YangMei and Mangosteens

The rainy season is officially over.   That's what a colleague told me today.  According to the weatherman in Shanghai, the rainy season ended last week and it is now officially summer.

Oddly enough, it rained today.

If you remember from a previous post, the rainy season in June is called the "plum rain".  ("MeiYu" in Chinese.)  They say that when the rains come then the plums will ripen.  And it seems they do.

The markets are now full of Chinese Plums....called "Yang Mei".  I've never seen a plum like this before.  As can be seen in the top-most photo, it barely resembles what we would call a plum.  It is all prickly, like a sea anemone.  It doesn't have spines of stingers, mind you, but when you pop them in your mouth its texture is a bit like a raspberry on steroids.

Anyway, I tried to find out the English translation and I'm not sure there is a good one.  I've been told that these are waxberries and bayberries and yumberries.  Wikipedia says that they're Myrica Rubra .  They grow like crazy in this area, on the South banks of the Yangtze River and around Taihu Lake.  These are the fruits of the plum trees that were blooming in February when I first arrived.   The taste and the texture is a lot like a strawberry...but with a little deeper and darker flavor.  Maybe a strawberry with a little bit of black plum in it.   But they are very good.  Folks have been bringing bowls of them into work to share.  The bowls are gobbled up quickly.  Theresa likes them too.

Half the fun of shopping in the local street markets is learning the rhythm of the seasons.  The different fruits and vegetables appear and then disappear as the growing season moves from spring to summer to autumn.  There are a couple of other local fruits that are also in abundance in the markets right now.  One is the Chinese cherry - shown above.   These are all over the place right now and are much like a sweet Bing cherry in the US.  (Not the dark black cherries.  You can buy those here but they're imported from the U.S. and cost $12 a pound.)

The other is the more exotic mangosteen, shown below.  Two weeks ago, I'd never seen nor heard of a mangosteen.  Now they are every place I turn.

The mangosteen is a strange fruit.  Though it looks like a big berry, the dark exterior is actually a husk.  The fruit lies within.   You carefully cut through the outer shell and then pop it open to reveal the fruit inside.  The photo below shows the prized interior.  It's kind of like an orange or a tangerine in that the fruit is subdivided into sections.  But the fruit is white and the texture is more mushy and the taste is nothing like a citrus.  It's sweet, but not overly sweet. It tastes to me like a mixture of peach and banana and vanilla.

It seems I'm late to the game on the mangosteen.  It has long been available only in Asia.  Now though, it is becoming all the rage in the West.  Chefs, evidently, are clamoring for the limited supply that can be had in the United States.  Some are saying it is the king of all fruits.  And the health folks are promoting it as the next best thing to the fountain of youth.

For me, I wouldn't say it's the best thing I've ever eaten.  But it's different.  Maybe even exotic.  Certainly in fashion.   And it tastes good....which is not always the case for things exotic or in fashion.

One Egg Omelets

Just behind the apartment is a neighborhood center and in the neighborhood center is a farmers market.  Of all the booths in the market, the most interesting is the egg stand.   It has all types and sizes of eggs - fresh and preserved.

We bought some big eggs.  Maybe duck eggs or goose eggs.  I'm really not sure.  But they were big - probably triple (or more) the volume of a normal chicken egg.  The photo above shows the comparison.  The brown ones are, of course, the normal chicken eggs.

The shells of the big eggs are thick.  Much thicker than a normal egg and with a more rubbery membrane on the inside.  There's probably a trick to cracking them open but since no one showed me that trick opening them was a bit messy.   The yolks are a bit more viscous than a normal egg.  But they whip nicely with the whites for making an omelet. 

One egg.  One omelet.

The Opera Museum

Two week-ends ago, Theresa and I took Jeff Thrasher, who was visiting from Indy, to the old city for a walk around the Ping Jiang Street district.  The weather was miserable - a steady rain all day.  But given the fact that this is the rainy season, miserable weather was the best that we could hope for.

