29 November 2010

my xiao dumpling

"Your dumpling looks like Australia."

In one of my last posts I mentioned that the Uncles, Z and I took a cooking lesson from Chunyi's Hutong Cuisine cooking school. We found out about Hutong Cuisine from our ever handy Insider's Guide to Beijing 2010. Learning how to make handmade dumplings and noodles has been on my growing Beijing "to do" list so I was most excited for the day. But, before I could even make my dumplings into the shape of Australia, instead of into a more perfect crescent moon design as instructed, I first had to learn how to purchase all the necessary ingredients. So, the day started out early at a market near the cook's home -- hence Hutong Cuisine. She showed us how to choose the best eggs (the ones that are smooth to the touch, and when shaken don't make a sound), how much pork and beef and what cut to select, and she explained to us why many people purchase large quantities of Chinese spring onions early in the season (because they will last all winter long).

choosing just the right eggs


shu cai





After the market tour, we were invited back to Chunyi's home to continue our lesson. Inside the well loved, well kept and well used hutong kitchen and outer room, we learned about the importance of and differences between dark and light soy sauces, vinegars and cooking wines. Now, when I go into Chinese supermarkets, I am not as lost amongst the many aisles of essential ingredients. I can start building up my love of all things condiments -- Chinese style: soy sauces, vinegars, chilies, preserved vegetables, oyster sauces, mushroom sauces, sesame oil, cooking wines...

Then, with the basics down, and with cleaver, chopsticks, wok and rolling pin in hand (but not at the same time) it was time to chop, roll, flatten, slice, dice, pinch, boil, stir, steam and fry.  

preparing the vegetables
chopping ginger

the dough is rolled out, cut and ready to flatten for dumplings
                       
Australia! 







Once the dumplings were plopped in the steamer, it was time to make the noodles!

I'll show you the trick to noodle making 

in they go!
and seconds later...out they come!

Home Sweet Hutong







The Hutong Cuisine offers many cooking courses and I plan to learn how to stir fry beef, dish out mapo dofu, and how to gongbao a jiding. Though my dumplings could use more practice, I will conquer Beijing one chopstick full at a time.

thank goodness they're gone!

...is what they wanted me to say when they left Beijing last week two weeks ago (OK, so I'm still a bit behind). But, the truth is, I'm still a bit sad to have seen them go. I will always remember our first guests in Beijing -- Z's Uncles.

They were here for almost two weeks, and we were their last stop on their semi-world tour. They started out in Paris, then trained their way to Berlin, then Warsaw, Moscow, Ute, Mongolia and then finally they were greeted by our shining faces in Beijing. What's that? Oh, yes, you do know the Uncles I am talking about. The Traveling Uncles. The Floating Boating Uncles. The New York Uncles by way of Miami Uncles. And now add to those titles, The Hutong Uncles and The Best Bargain Shopping Uncles in all of Beijing's Shopping Halls.

We had a fabulous time. It all started with a Friday evening of dirty martinis, but of course, and it ended with...well who cares how it all ended when there were several happy hours of dirty martinis? At one point there was a declaration by the Uncles that, "this would be great for the cockpit!" To which they were referring to the shining, spinning, musical orb that danced its way across the concrete floors of the underground walkway below Tiananmen Square. They just had to have it -- a toy that Z and I have often ignored, but which, in any case was a perfect addition to the Uncles' boat. I can't quite remember now if that was in the midst of the shopping sprees across this city, or if it was just the beginning. Either way, please do pay a visit to their boat in New York so you can see the musical, spinning, top-hat of a toy dance it's way into your hearts, too.

Like that spinning toy winding its way across the concrete floors with tenacity, we ventured just about everywhere. But it wasn't all whirlwind all the time, because in between sites and shopping, Z and I were taught the fine art of the afternoon coffee break. From the Temple of Heaven to the dumpling and hand pulled noodle cooking lesson, from the Lama Temple to the Bird's Nest and Water Cube, from Tiananmen Square to the Night Market, and from the Forbidden City to the Great Wall to shopping for electronics, we sipped and chatted, and chatted and sipped our way through Beijing. We shared stories and desserts. We had a movie night (with our new DVD player, thank you Uncles!) to marvel over Bertolucci's The Last Emperor because we had walked in the steps of that historic landmark just hours before. We tested my Mandarin skills with each taxi ride, or bargaining technique, or meal that we ordered. We had fun spelled with a capital 娱乐。

There is a sense of pride and ownership and joy that comes with playing host in a new home city. This joy comes easily when your guests are the traveling, eating, enjoying life kind of people. Just the kind of people whom we were lucky to have visited us. The pride and ownership comes with learning to share your love of a new place with others, despite its blemishes. There was that one incident on a major shopping street with the "lady of the night" accosting Uncle M for declining her advances (it's caught on tape), but we still wanted to showcase all the city had to offer. So, we did. We explored lots of Beijing's nooks and crannies and learned to love it even more because we could share it with Z's Uncles.

