebrity is endorsing this particular brand of ramen bowl. Noodles over here are serious business and celebrities endorse noodle bowls. Second, look at the English. The bowl brags of a “hot tingle flavor”. Not quite sure what they mean by the “tingle” flavor.

The second two pictures are taken directly from the meat case at our local supermarket. We didn’t go anywhere special to get these pictures, we didn’t ask for special access, these are at the grocery store a couple hundred feet from our front door.

The picture on your left is of an open air tank on the ground of live frogs and eels in the meat department. I can assure you that people are not taking them home for pets. The picture on the right is of an open air tank on the ground of crabs and turtles also in the meat department. One thing you learn is that there is a very different relationship between man and meat. It is much closer and personal. The disconnect between man and meat that we have in the United States where it shows up perfectly cut, trimmed, and ready to eat is an anathema here. Everywhere you go in one of the most developed cities in the country, meat is being trimmed or the animal that you are about to eat is right before you. Animal rights does not exist.

The last picture is one that we took as we were checking out, paying the cashier. I can only imagine what the cashier thought as we took this picture. In all honestly, I’m not sure I want to see a smiling condom in the checkout line. I mean if I were a condom, I’d be smiling too, but in the checkout line? Coming from America, I am so used to copies of US Weekly and breath mints. Maybe here in China they keep the condoms and add the breath mints. Now there’s some real product synergies!

Hope all is well with all our friends and family and don’t be a stranger on skype. As we get settled we’ll send out more contact information including telephone numbers and pictures. Thanks for all the emails and thoughts. Have a great weekend.

Christopher, Daisy, and the next speaker of the House of Representatives Corra Balding

The Food Update

After talking with Daisy we decided to do some writing on our experiences about eating our way around China. There are a couple of reasons we wanted to do this. First, from the “Panda Express” and “P.F. Chang” perch in America you really don’t understand the depth and incredible variety of Chinese food. Make no mistake about it, most of the dishes these places serve are reasonable approximations of a dish you can find here in China. Kung Pao seasoned meat and Orange chicken are actual dishes you can find here in China. However, there are so many great dishes that you will never see outside of China unless you know somebody in a back alley Chinese food speak easy. One aim is to provide of this section is to provide some greater understanding of Chinese food.

Second, while eating China is not for the faint of heart, there are also so many dishes that are very recognizable to western palates but with a decided twist. For instance, cucumbers in a Chinese dressing with oil, soy sauce, some vinegar, and sprinkled with garlic. Think of something like a Greek cucumber salad with a different dressing and no feta or tomatoes. Braised cabbage in soy sauce (I think) is served with a small sprinkling of red peppers. Hopefully, you’ll see what we eat and it won’t be so intimidating.

The first meal we’ll talk about is this Sichuan restaurant down the street. Sichuan restaurant is known for being spicy with lots of peppers. The pictures of the food outside showed a medley of vegetables and meat covered with a variety of fresh and dried peppers. That morning we had passed the restaurant as they chopped all the vegetables in front of the restaurant on the sidewalk in preparation for dinner that night. I don’t think the Los Angeles health inspector would give that food preparation process an A.

We had 5 dishes at dinner, four of them pictured. The best one and the only one not pictured was the braised cabbage. Now I am a fan of numerous styles of braised cabbages, but this was truly excellent eating. It was braised with oil, a light soy sauce, and we think some type of vinegar and sprinkled with dried red chilies. I don’t know exactly how they cooked it, but I am guessing they braised the cabbage with oil and stock of some kind and added the soy sauce and vinegar later because the natural cabbage flavor came through clearly without the soy sauce and vinegar dressing overpowering. The dried red chilies added just enough heat to let you know they were there but not much else.

The second two dishes were the spiciest and were peppers with chicken and peppers with shrimp. The peppers with chicken was mostly peppers with a little chicken thrown in. The green peppers and green onions were cooked long enough with soy sauce, I believe, to take the crunch out but not long enough to begin falling apart. In American terminology we would call it wilting or glazing the peppers. This took a lot of the heat out, as any seasoned pepper eater knows, but still left plenty of spice. Very good but with some real kick. The peppers and shrimp was good and with less kick. The peppers in this dish were red and green with more onions and maybe some regular bell peppers. The shrimp were little tiny shrimps with the shell still on which you ate whole. The shrimp might be fresh water but I don’t know that for sure. I thought the shrimp, more pepper variety, and more onions brought a better depth of flavor to this dish than the straight up peppers and chicken, but each was tasty.

