Secret Santa

 Christmas is not a holiday in China, at least not in the traditional sense.    But everyone seems to know about Christmas...well, the gift-giving part of Christmas.  Chinese culture loves to exchange gifts - on holidays, weddings, graduations, birthdays. Gifts are also important to professional relationships, which brings a whole set of unwritten rules known as "guanxi".  So it is no surprise that the Chinese are more and more growing to love Christmas.

Our little team at work organized a "Secret Santa" gift exchange...complete with decorations and an artificial tree.  (Same stuff you would buy in the U.S.....it's all made here anyway.)  For most of the folks, this was their first time ever to do such an Christmas exchange.  The beauty of Christmas is that it is so egalitarian - gifts are given to everyone and not just a special guest of honor.  So everyone had a chance to give and to receive and to enjoy.

The Expat Christmas Party

 We returned from Kobe to Suzhou on December 9th....just in time to prepare for the Suzhou Expats Association Christmas party on December 10th.  We weren't hosting the party...but just attending.   I wouldn't think much preparation would be needed for that.  Wrong again.  There were dresses to be picked up from the dressmakers and nails to be done and hair to be styled.  NASA moon launches had less complex logistics.

 The Renaissance Hotel hosted the party, as it does most other EAS functions.  They did a great job of decorating for the season.  If you woke up with amnesia calling "where am I?", you'd have no clue that you were in China.   The crowd of partiers would not have been a clue either, as it was an overwhelmingly Western group that could just as easily have been gathering in Melbourne or Strasbourg or Peoria, Illinois.

 The party is actually a charitable event - you buy tickets that entitle you to drinks, dinner, and dancing.  Any profits go for local orphanages and such.  They sold exactly 100 tickets this year, which they said was the most ever.  Evidently there are more expats in Suzhou this year....or at least more that are homesick for Christmas.  The photo above shows Theresa with Ed and Delores.   They are a lovely couple - he from England and she from Ireland - who've been living in Asia for quite a while now.   Their apartment is three floors above ours, and from time-to-time we see what trouble we can get into together.

The photo above is from the dessert table.  Amongst the gingerbread houses and Christmas puddings, this was the only thing that seemed to be a little odd.  It is a watermelon sculpture.  Maybe watermelon is a traditional Christmas food someplace -in Australia or South Africa, I don't know.  But given the Chinese love for the melon, I'm guessing this is a local spin on holiday dessert.

More Trains

We've talked about the trains of China before, so it is only fair to give some time to the trains of Japan.  The photo above shows a Shinkansen train, one of their famous "bullet-trains".  They run at speeds up to 300 kilometers/hour, which is roughly the same as the Chinese fast trains.  For travel in an island the size of Japan, the bullet-train is more confortable, more convenient, and often faster than going by air. 

Himeji Castle

 Himeji Castle is located in....well, Himeji.  It's about 30 miles West of Kobe.  There has been a castle on the site for about 800 years and the current version dates back to around 1600.  It's one of the best preserved historical sites in Japan.  Unfortunately, it's in the process of becoming better preserved.

 The castle is being renovated from top to bottom.  Normally, you would see the castle rising from it's hill-top with it's tiled roof reaching five or six stories high.  Right now, though, you see only the image of the castle printed on the cloth windbreak that shrouds the scaffolding-encased structure.  It takes a bit from the "wow" factor, but there is still a lot of history to be seen.

 Himeji is a small town.  In the late 19th century, cities such as Kobe and Osaka began to grow large as a result of Japan's opening to the West and its rapid modernization.  For some reason - maybe because it does not have a port - Himeji remained frozen in the past.  But there was a silver lining - Himeji was not significant enough to draw the cross hairs of the bombsights during WWII.  So it survived to remain frozen in the past for the tourism industry of today.

 Theresa always told me that, when she was young and in Japan, she was always being stopped by people to have her picture taken with them.   The photo above shows that she hasn't lost any of that attraction to the locals.

