More Noodles

One loyal reader of this blog requested that I keep writing. His actual words were, “Get the blog over with buddy…it’s not going to be too much fun later.” But that provides me sufficient excuse to mess around with this thing a bit longer.

I do have plenty of untold stories and observations, though they seem rather more distant than expected given the mere two-and-a-half weeks since I was fully immersed in China. Probably the high number of enormous hamburgers I’ve eaten since my return has accelerated the process of feeling fully at home in America again. But this past weekend Kristy and I decided we needed to use chopsticks and made a trip to a restaurant called Crouching Tiger in Redwood City in order to do so. I ordered dandan noodles, of course.

Writing that last sentence honestly made me start sweating from my face. The noodles were as spicy as the ones I ate at the Sichuan restaurant in Shijiazhuang, and much of our dinner conversation consisted of Kristy laughing at me while I said things like, “Oh man, these are spicy,” and “Can we get some more napkins over here?”

As previously mentioned, the food in China was mostly exceptional. It came in large doses, not suited for those with an instinct to keep eating as long as food keeps coming. This is probably why I’m convinced that I developed the beginning of a gut while there. Well, that and the bottomless tiny glass of beer with every dinner, the daily 3-pack of egg tarts, and the excess Ghirardelli chocolates my wife packed for me anticipating a client team of hundreds requiring authentic San Francisco gifts of goodwill. Had I stayed much longer I might soon have achieved my dream of developing a more convenient and fully portable snack food resting place.

Egg Tarts served with a smile daily

It’s something of a surprise that our dinners ever got started given the diversity and thoroughness of our team’s dietary restrictions. Several people cannot handle spice (I was accused of being one of them, but vehemently fought this assertion through the duration of the trip). Duli has a shellfish allergy. Two of the girls are relatively straightforward vegetarians, though apparently fish qualify as vegetables in Canada. And then one girl is what I will call an “ultra-vegetarian” simply because I don’t know what else to call her, never having attempted regularly to dine with someone who could not even eat onions or garlic. For all the work I do to pick hunks of onions and garlic out of my food I now recognize that I’m probably impacting 10% of the total.

The only restriction I put in place for myself was no dog meat, but I eventually extended this to cats after Duli, his grasp of the language apparently coming along much faster than anticipated, warned me that he recognized the symbol for cat in several dishes being grilled in the Carrefour parking lot. Later we found out it was the symbol for whichever Central Asian ethnicity was associated with that style of cooking, and there was no cat involved at all. Meanwhile, Tom made it abundantly clear that, with the exception of Duli’s allergy, everyone’s restrictions were personal choices and he refused to feel guilty if people struggled to find enough to eat in the local restaurants. As a result, some irony played out in the high frequency of visits to KFC by a subset of the group attempting to stay within the bounds of their healthy lifestyles.

One of the best meal options in China is the Hot Pot, lovingly celebrated in Mukul’s blog here. A hot pot, for those who don’t know, is a pot of boiling water into which you throw a bunch of raw food and then fish it out with chopsticks to eat. Important elements of the hot pot include the collection of stuff already simmering in the water to give it flavor and the sauces used to give the cooked food even more flavor. Well, and the food. I have categorized my hot pot experiences into three types: the community hot pot, the small table hot pot, and the personal hot pot. The community hot pot, as the name I’ve chosen implies, consists of one big “community” hot pot that sits in the middle of a table for 10 or 12 or some other relatively large number that can in good faith be labeled a community. The nefarious inventor of the community hot pot came up with a great way to start arguments, particularly among a group as picky and diverse as ours. Don’t put garlic in the water. Wait – is there shellfish in that? The meat has to go in last. That’s too many noodles. Why are you ordering more beef? YOU ARE SCALDING MY FACE!

At the other end of the spectrum is the personal hot pot, so named because each person at the table has his or her own hot pot to do with as he or she pleases. The fatal flaw in this design is its reliance on the individual’s ability to cook, which puts a significant damper on the experience for me. The other potentially more literal fatal flaw is that it puts the heating unit very close to people who may not be qualified to play with fire. At one restaurant I watched a woman lean over and light her hair on fire. I was about to congratulate her for the spot-on Michael Jackson impression when I noticed she was screaming and crying while her date was hitting her in the head with his hands and a napkin in a desperate attempt to put out the conflagration. By the time I got there with a glass of water she looked a little stressed out and more boyish than before, but uninjured.

