Lost in Translation IV

 These are some pictures remaining from my summer trip.  I've been looking for an excuse to slip them in to a story....but that excuse never came.  

At top is a statue that can be found in the small town of DongYang.  DongYang is the home of HengDian Studios and is also known as "Chinawood"....because of all the films shot there.  This statue is located in a bus stop area just outside the studio gates.  On the day that we visited, we saw no horses or buffalo.  The danger of stampede was very low.

 These last two photos were taken in the small village near the beach at XiaPu.  Walking through the streets of this village made me feel like a complete foreigner....like I was a million miles away from my home.   Then I saw this guy delivering Budweiser , and all was right with the universe again.

Fashion

 Here are a couple of observations about local fashion.  The first point is about glasses.  The second is about T-shirts.

If you look in the photo below, you see a good looking young man wearing glasses.  He looks reasonably intelligent.....until you get close enough to see his glasses have no lenses.  He is wearing empty frames.  Huge, empty frames.

Why is he wearing frames with no lenses?

Now, this is not a rare thing to see in China.  You see it quite a bit in Japan, too.  It's a trend for young people to wear glasses with no lenses.  By young, I mean people that appear to be between 12 and 32 years old.  (It's not just the school kids.)  Most often, you will see this on the ladies.  But now and then you will find a fashionable fellow like the one in the photo above.

Helen Reddy claimed "I Am Woman".  This lady claims "I Am A$*H*L*"

 Now, on to the t-shirts.  Here in China, it seems to be very fashionable to wear a shirt with something readable on it.  That something readable might be a brand name (Abercrombie and Fitch) or a school insignia (Harvard) or some kind of message (I Climbed the Great Wall).  Very rarely do you see Chinese people wearing clothing emblazoned with Chinese writing.  Most of the times, the words are English. French words are popular also.  In some cases, it is hard to figure out whether any real words are involved at all.  Grammar is often warped and misspellings are frequent.  Sometimes things are so mangled as to be unintelligible.  It seems that any arrangement of our alphabet will do.

Here is what I think is going on.  Some people buy legitimate brands like Nike and Lacoste in the malls.  Others are buying knock-offs, and the knock-off artists are not very good with their spelling.  Then, on top of it all, I think that much of the American novelty t-shirt market is supplied by factories in China.  And I suspect that many of these factories end up with a lot of "factory seconds" which can not be exported - either because of production overruns or because they've screwed up the graphics so badly that the customer would not accept the goods. All of these factory seconds probably end up getting sold in China.

 I've got to believe that the vast majority of Chinese people have little understanding of what their t-shirts are trying to say.  Even if they are able to read English very well,  the nuances of t-shirt humor and gutter language probably go right over their heads.   One day I saw one of the elderly landscaping ladies, a woman who looked to be in her 70's, wearing a t-shirt that prominently featured the "F" bomb.

Where do these shirts come from?



Gourmet Birthday

 It so happens that a colleague of mine, named Lin Jian, and I share the same birthday.  He is about 14 years younger than I, so the birth years don't match.  He is a Tiger,  according to the Chinese Zodiac.  By the lunar calendar, the twelve months beginning 23 January 1974 were the year of the Tiger.  I, being born in August of 1960, am a Rat. 

I could not imagine a less auspicious animal than a rat.  The Chinese, though, assure me that rats have many redeeming and endearing qualities.  Of course, the Chinese are extremely courteous... to the point of telling white lies to maintain your self-esteem.  For example, any attempt by a Westerner to speak Chinese, no matter how badly mangled, will ALWAYS produce a compliment.  "You speak Chinese very well !", they will say.  They are lying.  They are taught from an early age that, sometimes in life, courtesy is more important than veracity.  I suspect that, in their hearts, they pity the poor bozos who are born in the year of the Rat.

Snake with Chili Peppers

 Our Chinese co-workers were kind enough to take us out for a birthday celebration.  Lin Jian likes spicy food, as I do.  So a restaurant was chosen that specialized in the cuisines of Hunan and Sichuan provinces.  Lin Jian also has a predilection for some of the more exotic cuts of meat, as I do.  For that reason, Theresa decided not to go along to the restaurant.  She prefers the more traditional cuts of the pig and the cow and the chicken.  Those were not on the menu for our birthday feast.  (She arranged another party later on at Zapatas for the less adventurous.)

For appetizers we had some cold items - some marinated lotus root and chicken feet.  The star of the show was the cold, thin-sliced donkey meat.  There was also a pretty good mix of sliced, marinated cow stomach, cow tongue, and duck gizzards.  (Though the animals are different, the chewy textures of these organs complement each other.) Then we moved on to the hot dishes.  (The photos show some of them.)