The last two dishes were sautéed green beans and the egg pancake. The green beans were lightly cooked with soy sauce (?) garlic and just a small sprinkling of dried chilies. Very nice and balanced the two spicy pepper dishes well. The egg pancake would almost be what we called an omelet. It had herbs and vegetables but was served round like a pancake. I also think they added something to strengthen it up so that it was simply eggs, but at this point I don’t know what that might be. Serving omelet and crepe like dishes is very common though they have herbs and seasonings that is distinctly Chinese.

One last point is that most things at this specific restaurant were cooked long enough to get hot, but not long enough to be crisp or start breaking down. Even the cabbage for instance had a little crunch to it rather than braising it into cabbage mush.

I have attached two pictures from the pepper dishes and you can see just how many peppers we are talking here. It is important to note that both of these pictures are AFTER I finished them off and ate a lot of peppers. You can also see pictures of the green beans and egg dish in the back ground. I promise better pictures of the food for future editions.

Here’s to good eating.

The Long Strange Trip Week 1

On Saturday August 1, 2009 Daisy, Corra, and I arrived at Los Angeles International Airport bound for Hong Kong on United Airlines. The anticipation and excitement that hung thick in the air got bludgeoned when the United Airlines desk clerk informed us at 4 of our bags were each 2 pounds overweight and we needed to remove things to get underweight. Simple mathematics eluded the desk clerk who couldn’t comprehend what I meant when I explained that our other two bags were each almost 10 pounds underweight so it balanced out. We raced to the gate to catch our flight now 15 minutes from leaving, only to be informed that San Francisco was fogged in and the flight would be delayed at least an hour.

After such an inauspicious start to the voyage, the flights went swimmingly. Corra was an absolute champ on all the flights sleeping through her first two takes offs and one landing. If you ever travel with an infant, an iPod loaded up with Baby Einstein is an absolute essential. Besides the excessive amounts baby videos and replacing the milk in her bottle with Bailey’s we did nothing different with Corra and she pulled through in style.

We arrived in Hong Kong on Sunday bone tired only to discover a cheeky baggage carousel refusing to give us our last piece of luggage. After asking the same United desk clerk who told us our bags were overweight and was now miraculously in Hong Kong, they magically found our bag. If ever given the opportunity, please avoid United Airlines. (Just in case you haven’t seen it, I would highly recommend that catchy little tune “United Breaks Guitars”. Ask me sometime, and I’ll tell you about the time United Airlines lost my grandmother. No, not my grandmothers bags…my actual grandmother.).

We spent three days in Hong Kong and while I would love to tell you that we did all kinds of things. We really just recovered from jet lag and the actual high lights included a roof top pool overlooking Hong Kong, an amazing buffet, a category 8 typhoon, and being accosted by every Indian tailor in a six block radius.

We crossed into China with a large amount of bags and filling out multiple entry and exit forms while trying to avoid be trampled by the hordes of people that complete the crossing everyday. After a taxing day we settled for the closest approximation of good old American food we could find, a sushi bar.

The campus where I will be teaching is great and I was told they are going to be a building a 24 storey building for the business school.

Corra is a freaking rock star in here in China. Everywhere we go, people wave, play, and gather around Corra. The ladies in the police station were walking her around and putting or passport photos upon large computer screens just to watch her giggle.

We are adjusting well and getting over our jet lag. We are working on our Chinese and trying to find an apartment. The weather is 90 degrees and 90% humidity. Anyone from California has no idea what that means but if you have ever been there, you quickly learn that you can sweat from body parts you didn’t know existed. I really wish there was more excitement to report but for now we’re just trying to settle into life in China. Once there are pictures to post, we will be posting. Hope all is well wither everyone and don’t be a stranger on skype.

Christopher, Daisy, and the Artist Formerly Known as Corra