On one of the side streets, we sumbled across the Suzhou Opera Museum.  We know nothing about Chinese opera.  But the admission was free and the old buildings were beautiful to wander through.  But most of all, it was shelter from the rain.

The top photo is the stage -the roofed, raised platform in the center of the photo.  The stage plays out over a stone courtyard.  Near as we could tell, these are the cheap seats.  On either side were enclosed and seemingly private viewing areas.   In the photo below, these seating areas are just behind the screen-like walls of the building. 

A little bit of research on the web tells me that Suzhou is home to a particular style of Chinese opera called Kun Qu.  You can learn a bit more too by watching this short video on YouTube.

The costumes and make-up are extravagant.  Above is a poor photo of one of the costumes on display.  If you'd like to experience more, you can see and hear a sample of a Kun Qu opera at this link.

Happy Father's Day

I know this is a week late, but happy father's day to all friends and family.  Especially to Jake and to Dave...the fathers of our grandchildren.

Over the past few days, I've been thinking about what it means to be a father and of course thinking about my father.   We only get one in our lives.   And we tend to forget the importance of the one we get.  I've been trying to think back to the earliest memories that still remain in my tired, old brain.  Instead of seeing my father through the my adult eyes, I'd like to see him again through the eyes that were mine as a child.  Children's eyes, I think, are able to see the world much more clearly, more truthfully.  They are not clouded by the silliness of the adult world.

I remember being small and sneaking into my mom and dad's bedroom.  I remember playing with the spare change in the glass bowl in the small wheelbarrow-shaped nick-knack on the dresser.  I remember using their big, two-person mattress as a trampoline.  (Our mattresses, as kids, were much smaller and much less effective trampolines.)

I remember opening the closet and stepping into my dad's shoes.  Quite vividly I remember how they seemed so huge and how my feet - maybe four-year-old feet - couldn't fill them enough to lift them off the floor.  My father was a giant.  Or so it seemed.

By all accounts I was a mommy's boy.   She was with us kids 24 by 7, whereas dad would be gone to work most of the day.  His arrival in the evening was celebrated with the great feast of supper time.  That doesn't mean dad was less significant than mom.....only more mysterious.  A man who lived part of the day within the family, and lived the other part of the day in the great mysterious world that lies beyond the front door of a four-year-old's house. 

On week-ends my dad did magical things such as mowing the lawn or shovelling snow or planting the garden or working on the house.   He always welcomed a tag-along.  In my earliest memories, we were a family of three kids...and then three became four ...and then five.  Then, just before I went to college, we became six.   He always found a way for each of us to do the same things as he did, but in miniature....whether mowing with a toy lawn mower or planting a few seeds in our own corner of the garden.

I remember when my father helped my sister plant a maple seed, then nurture it to a sapling, and then plant the sapling in the yard of our house in Loogootee.   I remember the great tragedy when he accidentally ran over that sapling with the lawn mower.

I remember going with him to inspect the new house in Washington when it was still being built, still just a frame of sticks, and walking across the 2 by 12 plank to get into doorway.  He moved the family into the half-finished house in 1966 and never stopped working on it for 30 years.  In retrospect, that home was a magical place to grow up.

I remember Saturday mornings in the summer mixing and pouring concrete and Saturday mornings in the winter finishing off the interior of the upstairs bedrooms. I remember riding to the lumber yard in the old International pick-up truck with my father singing silly songs.  "Moses was a carpenter who stumbled in the dark.  Came across a hammer and he built himself and ark."

Later, I remember clearing fence rows.  Always, I remember being awestruck at how he could keep working long after my arms and legs take no more.

I remember shelling peas and lima beans while watching TV in the summer evenings.  Hot summer evenings in a house that had no air-conditioning.  And I remember each evening included a family dinner in which my mother and father would talk and joke and discuss the world ...and how all of us kids would be allowed to participate as equals in those conversations.  I remember being sent to bed and hearing mom and dad talk while they were watching the late shows on TV and then hearing them continue talking after they went to bed.   I never went to bed afraid that my mom and dad would get divorced. Never. Ever.