 

Sichuan Spicy Bullfrog

The snake with chili peppers had a very nice flavor and spiciness.  The snake skin was left on the meat, which produced a very nice chewiness.  The only downside was the bones, which were many and tiny - like the small bones in a small fish.  This restaurant used a small snake for this dish.  You might find street food made from larger snakes, which afford a boneless filet to be cooked on a skewer.  But you will not find a more tasty snake-based dish.

Spicy bull frog is always a winner in my book.  The frogs are skinned and gutted and the meaty parts are cleaver-chopped into bite-size chunks and then fried with onions, garlic, and peppers.  As with the snake, one has to deal with the little-bitty frog bones.  Luckily, Chinese table etiquette allows you to spit these out onto your plate.  The spitting of bones offends no one.

Fish Heads with Red Pepper

 Fish heads don't have a lot of meat on them, but what little there is is considered by the Chinese to be the best.  I'm starting to understand why.  Firstly, the head has more bones and connective tissue, which produces a richer and more gelatinous quality in the meat.  Secondly, muscles in the head are smaller, more delicate, and more globular and fixed to large facial bones.  When cooked, these muscles become tender, boneless chunks of meat that can easily be pulled away with chop sticks.  We had a wonderful dish of fishheads cooked with red peppers.

Pork Belly in Garlic Barbecue

Then, there was the pork belly.  Pig meat is the most popular in China.  And if you want to impress a guest, then at least one dish with pork-belly is de rigueur.  This is, essentially, a big slab of bacon which has not been cured nor smoked nor sliced thin.  Instead, the pork belly - with skin - is chopped into cubes and slow cooked with a dump-truck-load of garlic in a barbecue-like sauce  Each cube (about one inch on each side) consists of a layer of chewy skin followed by alternating strata of meat and fat.  Each cube probably has a calorie content bigger than a Big Mac and more cholesterol than a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken.   Each cube is a cardiac surgeon's nightmare.  But it tastes.....oh-so-good.

This was my birthday dinner.  Though it probably took 5 years away from my life expectancy, I would not trade it for all the world.

No Escape

There are some advantages to being 7000 miles away from home, especially in an election year.  There are no political advertisements on the television.  For the most part, there is not much coverage of the U.S. elections in the news.   Sure, from time-to-time you will catch a story on BBC World News.  But it comes in small doses and is tolerable.  CNN Asia has been making a lot of noise about the elections lately; Obnoxious segments with people yelling at each other. (Just like at home.)  A quick zap from the remote control is all that is needed to restore peace and harmony.  You can surf right past CNN to the apolitical tranquility of Dog Whisperer re-runs on one of the Filipino channels.

 Theresa and I were in Beijing last week - the last week before the Tuesday elections.  Our hotel had the full set of CCTV channels.

Side Note:  We don't have CCTV at our apartment.  We have satellite TV coming out of the Philippines. Strictly speaking, external programming is not supposed to be available in China....or at least not available to the general populace.  For foreigners it is tolerated, though.  Satellite TV keeps the expats happy and, since we're already corrupted, it can't corrupt us any further.  The only downside is that the CCTV programming is often better than that on the satellite.  The Chinese soap operas and kung fu movies are much better than the Filipino programming, which is mainly two-year-old re-runs of B-grade American cable TV shows.  (Dog Whisperer, Hillbilly Hand Fishing, Pawn Stars....)

 Anyway, in our Beijing hotel we had the full menu of CCTV to select from.  While surfing for a good kung fu movie, we stumbled across some local programming on the U.S. elections.  The photos here give you a feel for the show.  The format was a cross between a newscast, a debate, and an episode of American Idol.  The host of the show provided the news content - he explained the candidates and the key issues and the electoral climate.  He also posed questions to a panel of experts.  The experts would argue their points.  A couple of the experts were Chinese-speaking Americans, who seemed not-so-much to argue as to try to explain why things were not-so-simple as they appear on the surface. 

Every now and then the host would allow members of the audience to express their opinions or to ask questions of the experts.   After points were debated, he would ask the audience to vote as to which of the opposing positions they supported.  That's what they are doing in the photo immediately above....holding up little paddles to show their votes.

In case you are wondering, the Chinese name for Obama is 奥巴马.  The anglicized spelling is "Ào bā mǎ" and it is pronounced very similar to the actual English pronunciation.  Romney is not-so-easy a name for the local folks.  His Chinese name is 罗姆尼, anglicized as "Luō mǔ ní". The "R" is the killer.

