exploits in china
In accordance with Crank’s two favorite loves (zombies and pandas, of course), and in honor of one of our favorite procrastination sites, Crank recently came up with the following ven diagram that I decided to illustrate.
I think you would agree, Cutest Apocalypse Ever.
Though the People’s Republic of China didn’t go all out to celebrate Earth Day, our local hiking group, Beijing Hikers, was a bit more proactive, and put together its first annual Earth Day Clean Up Hike. We joined twenty-odd expats and packed onto a bus for a three hour ride to the small Cuàn Dǐ Xià village near a section of the Great Wall in the Mengtougou district of Beijing. We set off up the steep canyons with plastic bags in hand, picking up all manner of bottles, caps, wrappers and rubbish. From the village we hiked up to the Huáng Căo Liáng, or Yellow Grass Plateau, where we enjoyed a breezy lunch (we’d packed peanut butter sandwiches, bananas, peanuts and the obligatory chocolate bar, for the Stepho, of course). After lunch we got down and dirty and fanned out across a section of the plateau, picking garbage out of the tall grass and bushes.
The hike was beautiful, if a little hazy, and it felt good to do a little community service. It reminded me of the Earth Day clean up trips I used to do with my fellow scouts in Chappaqua’s Troop 2. We’d get giant, heavy-duty, bright orange garbage bags from the town and head into Whippoorwill Park where years of illegal dumping have left refrigerators, sinks and almost an entire car. Over a decade later I still have a bunch of old, intact glass bottles I found on those trips on a bookshelf at home.
Mmm delicious xiao long bao
This week, xiao long bao, better known by some as soup dumplings.
Soup dumplings, I must say, are magical, magical things. Perhaps one of my favorite noms of all we’ve eaten thus far in our Chinese adventures. The dumplings are traditionally filled with pork but can be found with a variety of other fillings, from vegetables to seafood. The best part: the dumplings are also filled with a gelatinized broth that turns to soup when steamed. Yes, any food that contains the term “gelatinized” I often view as suspect, but xiao long bao is an exception. One bite into a steamy bao and the delicious flavorful broth rushes into your mouth and the term gelatinized is forever forgotten.
We visited Din Tai Fung, a world-renowned Taiwanese restaurant specializing in xiao long bao, for our first soup dumpling experience. We ordered two types of the dumpling. The first was a mini xiao long bao which you eat with a soup spoon and a small extra bowl of soup — the soup dumping is placed in the spoon with chopsticks, the spoon is dipped into the bowl for a bit of extra flavorful broth, and the entire tasty treat is popped into your mouth to be savored until the next bite. The second type we ordered was the regular soup dumpling (10 to a basket, rather than the minis which come 20 to a basket). These are eaten with chopsticks, dipped into your preference of sauces (generally soy sauce or vinegar or a mixture of both) and savored (in our case quickly rather than slowly — I think we downed all of our dumplings in record time they were so delicious).
A word on dumpling terminology: what we in the west have come to term “dumplings” are actually a bit mis-named. The Chinese have many a dumpling-like food, all of which have different names. Jiaozi , or potstickers or gyoza, as they are known elsewhere, are made with a wheat-flour based dough, stuffed with a meat or vegetable-based filling, and sealed by crimping the edges together. They can be cooked by boiling, steaming or pan-frying. Baozi, on the other hand, are always steamed and are generally more bun-like. Generally filled with meat or vegetables and crimped at the top, they are also made with a wheat flour, but can be made both with raised or un-raised dough. The xiao long bao are an un-raised baozi, meaning the wrapper is thin and smooth. Baozi made with a raised dough have a very bread-like consistency.
Check back soon for the next Food Glorious Food post, where I will describe how to make dumplings (Craig and I took a cooking class with Hutong Cuisine and learned to make our own jiaozi!). For detailed information on how to make your own xiao long bao, check out Steamy Kitchen’s blog (thanks to Grace for finding it!).
The art of 798 is not limited to the gallery walls. The outsides of nearly every building are adorned with graffiti, ranging from the cartoonish and doodley to the subversive and stencily. Graffiti is pretty rare in Beijing, so the high concentration of “urban street art” in 798 was extremely noticeable. I’m still looking for a Beijing Banksy, but I dig the vibe of some of the simpler pieces, especially the little dragon.