Every man has ambitions, desires, disappointments, disillusionment, weaknesses, and personal demons.  It's part of life. 

Supposedly great men - the authors and artists and the achievers - weave these failings into their autobiographies as is they were no more than plot twists.  You know the ones.  "He was a great movie star....who was married seven times".  "He was the greatest baseball player of all time.. even though he was a drunk who never came home to his family."  "He was a self-made multi-millionaire and a business genius...who divorced and married a 25 year-old when he was 60."

I'm sure my father is not a perfect man.  But what makes him great is that whatever ambitions and disappointments and demons he had were known only to him.  All we knew in our family was the steady strength and patience and faith and unshakable character and unconditional love of a humble man.

What amazes me more, when I look at my father through the eyes of my childhood, is that I can see now that he was just a kid.  We have some videos made from the old home movies.  In them, mom and dad are skinny, awkward and so so very young.  Barely in their twenties in some of them.  Not thirty when I turned five years old.  These were not yet people with the wisdom of old age.  They were kids.  How did they do it?  Where, if not from a soul blessed by God, does character like theirs come from?

I wince now when I think about the stupid and inconsiderate things I did as a child or the things I did when teenage years magnified that stupidity and inconsiderateness.

I smile a little every time I hear my father's voice coming out of my mouth or when I see his mannerisms in the things that I do.  I will forever celebrate those parts of him that are in me...to atone for my stupidity and disrespect.  And because I love him and love the thought of any small part of him that I might have in me.

And I keep thinking about how huge my dad's shoes felt when I was a four-year-old playing in his closet.   Now that I'm past the age of fifty those shoes still feel huge and impossible to fill .  My father is a giant.  Or so it seems to me.

Her Car - His Car

You don't see bumper stickers on cars in Europe.  Nor do you see female silhouettes on the mudflaps of European semi-trucks.  I figured that was an American thing....treating your vehicle as an extension of your personality.

It seems the Chinese also have that "thing" for their cars.  Not so many bumper stickers, though you see one from time to time.  What you really see a lot are the decals that stick on side panels and windows.  The most common one is "baby on board".  A couple of other examples are provided above. 

I'll let you know if I see one that says "God Bless Texas".

Central Park

The Suzhou Industrial Park is is planned city.  Twenty years ago, it didn't exist.  The city planners laid out the infrastructure of roads and utilities first.  Then the businesses and the residences followed in strictly choreographed construction projects.

 I've been told that this is fairly common in China.  Since the opening of the economy in the 1980s, hundreds of cities have been expanded or built out of whole cloth.  You see, China was (and still is) a predominantly rural country.  It's like the U.S. or Europe in the 1940s.  Urbanization is one of the top goals of the government.  By attracting the poor workers to the cities from the countryside, they can kill two birds with one stone.   The first bird is that urbanization creates concentrated pools of low-cost labor to attract foreign investment...and foreign investment generates tax income.  The second bird is that it is much easier for the government to provide social benefits such as medical care, housing assistance, and transportation to a dense, centralized population. 

 Anyway, like I said before, Suzhou Industrial Park is a planned city.  But the local folks all say that it an exceptional planned city because the city planners have stuck to the plan.  Most cities, they say, suffer because the bureaucrats responsible for the city plan turn over every few years or so.  When new ones come in, they all make changes to improve it.  Each change is a deviation from the original master plan and before long the city becomes a confused jumble.  SIP, however, has stubbornly stuck to it's original master plan.  There is logic to the organization of industrial and residential and public spaces.

You've seen those high-end subdivisions where the developer comes in and builds a nice little community of houses and a playground and a golf course and a shopping area?  Suzhou Industrial Park is like that.  Only it's bigger.   A lot bigger. 

One of the nice things that the city planners did was to carve out a few acres for Central Park.  Central Park is about halfway between the Old City of Suzhou and the recreation spaces on JinJi Lake.  It is an island of trees and water and bamboo groves and flower gardens in an ocean of concrete and asphalt. 