The individual characters are for phonetic purposes and not really intended to have meaning.  However, if literally translated (according to Google translate) Obama's name might be something like a "mysterious Pakistani horse".  Romney would be something like a "fussy baby-sitting Buddhist nun". 

The Pants Go Viral

(Link to original site for photo above.  Link to Google Translation)

 Remember the "Pair of Pants" building from previous postings here?   Well it seems that this unconventional skyscraper is getting quite a bit of attention over the past few days, at least on the Internet here in China.  According to the China.org.cn website:

"A netizen from Suzhou uploaded photos of the skyscraper to his microblog on Aug. 27, and was quickly forward more than 4,400 times despite the bloggers limited audience."

 The India Times also has a good article regarding the explosion of opinions on Chinese websites.  The building has looked like a pair of pants for a good six months now, so I don't understand why the public debate is just started within the past few days. 

Regardless, it has quickly snowballed so that the Chinese sites are awash with comments...I hear over half a million now.  And, best of all, there are Photoshopped images.  I've included a few of them in this post as a cross-cultural-enlightenment-opportunity.  Links are provided to the original websites (just in case there is someone in China who is concerned about intellectual property).  There is also a link to a Google translation of the site.  (Google Translate is good...but it still can be pretty sloppy.  Be warned.) 

(Link to original site for photo above.  Link to Google Translation)

Most of the critics are calling the building 秋裤, or QiuKu.  (That's the caption in the cartoon above.)   Ku means pants.  Qiu means Autumn.  I'm not really sure what the two characters mean when taken together, but I believe it translates as "long johns".   I believe that because, right now, if you do a Google search for images with 秋裤, about half of the images displayed are of the Pair-of-Pants-Building.  The other half are of people in long underwear.

(Link to original site for photo above.  Link to Google Translation)

Other people are calling the building "jeans" or "hip huggers".  Some have suggested they continue building another 20 stories or so and put a bra on it.  Opposing the criticism are a  few brave souls defending the architecture as art.  (After all, they say, the 19th century Parisians thought the Eiffel Tower was an eyesore at the time it was being built.)  But my favorite people are the ones that bypass the serious debate and move straight into the mockery....by grafting bodies upon the structure.

(Link to original site for photo above.  Link to Google Translation)

 As a side note, the official name of the pair of pants building is DongFangZhiMen (东方之门) which translates as "Gateway to the East" or "Door to the Orient".   If you're ever in the neighborhood, then that is also the name of the subway stop that you would get off at to come visit our apartment.

(Link to original site for photo above.  Link to Google Translation)

As another right now if you do an Internet search on images related to 东方之门, you can find some other Photoshop humor.  Over the next few days, there may be some new ones.  Check it while you can.  I expect that they will fade away with time, as do all things on the Internet.

(Link to original site for photo above.  Link to Google Translation)

ps:  If you like these Photoshopped images, then go to this link and scroll through the full set of photos.  It's probably the best collection out there.  It's in Chinese, but just click on the right arrow to scroll through the 20 or so photos.

(Link to original site for photo above.  Link to Google Translation)

TaiMu Shan

 In China, there are many famously historical mountains - the sacred mountains of Buddhism and Taoism.  These mountains (and just about every other hill more than 10 feet high) are covered with ancient shrines and monuments and a temple or two.

 TaiMu Shan, in FuJian province, is not among these historical mountains.  Sure, there is a temple up there.  But the main attraction of the mountain is more natural than supernatural.  It is like a little slice of Yosemite or Yellowstone.  It is blessed with dramatic rock formations and stunning views of the coastline of the East China Sea.  It also has an assortment of trails, each with its own unique scenery and obstacles.

 One of the obstacles on our trail was called the "ray of sunshine", or something like that, where the path wound it's way through a narrow gap in the rock formation.  They call it the "ray of sunshine" because that is all you can see as you squeeze your way through.  You can see the ladies below going down to the entry.

I was about 10 yards past this point (where the ladies are above) when I realized that there must not be very many personal injury lawyers in China.   The sunlight was choked off to almost nothing.  It was impossible to see the pathway as it continued steeply downward and the stones became more slimy and slippery.  But the lack of light became academic - the gap became too narrow to tilt one's head to look downward. 

At one point, the gap became narrower than I am thick (From back-of-shoulder-blade to front-of-chest).   I had to work my way through sideways on one foot and one arm.  I may be a fat American, but I am not the fattest one you will ever find.  One more inch around my middle and I would have become a permanent fixture of TaiMu Shan.  (By the way, the women in our group were nimbly slipping through the crack like a rabbit in a rabbit hole.  The fact that I have a bigger chest, from back to front, than all of them should tell you something about the physique of the average Chinese woman.)  