 The castle grounds are protected by rings of moats and stone walls.  You can see that in the photos above and below.   The remaining photos show some of the restoration going on inside the shrouded scaffolding.  Also, they show the view from the top (Note the windows at the top of the scaffolding below...that's where the photos were taken.)   The final photo shows some of the brilliant foliage.  December seems a bit  late for fall colors, but it is actually peak season in this part of Japan.

Kobe Miscellany

 The food in China is very good, but it was a nice break to be in Japan to enjoy something different.  From what I can tell, all of the Asian countries are passionate about their food.  Also, from what I can tell, the American versions of Chinese, Japanese, Thai, and other Asian foods bear little resemblance to the authentic, home-country cooking.

Shabu-shabu is the Japanese version of a "hot pot".  In Suzhou, we've had the Chinese and Korean versions.   In all variations, you have a table top burner upon which boils some broth in which you cook vegetables and thinly-sliced strips of meat.  In Kobe, we enjoyed a true Japanese shabu-shabu that included some Kobe beef and some seafood.  All the ingredients were of highest quality, as you would expect in Japan.  It was a delicious feast.

The photo at top shows us dining in a little shabu-shabu place that is tucked in the basement of an office building.   I would never have found the place on my own.  But Moriyama-san, the lady in the left-rear of the top photo, claims it as one of her favorites. The others in the photo are colleagues - Laurence Degan at right-front and Dana McKinney to the left.  Theresa, of course, is in the back center.

 In Kobe, we got a chance to eat many of the dishes Theresa remembers from her childhood years in Japan. Of course, there was a lot of sushi and sashimi. Also, almost every day Theresa got a tonkatsu for lunch.  Tonkatsu is actually a Western import...the Japanese version of German schnitzel.  It's a breaded pork cutlet, pounded to about 1/4 inch thickness and fried.  It's served with a special sauce and rice and all the other things you see in the photo above.

  The photo above shows another one of her favorites cooking - okonomiyaki - which is best described as an omelet of scrambled eggs, shredded cabbage, and whatever else the cook wants to throw in.  Osaka, which is not so far from Kobe, is the traditional birthplace of okonomiyaki.  So it wasn't too hard to find a good one.  You slather the thing in mayonnaise or sweet-sauce before eating.  Anything slathered in those sauces would taste good.

Finally, we change the subject away from food.  The photo above shows the "escape hatch" in our hotel room.  It allows you to climb out onto a narrow balcony.  We were 26 floors up...so I hope that the balcony led to a ladder or some other means to safely get down to the ground.  Japan is the only place I've seen such a thing.   I'm not sure if it's provided out of fear of earthquakes or fire.  In any case, it's not sized for the typical American wide-bottom to fit through.

Kobe, Japan

Theresa and I travelled to Kobe, Japan for the first week of December.  Kobe was my last stop before entering China last February.  And this trip marked the first time that I'd been outside of China since then.

Kobe is a bustling city built on a small strip of flat land between Osaka Bay and the mountains that pop up a kilometer or so inland.   When you're in Kobe you can occasionally glimpse the mountains between the buildings - downtown Kobe is a forest of commercial towers and high rise apartments.  And when you're walking in Kobe, you always know that if you're walking uphill then you are walking North, toward the mountains.  If you walk far enough uphill, then you will come to the dividing line where the city ends and the forests of the mountainside begins.

 There are several places where you can take a cable car up the side of the mountain.  I had to work, but Theresa did not...so she found the time to take the cable car.  This is the first week of December, and you can see the trees are sporting their fall colors.  The temperatures in Kobe are almost always the same in Suzhou, which means that at this time the mercury had just started dipping into the 30s (Fahrenheit) at night.  The prime colors are a couple of weeks away.  But it is already beautiful.

 From the top you can see city and Kobe harbor and the islands (Harbor and Rokko Islands) beyond.  Japan is country of amazing landscapes and beauty.  These photos give just a small taste.

Street Food

 You can find a lot of street food for sale in old Suzhou, especially in the places where there are crowds.  If the crowds are normally shoppers or tourists, then the street food will be more exotic or indulgent.  You can get working man's food near the construction sites.  Tourists and shoppers want empty calories...the Chinese analog of a deep-fried-twinkie. 