Above are a few photos of Central Park.   There is a bus stop to the North of the park and another to the South of the park.   Let me know if you need the numbers of the buses which visit there.

Bus Stop Mapping

I've taken up a new hobby.  I photograph bus stops.

You see, there are a lot of buses in Suzhou...tons of them.  And there seem to be a lot of people happily moving from place to place on them.  I wouldn't mind being one of those happy people.  Especially now that it is the rainy season and empty taxis have become scarcer than the sunshine. 

Unfortunately, all the bus route information is in Chinese.   (Or at least all that I've been able to find. )  No maps of the bus routes either.  You can find maps with the subway lines on them.  Too bad that the subway doesn't open for another year.

So now whenever we go any place, we take pictures of the nearby bus stops.   Then we go home and I plug the bus stops and the bus numbers into a big matrix.  (Actually, an Excel spreadsheet).   Slowly, with each added bus stop, a picture of the buses and their paths begins to emerge.

I don't expect to map the whole city - just the stops at the places where we most commonly go.   Besides, they change the bus routes from time to time. 

Tiger Hill

If they had barns in China, then the roofs and walls would be painted with "See Tiger Hill".  Tiger Hill is the Number 1 Sight to see in Suzhou.   That's what all the tourist maps say.  About 900 years ago, the poet Su Shi said, "It is a lifelong pity if having visited Suzhou you did not visit Tiger Hill.".  The local tourist board has been quoting him in their advertising ever since.


Don't get me wrong, Tiger Hill is a site well worth visiting.  Suzhou is known all over China as the city of historic gardens and Tiger Hill is the most famous of them all.  Tiger Hill is a knob of about 5 or so acres on the Northwest corner of old Suzhou City.  The country side around Suzhou is so dog-gone flat that any type of hill would merit tourist attraction status.  But Tiger Hill has history to go along with the geography.  The Tiger Hill Pagoda (shown above) dates back 1100 years or so.   The Suzhou Museum has artifacts from the site that date back two or three thousand years before that.

Surrounding the pagoda are lush forests and gardens and terraces and temples.  Many of the buildings are reconstructions, I'm sure. But still, the feeling of oriental mystique is strong and authentic.   The place reeks of history.   You can't help but feel a little knot in your stomach out of awe.

A scholar could probably spend a week exploring Tiger Hill.  For your average tourist, a half a day is more than enough.  There are bus loads of average tourists that come in the morning and afternoon.  Bus loads.  Tiger Hill in the morning and the Pearl Market in the afternoon.   Or maybe the Silk Factory in the morning and Tiger Hill in the afternoon.  Tourism is a great way to make a buck, whether your peddling Tiger Hill in China or Rock City in Tennessee.

The Tiger Hill pagoda is also known as the Leaning Tower of China.   Perhaps you can see why in the photo above.

And of course there is a bit of Buddism in the history.    

The Public Art of Suzhou

Suzhou, or at least the Suzhou Industrial Park, is salt and peppered with pieces of artwork in its public spaces.  Most of the art pieces are statues of people or animals or insects.  Other pieces are more difficult to recognize, which I guess makes them sculpture.

Here are a couple of examples.  Above are some park benches that sit outside the Cultural Center building.  (aka...the ""Bird's Nest").  Below is an example from Hubin Park on JinJi Lake.

I'll put up more examples from time to time.  There are a lot of these things around.  And they make for quick and easy blog posts when things are otherwise dull.

There Will Come Soft Rains...*

I think the rainy season has arrived.

Locals and expats alike have been telling us that June is a month of rains.  Not exactly the monsoons.  Not torrential downpours.   More like constant drizzle broken only by periods of heavy rain.  They call these the "plum rains" because they come at the time that the plum fruits ripen.

You'd think that people would look forward to the end of the plum rains.  They don't.  After the rainy season comes the two hottest months of summer.  Many of Theresa's expat friends are fleeing the country in July and August to escape the heat.   It's kind of unsettling to see them off... like waving goodbye to lifeboat passengers as they are lowered from the decks of the Titanic.