At the top of TaiMu Shan are dramatic knobs of granite, like the one shown above.  Some brave workers have constructed a kilometer or so of walkways around the circumference of these knobs.  The walkway rests upon concrete beams cantilevered from the nearly-vertical rock. You can see the walkway in the photo above.  When  stood on the platform, I couldn't imagine how the poor construction workers installed those support beams.   It's a long way down to flat ground, so any kind of scaffolding would have been a remarkable feat.  

 The platforms allow you to walk almost completely around the top of TaiMu Shan.  The scenery is spectacular, and was especially so on the day we went because the skies were sunny and crystal clear.  The photo above shows an inlet of the East China Sea, with a small town nestled at the shore. (Note that this is not the beach-side village we visited earlier.  That was much smaller.)  The photo below shows the terraced sides of the hills down below.

 Finally, you can see below a photo of our group that went to TaiMu Shan...totalling about 50 of my co-workers and their families.  Very nice people and a pleasure to travel with.  (I am at the back at dead center.  You can just barely see my head poking up above the others.)

Rice, Tea, Corn

Fujian province is a far cry from the flat lands of Suzhou and the Yangtze River flood plains.  There is a saying:

"If we divided Fujian into ten parts, then eight parts are mountains, one part is water, and one part is farmland".

As you move back from the beach-side village near XiaPu, away from the beach, there is a ribbon of that rare farmland that is flanked by the hills.  The villagers, I assume, must farm this land.  Maybe they split their time between fishing and farming, or maybe some fish and others farm.  Close to the houses there are patches filled with corn and squash and other vegetables. (Kitchen gardens I suppose.)  Beyond those are acres and acres of rice.

The climate is sub-tropical, which means that the winters are pretty mild.  For the rice farmers, this means a nearly perpetual growing season that yields multiple harvests.  The rice fields near the beach had crops in all stages of growth.  In the top photo, you see in the foreground some newly planted shoots (stalks, seedlings, whatever you call them).  Behind are plots at different stages of maturity.  The photo above shows a plot that was recently harvested.

The photo above....it shows one of the garden plots I mentioned.  (Just to prove I wasn't making stuff up.)  In the center are stalks of corn that would make any Indiana boy homesick.  The Chinese love corn on the cob, especially as a street food that can be eaten on the run.  The cobs are impaled on a wooden stick which serves as a handle, first for the preparer to retrieve the ears from the boiling pot and then for the consumer to munch on the ears like a Popsickle.

But more than anything, the Chinese love their rice.  All Asians, for that matter, love their rice.  They can talk for hours about the different types of rice and how each type requires different preparation and has different texture and is suitable for different dishes.   Asians know rice like the Irish know potatoes.

The husband of Betty, my guardian angel, was excited to be going to dinner in Fujian.  The rice in Fujian, he educated me, is of longer grain and fluffier than that grown to the north.  Not like the basmati rice of India, he said, but more like the Jasmine rice of Thailand.  (I felt like a beer drinker listening to a Frenchman talk about wine.)  Delicious and sweet, he said the rice is.  "The best in China?", I asked.  He thought hard for a few seconds and then answered that, in his opinion, the best came from the Northeast of China, at the northern limit of the growing range.  Because the rice there can not grow as fast, it has longer to concentrate the flavors of the sunshine and the sea breezes.  So he tells me.

The photo above shows newly harvested rice, drying on the asphalt road that leads to the village.  Fishing nets, rope, rope fibers, rice straw, and  rice - everything that the villagers needed to dry was laid out on that road.

Some of the surrounding hillsides are terraced to create additional land for crops.  At the lower levels of the hillsides, the terraced plots are filled with rice.  Higher up the hillsides, it is more valuable to grow tea  The photo above shows a plot of tea plants.  (My colleagues call them trees, but I think it would be more accurate to call them bushes.)  Fujian province is famous for "white tea", and I would guess that is what we see above.  My understanding is that the white tea is consumed mostly because of its medicinal reputation rather than its flavor. 

Of the teas from FuJian, the most prized is the Fuding White Tea.  Fuding is a city just a few miles away from the beach side village near XiaPu.  So it's a reasonable guess that these terraced hillsides are Fuding-White-Tea-in-the-making.

In China, the local palates are highly discriminating in their tastes for tea and rice.  When it comes to corn-on-the-cob, though, not so much.  There is no such thing as sweet corn as we know it.  No tender, sweet, milky kernels of white or gold.  All of the corn is field corn, with no-parking-yellow kernels matured to the point of being tough and fibrous.  It is bland, it is starchy, and it is most definitely not sweet.  I hope that, with time, capitalism will fix this.  Surely there are millions to be made growing and selling real sweet corn here.