In my experience the best hot pot is the small table hot pot, although this may have been more a function of the people around said small table, not to mention their relative lack of dietary restrictions. Apparently there is spin on the hot pot, whereby all the stuff to throw in the pot whizzes by on a conveyor belt while diners frantically grab items with chopsticks. With this invention the hot pot restaurateurs have come very close to completely automating the restaurant.

Mukul fell hard for Chinese Hot Pot

For those restaurants still employing people, ordering in China can be a challenge for those of us who barely even know how to count in Chinese. A key tool in this process is the translated menu. I had heard many stories and seen many pictures of menu translations gone horribly wrong in small town China, so I was looking forward to this aspect of the experience with great enthusiasm. Besides a few gems, such as “Trumpet She’ll Flesh,” Shijiazhuang mostly underdelivered for me. Thankfully, during our Shanghai trip we found a restaurant just off of Nanjing Road with a menu that nearly made up for it all. In addition to the famous Shanghai steamed dumplings, or xiao long bao, people dined on such dishes as “Trick Not Cut Jobs,” “Chicken Curry Piece of Land,” and that traditional favorite, “Hot Face in Three Other.” Everything we ordered was good, and when Duli didn’t die we found out that none of what we ordered had shrimp in it, either.

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The Hamburglar sees a growth opportunity in China, too

Must have been what the girl with the burning hair ordered.

If you could read this you definitely would laugh

Editor's note: the fact that this blog doesn't have an ending is meant to be symbolic given that Chinese meals didn't really seem to have a very obvious ending, either. Actually, I'm proud I came up with that because in truth I sort of ran out of steam writing this one.

Enter the Wu Tang, Part Three

As Part Three begins, we still hadn’t made it to the actual Shaolin Temple. Emily, Carlos, Duli, and I had traveled many hours and kilometers (note to American readers: those are kind of like miles), and now we had a few steps left to complete the journey. The outbound journey, that is.

Duli, being single, had become enamored of Emily during the early stages of our assignment. By this time he’d decided that the feeling was not reciprocated and so hung back with me cracking jokes as we walked slowly to the Shaolin Temple. A lot of our conversation had to do with the Wu Tang Clan and Chinese language. One of the earliest phrases I learned in China was “bu yao,” or roughly “I don’t want it,” and it was always satisfying to be able to yell “boo yah!” at people and get a point across. A lot of Chinese phrases sound straight out of a rap song, but with entirely different meanings. In addition to my Shijiazhuang donut business I may also be able to carve out an opportunity by creating a Chinese-Rap crossover double entendre genre. I’m really surprised this doesn’t exist already.

At long last we entered the Shaolin Temple. I stuck a coin in an old tree, Duli burned some incense, Carlos snapped photos of Emily posing in front of temples, and the entire thing went on towards infinity like everything else in China. It’s a nice temple in a beautiful setting, and Duli took some shaky videos on his iPhone.

“I have a friend who makes Kung Fu B movies.”

“Isn’t he about 35 years behind on that one?”

“Maybe he can use some of this footage.”

“Let’s get one of me leaping out from behind that wall, then.”

The monks in the temple were not doing any Kung Fu. Mostly they were talking on cell phones. We heard later that a lot of them are actually rent-a-monks put in place for aesthetic purposes. But we did come across some older ones who, while they looked like they hadn’t done any Kung Fu in a long time, did at least chant, wave some smoke around, bang on things, and ask you not to take pictures. That felt authentic.

He heard the call

Inside the Shaolin Temple grounds

We’d seen the temple and continued walking away from our driver and Shijiazhuang. Now a number of women began swarming us to sell us these incredibly annoying cats that make a high pitched noise, apparently meant to be a meow, when you run your fingers down the string to which the cat is attached. The women were insistent. One woman came up to me while torturing her cat toy and began punching me in the chest, ordering me to buy it for 2 yuan. I started yelling “Boo Yah!” and pointing at her face repeatedly, which made me feel good but didn’t stop her. As I wrestled my way from her I asked myself who the hell would buy anything when faced with these selling tactics.