--------------------------------------------

* Regarding the title for this post....
It rained all day on Friday.  ALL day.  The rain drumming softly on the windows recalled this phrase "there will come soft rains".   It was the title of a short story in our high-school literature book.  Freshman or Sophomore year I think, though not sure.

So I stole it for the title of this post.  Pretentious, I know.   But it's my blog.

I had to do some internet searching to fill in the large gaps in memory.  Thankfully, Wikipedia is there to help offset the toll taken by the years.  I learned that the title of the short story, by Ray Bradbury, actually comes from a poem by Sara Teasdale.:

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pool singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white

These first four lines seem rather apt for the plum rains.  The remaining 8 lines of the poem get decidedly more depressing.  You can go HERE and enjoy it for yourself.

Again, it was the Ray Bradbury short story that we studied in literature class, not the poem.  The short story was written in 1950 and later became part of Bradbury's book The Martian Chronicles.   It's only 4 or 5 pages long.  I'm sure the textbook authors were attracted by it's brevity.  Also, this was back in 1975, the age of Aquarius and all that.   I suspect they thought it cutting edge for them to include a study in "Modern" science fiction in a high-school textbook. 

You can read Bradbury's story There Will Come Soft Rains by clicking on this link.   It's 35 years older than it was when I first read it.  Bradbury never saw the coming of digital electronics.  But if you forgive him that, his 1950 predictions of future technology are not too ridiculous.   I hope that I hold up as well when I am 61 years old.

Theresa Goes Shopping Downtown

 I've mentioned before that our official address is in the Suzhou Industrial Park...or the SIP.  The SIP has been around for about 10 to 15 years.   Just to the West of SIP is the city of Suzhou, or what the locals refer to as "downtown".   Suzhou City has been around for 1000 to 1500 years... or even several thousand years longer, depending on how you choose to measure. 

Living in SIP is like living in Houston or Indianapolis or any other Western city.  But the true China is only a 15 minute cab ride away, in downtown Suzhou.

 Last Friday, Theresa and a group from the Expats' Association went on a shopping trip down town.   These photos show a couple of stops at the meat market and at the spice market.  Do you need a little pig snout to flavor that recipe?  Well then, you can find it in downtown Suzhou.   And the spice market is filled with bags of the good stuff that Colombus was looking for when he set out in 1492.  Theresa says that the smells in the spice market are overwhelming.  Breathing is difficult if you have a good set of lungs.  Do not go if you are asthmatic.

 The scenery out and about is also different to the SIP.  In SIP we have sky scrapers.  Downtown, they have pagodas.

ZongZi

In the previous post on Dragon Boat Festival, I said that the festival is associated with two things.  That post described the first thing...the dragon boat races.   This post describes the second thing......

On Dragon Boat Day, and the days leading up to it, you eat ZongZi

That's right.  You eat ZongZi.   The pronunciation, as close as I can represent it, is something like "dsong dsuh". 

ZongZi are bamboo leaves wrapped around a ball of sticky rice that encapsulates some meat or fish or bean or fruit.  It's kind of like a Tamale...but in China the leaf does not come from a corn stalk and for the stuffing the Chinese use rice instead of corn meal.

Anyways, these jobbers have been all over the place for the past month.  All the grocery stores have had them displayed out front and center.   And people at work have been bringing in homemade versions...made by their parents or in-laws.   Some have a sweet filling....like dates or bean paste...intended for desert.   Others have a savory filling....like barbecued pork or duck...intended for the main course.  They're all pretty good.  Not exactly diet food...but pretty tasty.

Dragon Boat Festival

 Monday, June 6 was a holiday.  It was the day of the Dragon Boat Festival.  The Dragon Boat Festival is an ancient tradition in Asian culture.  But in China, the tradition was lost...at least officially lost...for may years.  It was only in 2008 that the holiday was officially re-instated by the government.   Which is a good thing, since this is 2011 and we get the day off of work.