Thank goodness they visited!






21 November 2010

Mellifluous

Here's the rub: I keep having the same dream. It's the one where it is somehow already the last day of school, and I realize I haven't shown up to any of my classes all year. My dream sequence flashes between Spanish class or math class or science lab. All my combined years of classmates are there, the years of schooling are intertwined. It's fourth grade on the Kansas playground, I'm cold and I can't zip up my jacket; then I'm flashed forward to high school, but instead of my suburban New Jersey classroom, I'm in a Boston University cafe studying communications theory. Then I am thrust back into the disquiet of my dream, sitting in my middle school cafeteria, and I realize I haven't finished a single school project while I am biting into my bologna sandwich. Is that Michael Jackson sitting next to me reciting Chinese poetry? I can't speak a word of Spanish. My calculus teacher is rehearsing Shakespeare instead of working out equations on the blackboard. I'm being tortured over chemistry compounds, and can't figure out why my Bunsen burner won't light correctly, but I'm fully costumed in an outfit that resembles a sheep's tail dancing around my college theater stage. There are not enough dream dictionaries that can sort out all of my hidden anxieties.

I am the girl who was supposed to keep a journal all semester, tomorrow is the due date, and I haven't written a single word. Time to break out the different colored pens to make it look like I was a diligent student.

Over two weeks ago, I stepped out of my dream world and into an actual classroom where I have a chalkboard, desks, overhead flickering fluorescent lights, a dais which seems way to formal (and on which I do not stand for too long), and most importantly five bright and enthusiastic Chinese high school students eager to learn more, more, more English. The time we spend together at the Dandelion School for two or three or more hours, is a way for the students to add flavor to their six years of textbook English. But they are already way past simple phrases and can tell me stories full of imagination and zest. I envy the way in which these students swallow up the banquet of English words and phrases, whereas I can only pick at my plate of Chinese syllables, scraping the sounds across my tongue.

These students come from an education system in China that is complicated and is compounded by the government's often neglectful stance toward the children of its migrant worker population -- a population of "people who are born and registered in [China's] countryside...but [who] travel to [the nation's] cities to live and work" (BBC online, 11/1/10).  According to the BBC online report on November 1, the recent Chinese government census could reveal a number as high as 200 million migrant workers nationwide. In a city of nearly 22 million people, it is difficult to count the number of migrant workers and their families who now call Beijing their home.The migrant workers who live in the nation's cities without holding proper documentation - a resident identity card called a hukou- are denied access to necessities like health care and formal quality education for their also unregistered children.  For those who are legally registered, the law states that children have the right to nine years of compulsory education. The system made progress five years ago when the Dandelion School opened its doors to the children of migrant workers. In doing so, Beijing and its government publicly declared its approval. The school remains (the first and) only government sanctified middle school providing formal education under the guidelines of State Compulsory Education Law to migrant children.

The five students with whom I meet every other Friday are graduates of the Dandelion School, and are making great strides towards succeeding despite their many obstacles. Obstacles that include coming from poor, rural families who still live with the financial pressures and the social embarrassment of having more than one child. These students all come from loving families that sacrifice more than just time and money to ensure they succeed past middle school and high school. By the time I reach the school around 2:00 PM, an hour from my apartment by taxi, the students have already put in a full day of high school, a full week without seeing their families, and have traveled an hour to meet me. They postpone their weekends and getting to see their families so that they can improve their English speaking skills, their listening comprehension, and their critical thinking about community. During our "English only" sessions, the students improve upon sharing their personal narratives so that they can continue to improve the narrative itself.

The first Friday I met with the students, I had more jitters than any of my own years of "first day of school" nerves combined. But, almost immediately after arriving, I was eased by the familiarity of their teenage expressions. I could tell right away from their smiling faces that they enjoy returning to the school, visiting their former teachers and principal, saying hello to classmates and hugging siblings who might also have the opportunity to attend the Dandelion School.