I heard Duli’s laugh before I saw him walking up to me, and then I heard a weak but still annoying meow come from the item he was holding in his hands. “This thing is great,” he said as he kept laughing.

Reluctant movie stars and their cats

Kung Fu Chicken

Eventually we began our journey back to Shijiazhuang. Our bus deposited us at a noodles place in Zhengzhou, and after dinner we dodged hectic nighttime traffic while walking through what seemed to be a pretty nice city. We narrowly avoided being run over several times and Carlos just about lost an eye when clotheslined by a low hanging wire. “Why this wire hanging here?” But we found the station.

Unlike our outbound train, the return train was a slow one with sleeper cars. Our “hard sleeper” consisted of six beds crammed three high into a narrow box. Duli and I were convinced that we’d share a unit with one of the local men who showed off their shirtless and prodigious bellies in what seemed to be a Shijiazhuang summer style. As we settled in, we found a bottle of rice wine that smelled like nail polish remover and a tube of something that thankfully turned out to be toothpaste awaiting us on the filthy table between beds. The train pulled out of the station sometime after 10 pm and would not make it to Shijiazhuang until 3 am. Tired and weary after a long day, the four of us chatted for a bit before retiring to our bunk beds.

Hard sleeper

I looked down at my feet that hung well into the aisle and, having recently seen Misery in an oddly-chosen dinner accompaniment at a Shijiazhuang restaurant, was glad there was no food cart on this train. Soon the lights were turned out and the train filled with sounds of many snoring Chinese passengers, what Carlos called the “Lotus Symphony.” Tool’s cover of No Quarter drowned out the sound via my iPod. With no real idea where the train was, and hours from Shijiazhuang, I lay there in the dark on a small, hard bed looking up at the occasional lights of a very foreign land flashing by. The world was infinite again.

Live Update

Quite a few stories are left untold, including the story of our final presentation to students at Hebei University of Economics & Business. Those stories will be told...just a little late, go figure.

Tonight was my last night in Shijiazhuang. Tomorrow we depart for Beijing and I catch a flight out of Beijing on Saturday. It's been quite an experience. Some quick observations:

• Shijiazhuang is booming. The scale of development is almost inconceivable but in a way that seems more sustainable than what I saw in Dubai last year. They build on three year plans and the city is transforming before our eyes.
• Students are students. Tom and I got to know a few of the students and they are smart and down to earth, although I never would have imagined being treated with such reverence by humans.
• The people I've met are outstanding, from my CSC teammates to the ABV team to those at the University to locals to anyone associated with Phil. Quite pleased to have a number of new friends and people welcome in San Carlos anytime.
  
• Very interesting to hear people talk about the overall climate over here. More on this later, perhaps.
• Can't say enough good things about the food, even if I did have to dodge several menu items. Nevertheless, I can't wait to have good Mexican food and a big, juicy burger.
• Does anyone want to go into the donut business with me in Shijiazhuang? The ratio of Chinese donut shops in SF to total donut shops in all of Shijiazhuang is huge.
  
• Is it rude for me to say I'm very much looking forward to the level of cleanliness to which I'm accustomed?
  

I should sleep. Stay tuned for more...

Enter the Wu Tang, Part Two

The story of our epic day trip continues where it left off, with Duli and me in our new raincoats, so thin that despite their gaudy colors they acted something like invisibility cloaks and we found ourselves inside the Shaolin complex without paying. We uncomfortably squeezed the wrong way through the turnstiles to find a place to buy tickets. Most uncomfortable of all was Carlos, who had held a mildly terrified look on his face for the last thirty minutes.

“I don’t know if I can make it,” he had said as we were winding our way into the mountains in our small bus.

“You gotta hold it. This is your first Shaolin test.”

From there his wide eyed gaze had fixed on the horizon and he focused all of his energy on not wetting himself. But now we were on the move, and he was getting desperate. “Where is bathroom in this place?” His first word was reaching ever higher notes. After running across a courtyard we were at the bathroom.