 On the day of Dragon Boat Festival, you do two things.  The first thing you do is go to see the dragon boat races.   Word-of-mouth says that most every city has some kind of dragon boat race.  Businesses and clubs form teams to participate in a friendly competition.   The organizers provide the boats.  And the teams just show up the day of the competition.  The more aggressive come to win.  The majority, though, come with only the hopes of not overturning the boat and looking foolish.

 In Suzhou, the Dragon Boat Races were held on Jin Ji Lake in the Moon Harbor area....just a mile or so East of our apartment.  It rained most of the day, but miraculously there was a break in the drizzle from about 9:00am until 1:00pm for the races.

 In coming out to the races, the main point is to see other people and have a good time.   In truth, if you've seen one Dragon Boat Race,  you've seen them all.   Unless you've got a horse in the race, it's pretty much all the same.  It's mainly for fun and for charity.  Somewhat like the Daviess County Turkey Trot, but with Dragon Boats instead of Turkeys doing the racing.

The Pearl Market

 I know nothing about jewelry.  Absolutely nothing.   And so for our entire marriage I've not given Theresa any gifts of jewelry...partly out of fear of showing my ignorance and partly out of fear that one gift would lead to the expectation of a second and a third.  I swear the stress would compound to the point of killing me.  So for 29 years I've successfully avoided the subject.

Unfortunately, the Suzhou area is big on jewelry.  Or at least big on pearls.

 There are two basic types of pearls.  Saltwater pearls and freshwater pearls.  Naturally occuring pearls are a rarity in the scheme of things.  Most of the pearls in the world are cultured.  And most of the pearls in the world are freshwater pearls.  And most of the freshwater pearls in the world come from the areas around Suzhou.  Of course, I'm relying on the internet for my figures, but when I say "most pearls in the world", it does not mean 25% or 33% or 51%.   By some accounts it's in the neighborhood of 90% of the world's freshwater pearls come from this area of China.

 On the fringes of Suzhou, near Taihu Lake, there is the pearl market.  The market is actually a collection of several building and within each building are many, many booths operated by individual entrepreneurs.  You want to buy raw pearls?  They will sell you raw pearls.  You want them to string a necklace or a bracelet or whatever?  They will string it for you while you wait.  The price?  Well, that depends upon how well you can negotiate. 

It's capitalism in all it's naked beauty.

We've become acquaintances with a couple that lives a few floors above us in the apartment block.  He is originally from England and she from Ireland.  They were telling us stories about how they've lived in various places in Asia (including China) over the past 10 years.   When I asked if they spoke Chinese, Ed...the husband...answered; "No, but my wife speaks fluent calculator".  

You see, that is how you dicker for prices in China.  The Chinese person trying to make the sale enters the starting price on a calculator and hands it to you.  Then it's up to you to enter your counter-offer.  (As a rule of thumb, you can take the starting price and divide by 5.  After that, the calculator gets passed back and forth however many times are necessary to arrive at an agreed price.  There's usually a lot of yelling and waiving of hands and walking away involved as well.  But in the end, all that matters is the number that is on the calculator at the time of the hand-shake.

For what it's worth, Theresa is getting to be pretty good at speaking calculator.

The Perils of Air Drying Laundry in a High Rise Apartment

We found this hanging from our balcony railing one morning.  We assume that a gust of wind liberated it from a tenant on an upper floor.  

From PuDong to PuXi - Shanghai Shopping

The Huangpu river is barely 60 miles long.  But its last few miles make it one of the most important waterways in the world.  It happens to dump into the Yangtze river just at the point where the Yangtze dumps into the China Sea.  The geography of the Huangpu river provides the best real estate for a port in an otherwise muddy Yangtze delta.  The location is ideal as a gateway between ocean and river traffic.  And Shanghai just happens to occupy that location.   If the Yangze is the Missisippi of China, then Shanghai is the New Orleans.