Just outside of the Lion Grove Garden, we found this couple selling steamed sticky rice cakes.  The lady would fill a little wooden bowl with sticky rise flour and then the man would top the bowl with your choice dried fruits or nuts.  The mixture was placed on a steamer for five minutes and then, viola! - you had a glob of hot, sticky, sweet, goodness.

The cost for each cake was 2 or 3 RMB (thirty to forty cents) depending upon the type of topping.  Theresa and I bought a couple of cakes.  They were very tasty.  It was a good sign that the Chinese folks were lined up three or four deep waiting for their chance to order.  You have to approach the street food with a little bit of caution.  A line of waiting customers is always a good sign.  And a cooking process that kills gut-tumbling germs..like five minutes of steaming...that is enough to seal the deal. 

The Lion Grove Garden

 The last week-end in November was our last taste of Indian Summer in Suzhou.  The temperatures were in the mid-60s... and may have even broke 70.  The sun was out and the skies were clear.  So Theresa and I went to the old city, to the Lion Grove Garden.

 Suzhou has quite a few gardens and most folks say that if you've seen one then you've seen them all.  A student of classical Chinese gardens could talk for hours about the differences in design and architecture.  Your typical tourist is hugely impressed with the first one they see, but has trouble maintaining the same level of excitement for numbers two, three, four, and on and on.  I've heard tourists to Europe say the same thing about the Gothic Cathedrals.  "Cathedral overload", they call it.  "Garden overload" is a similar thing.

 The Lion Grove Garden is special treat for those suffering from "garden overload".  Though among the smaller gardens in Suzhou, it is one of the most loved because of its unique and playful use of rocks.  The "rockery", as they call it, includes maze of paths and puzzles for visitors to climb over and climb through.  It's like a jungle gym for adults.

 On the Sunday afternoon of our visit, the garden was packed with rockery climbers.  There were not a lot of tour buses in the parking lot and most of the folks looked to be locals.  Everyone, it seems, came out to enjoy a last chance at the warm weather and sun.

 The Lion Grove Garden takes its name from the rocks... in an indirect way that is so typical of the Chinese.  The rocks, they say, look like lions.  (I can't see it....but I'll trust them on that.)  The forest of rocks looks like a forest of lions.  So in Chinese the call it 狮子林园, which literally translates as something like "the forest of lions garden".  The tourism bureau must have decided that "Lion Grove Garden" as a more posh translation.

 The garden was initially built about 700 years ago by a Buddhist monk, as part of a monastery complex.  The limestone rocks come from hills surrounding nearby Taihu lake, where they were carved by the combination of time, water, and gravity.  In building the garden, the most exotically shaped rocks were chosen and carefully piled into even more exotic combinations.  Toss in a lake and some trees and some pavilions to go with the rock piles and you have the garden that you see today.

 During the hard years of the 1800s, the garden fell into disrepair.  In the early 1900's, the property was bought by a member of the wealthy Pei family, who restored the grounds and made the garden the home for his family.  Each summer, he would host his relatives from Shanghai, among whom was a boy named Ieoh Ming.  When the boy got older he went to the U.S. for university studies.  He must have tired of having his name mispronounced because he started using just his initials - I.M.

I.M. Pei went on to get a degree in architecture and to design a bunch of buildings that architects love to talk about including that silly glass pyramid at the Louvre in Paris.  (I guess this also makes him complicit in the DaVinci Code conspiracy.)  Perhaps his time amidst the splendor of the Lion Grove Garden helped inspire his architectural genius...though there is nothing at the Lion Grove Garden that remotely looks like a glass pyramid. 

He did come back to Suzhou, in his twilight years, to design the Suzhou Museum.  The Suzhou Museum may be his final project, though I'm not sure.  He designed the courtyard of the museum as a modern echo of the classical Chinese garden - with greenery and rockery and water. (watery?)   Ironically, the museum is only a short walk away from where he spent his youthful summers - two blocks from the Lion Grove Garden.  So to say his career finished where it started is not just a metaphor; it is a geographical fact.