We were hacking and coughing when we could finally breathe again after leaving this gas chamber. “Oh man, that was a Shaolin test!”

Legitimately through the turnstiles again, we headed directly for the Kung Fu show that the monks put on at 2, 3, and 4 pm each day. This was such a beast of a day trip that we only arrived in time for the 3 pm show, despite having been at the Shijiazhuang train station on 4 hours sleep that morning. We chose balcony seats, settled in, and waited for the show.

Before it began, however, a tour group of middle aged Korean women swarmed the balcony. They were all around us, moving in every direction. A cacophony of “anyangs” accompanied a hectic search for seats. The women were like a swarm of bees on flowering shrubbery. They came from every direction at once, sitting, hopping up, moving to the next seat, trying to sit on our laps. Carlos and I leaned forward and used all of our size to block, but Duli wasn’t as lucky and two or three Korean women sat or stepped on him in their search. It was chaos until the emcee stepped onto stage.

When Korean women attack

He gets ice cream after this

Duli is from Boston – South Boston, to be more precise – and his accent got confused during a life spent in Sri Lanka, Dubai, Washington state, and South Boston. He is one of these guys who is already laughing when he walks up to tell you a joke, as he was the time he showed me his iPhone saying, “I think I found the place where William Hung gets his glasses.” The iPhone showed a photo of the façade of Shibang Optical in Shijiazhuang. Once, in conversation that I guess must have been about the predicted rapture, he said, “I once tried to resurrect a raccoon. Seriously.” He went on to describe the process but I’ve since completely forgotten it.

Duli is the only single guy in our group, so that makes him the most motivated to learn some Mandarin while here. In an early dinner with two of Phil’s former language teachers, Vicky and Sophie, Duli tried out one of the pickup lines he’d been practicing in hopes of getting some phone numbers. Quite a bit of laughter ensued until they were able to tell us that he’d just said, “Your telephone is beautiful.” Duli is also at least something of a Buddhist, so once the Kung Fu show was over I went with him to see some monks and offer a prayer or two.

“Duli, I forgot to bring money today.”

“Don’t worry, you’re not obligated to pay. They’re Buddhist monks.”

One of the monks was asking me to sign a book while he put beads on my wrist and a jade Buddha around my neck. Not a single signature was in anything but Chinese characters. I considered pulling out my Hao wen si business card to copy the characters before deciding what the hell and signing my name as I do on my checks. “I’m not sure what I’m committing to here.”

Duli began to drop a good amount of money into the offering bin – significantly more than we usually spend in Shijiazhuang for dinner – but it looked to me like his monk was not satisfied with this. The other monk was suggesting that I do the same. As they became more adamant it was apparent to me that we were indeed under some obligation. Duli doubled his offering and said in English, “I’ll pay for both,” which struck me as a phrase he really should have learned in Mandarin. This seemed to agitate the monks even more.

“What do we do?”

“I don’t really know. Buddhist monks aren’t supposed to make you give them money.”

“These guys know Kung Fu.”

I considered removing the jewelry and scribbling out my name, but I guessed this would infuriate them even more and might unleash fists of fury on my fragile western body. I had the Carlos look on my face when Emily walked up asking what sort of fix we’d gotten ourselves into. “I don’t have any money, and Duli paid for both of us.” Despite my lack of Chinese language skills it was clear to me that Emily didn’t make any more progress before saying, “It’s ok. Let’s go.” I was sure I had just stolen jewelry from Shaolin monks. This couldn’t be good.

Please forgive us

Duli and I decided that the best way to restore our karma would be to act out the fighting scene depicted in a large statue in front of the Kung Fu theater. This was met with rave reviews from Chinese tourists nearby, so we proceeded to take this show on the road for the rest of our trip in China.

Shaolin

Let's not act this one out, guys

Top of the World Financial Center, Shanghai - believed to be the highest Shaolin pose ever performed

Tom gets into the act on the Shanghai waterfront

Our karmic debt paid, we walked on. “What else do we need to see today?” I asked. “Umm, the Shaolin Temple?” Ah yes, a topic for Part Three.