 The city of Shanghai is split into East and West by the Huangpu River.  We were staying in a hotel on the East side, known as the Pudong area.   Pudong is new city, built up in the last 20 years of economic boom.  The West side of the river, known as the PuXi, is the old city.  In truth, the larger part of it is also recently built.   Historically, though, the West side of the river is what made Shanghai.

Shanghai traffic can be horrendous, and getting over the river can be one of its larger horrors.  Theresa, being the trouper that she is, climbed in a taxi one day and made the crossing.  She was motivated by the opportunity to go shopping in one of the truly "old" areas of Shanghai.

 

Above are some photos of the shopping area in the City God Temple district.  Below is a photo taken back at the apartment showing Theresa and her purchases.  It's like a photo of a hunter with his kill huntress with her kill. 

Shanghai

Last week, Theresa and I were in Shanghai.   That is one of the reasons for the slow pace of postings lately.   I had business meetings there the week of May 23rd.  Since this justified a hotel room, Theresa came along rather than stay in Suzhou.

Shanghai is big...though how big is hard to figure.  Some say it's population is 16 million and others 23 millioni and others 26 million.   It all depends on how you want to define the boundaries of Shanghai, I guess. 

Suzhou, being only 50 miles away or so, is lost in the limelight of Shanghai.  Shanghai is the big city.  It's where the action is.  Where the rich people come from.  The people of Suzhou take pride, and brag, about the fact that they are only a "small town" when compared to Shanghai.  A small town of only six million. (as compared to 20+ million.)

Above is the Shanghai World Financial Center, as seen from directly underneath.   It is one of the tallest buildings in the world and offers the highest open-to-the-public observation deck in the world.

Good Eats

There are a million things to write about the  food and the dining experience in China.  For example, I'm yet to see General Tsao's Chicken on any menu.   And a typical Chinese Restaurant resembles a hotel more than it does a U.S. restaurant.  But those are stories for another day.

All we have time for today is a short blurb on odd things we've lately eaten.  Not that it is rare to eat odd things, mind you.   These are just a couple of recent items.

At the top is a heaping plate of Duck Tongues.  This is a common starter, or "cold dish" in the better restaurants.  I'm not really sure how they're cooked...whether boiled or braised or fried or what.  They taste good, but don't have a lot of meat on them.   And they have a bone in them.   I never realize that a duck has a  bone in their tongue.

The photo above is from Japanese restaurant in China.  Japanese restaurants in China are kind of like Mexican restaurants in the U.S.   (Read into that what you will - it works on several levels).  Anyway, the Japanese are famous for their raw fish - sashimi and sushi.  The Chinese especially love these Japanese raw fish dishes.  Freshness is important to the Chinsese.  And nobody in the world does fresh fish better than the Japanese. The dish in this photo represents the ultimate in freshness.

What you are looking at is a fish on a bed of ice.  On top of the fish, the glistening stuff, is thinly sliced raw fish meat which was carved from the body of the fish.  (There is not much between the head and tail of this fellow, except his bare spine.   You just can't see the bare spine because it's hidden by the meat and the ice and the other garnishes.)  You eat the glistening, raw meat like any Japanese sashimi...but dipping it in a little sauce and then slurping it down.  If the fish is very fresh, then it is very good.  If the fish is not so fresh, then it's like eating an old pair of socks.

This particular fish was very good.   And as we were eating it, a Japanese colleague explained that it had to be fresh because the fish was still alive.   The dish is prepared by carefully carving a live fish.  Just because the meat is off the bones does not mean that Elvis has left the building.

And to prove it, he said, you just need to drop a little beer on the nose of the fish.

And we did.

And the fish's head gulped air through its gills and wiggled it's tail around. 

Of course, you can't leave that alone, so a few minutes later we dropped some more beer on it's nose.  Again, he bobbled his head and wiggled his tail. 

He kept on doing this long after his former possessions had been eaten and until the waitress took his remains away.  About 15 minutes later he came back again, this time as the main ingredient in a boiling pot of fish broth.  At that point, though, he was no longer wiggling and most assuredly Elvis had left the building.