I hesitate to speak specifically about each of the five students because I do not want to simplify or water down their stories. Also, I have not yet asked their permission to write about them individually in my public space, so I will not do so now. But it is important to tell you that this is not a debate about the education system in China versus the education system in the United States. It is in part a recognition of five students and their families who, despite carrying the weight of the world on their backs, make education a priority in their lives. They create meaning and value when others want to deny them that right. After many, many months, these five students have finally settled into a high school routine. Even when they were dismissed from one vocational school or high school after another, or they chose to repeat an entire grade because their new school system lacked a more challenging curriculum, they continue exude optimism, maturity, strength and humor. I see these great qualities in them already, and I have only known them for a few weeks!

In the moments I feel like I can't possibly know what I am doing with these students, their conversation brings me back into the moment and washes away my doubt; they are full of questions, observations and light. Last Friday, one of the girls chose to share the word "mellifluous" from her Language Journal which I have assigned to them. Mellifluous! I did my best smooth scat impression to help her define the word (as in "The jazz singer had a mellifluous voice") only after I secretly looked it up first myself. Each Friday afternoon, I learn a lot in the three hours that fly by so quickly.  We always have more to discuss and to learn from each other. I am lucky and thrilled to be connected with the Dandelion School and these exceptional students in a small way. I hope to continue to share my stories and experiences with you for as long as I am in Beijing.

If you want to learn more about migrant school children, there is a lot of information on the world wide web about the subject. Click on this link to hear more about the Dandelion School itself in an NPR story from 2009.

16 November 2010

To Market, To Market

Since it has been a few weeks without proper updates, I'll backtrack just a bit...cue reverse time travel music...

It is a couple of days before Halloween (you know, the American festivity where foreigners celebrate by making yet another trip to the Beijing IKEA for a coffee table) when Z and I are exploring the neighborhood in which our first visitors plan to stay. The neighborhood is lined with shop after shop; winter jackets are debuted in store front windows next to street food vendors selling various meats on sticks. Cars and taxis and pedestrians and bicyclists are jockeying for a spot in front of one another before the traffic lights signal red again, slowing up the process of progress. Back on the sidewalks, in between puffy coats and shiny puffy vests with fake fur hoods, the stereo surround sound of employees' voices fills the air to the beat of the music blasting from within busy shops, "New face creams on sale! Leather boots only 500 RMB! Get your sunglasses here! Today there is a clearance on bottled water! Buy another puffy vest, you can never have enough! Come into my shop...no, come into my shop...Everything you need is right here!"

As we turn onto the street of our future visitors' guest house, everything gets quiet in a crunchy-fall-leaves-under-foot kind of way. Old men are riding their bicycles through the narrow hutong alley, carting behind them dozens of spring onions the size of American leeks, or balancing eight feet tall by eight feet wide stacks of cardboard for recycling, or with each forward motion they are gently rocking caged birds and bunnies to sell as pets. Families are selling cabbages out of their vans, the vegetables packed floor to ceiling.  The guest house is situated on a street that embraces the Old Beijing, while the New Beijing blares outside just a few meters away.

Then we turn onto another corner at the opposite end of the hutong. Now we are running parallel to the street with fake furs and meat stick snacks. This street is busy in its own kind of way despite missing the sounds of the pop music wafting from clothing stores and hawkers announcing the day's sales. Its pedestrians appear less ambitious to get to wherever they are going, but still they are mindful of Beijing's inescapable urgency to keep moving.

If you walk a little further along this particular street, you will stumble upon a food market, much like the way we did that day. Perhaps this is where most people on this particular street were headed, too. And then there you are amidst the eggs, spices, freshly made tofu, fruits and vegetables. Vendors are crammed into stalls five feet by five feet. Many stand atop their mountains of produce, throwing out samples, peeling back ripened citrus, engaging customers with techniques for the best ways to stir fry and steam.

We spend hours walking from aisle to aisle, wishing we could take home bundles of bright vegetables without condemning them to waste after a week's time. When we return to this market - The Market of all Markets - we will be better prepared and better equipped. We will have recipes in mind, and bags in hand, just like so many Beijingers do every day to prepare everyday culinary delights. There is lots that I miss from home in the States, but this sure beats cutting coupons, fluorescent lights and triple-washed-hand-selected bags 'o salad for Monday night dinner.












  

15 November 2010

Vanities of the Bonfire

A blogger isn't much without her blogs. So in a vain attempt to hold you (and me) over a few more hours, I am posting a quick hello. Did you miss me as much as I missed you?

Heat's on today. Now isn't that a warm and comforting thought.