One of our other fun excursions while my dad was visiting was to the 798 Art District. The art district is located on the outskirts of the northeastern part of Beijing in what was once a thriving factory community. The district had it’s beginnings in the early 1950s, when China was in need of new electronics manufacturing capabilities. Having already funded Projects 1 through 156, Soviet Russia suggested China turn to another ally in the Eastern Bloc. Planning for Project 157 began in East Berlin which accounts for the factories’ German Bauhaus-style architecture. The factories were all highly productive during the 1960s and 70s, however by the early 1990s factory production had largely ceased.
In the late 90s and early 2000s the area was reborn as a contemporary artists’ community which has thrived in the last several years. Art galleries and cafes have sprung up in the same factories that once supported Mao’s China and evidence of his control over the country are visible in some of the galleries today — huge Maoist slogans continue to adorn many of the gallery walls and ceilings.
My new favorite painting.
We wandered around the shops and galleries for the day, sipping coffee and snapping photos. I also found my new favorite artist, Liu Ye, one of who’s prints is shown above (it is a little girl with a knife in her hand, facing off with a pig). (See more of his art here). We had a really great time — so good, in fact, that we decided to go back the next weekend and camp out there for a day. See below for some of our photos of the awesome art and architecture of 798.
In the epic saga of Steph and Crank versus the PRC we have recently won a small and expensive concession from the opposition. We have been granted Type F Student Visas which will allow us to stay in China until mid-July. So we no longer have imminent deportation hanging over our stay here. Well, at least as un-imminent as we can hope. Hooray!
I think our dancing in this video really says the rest concerning how we feel about our new visas.
The jewels of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the Beijing National stadium (aka “The Bird’s Nest”) and the Beijing National Aquatics Center (aka “The Water Cube”), no longer host athletes from the world but still sparkle every night.
We were excited to have Steph’s Dad visit for 10 days in March. While he was here he arranged for us to visit the two buildings. We toured the arenas, along with throngs of bussed-in Chinese tourists. We snapped lots of pictures (seen below) and were constantly ushered along by a small battalion of guards, guides, caretakers and custodians.
The Chinese authorities have been hard pressed to find an act to fill the Bird’s Nest’s 80,000 seats. But just this week the first concert to be held in the Beijing National Stadium was announced. And who will be headlining China’s biggest venue? None other than Jackie Chan. Yeah, maybe you didn’t know it, but Chan is quite the renaissance man. According to Wikipedia, he’s released 20 albums and trained at the Peking Opera School in his childhood. “Jackie Chan & His Friends” will be rocking the Nest May 1.
Lots more pictures after the jump.
Peking roast duck is, as one would say in Chinese, “Běijīng de míng cài”. In English…Beijing’s famous dish. It has a history that goes back hundreds and thousands of years to ancient China (specifically the Southern and Northern Dynasties) when the dish, then known as shaoyazi, was served in imperial courts.
We had our inaugural duck experience at the Li Qun Roast Duck restaurant, a slightly out-of-the-way spot tucked in the Qianmen hutong area south of Tianamen Square. After finding our way to the hutong district a very insistent pedicab driver convinced us that we wouldn’t find the restaurant on our own, so my dad and I hopped in. The driver then pointed at Craig and told him to run behind us — apparently he couldn’t fit three.
Our experience at the restaurant was not disappointing. The duck, roasted in traditional wood-fired ovens, was crisped to perfection and served with the standard fare of pancakes, sweet hoisin sauce, cucumber and spring onion. In many restaurants the skin of the duck is served first to diners and eaten with a mixture of sugar and garlic, and truly melts in your mouth.
If you make your way to Beijing this hidden roast duck gem tucked away in the winding hutong streets is definitely a must. If you go be sure to order the fried shredded potatoes with chilis…
“At Sinoland we study!”
We’ve been allowed back into China (for the time being) and have started our Mandarin classes at Sinoland College. Here’s a quick breakdown of the school and our study structure:
We have class Monday through Friday from 9am until noon. Steph and I have only one other classmate, Marcos, from Brazil. Class is taught by our constantly-correcting and infinitely-patient teacher, Liu Xiao Jing, aka “Liu laoshi.” The focus of the class is on speaking so for the vast majority of the class we are talking. Every afternoon we write out dialogs, study vocabulary and try to speak to each other in Chinese.
While we have a very limited vocabulary, we can still manage to say a lot of important things to each other. Here’s a quick “Best Of” from our growing Mandarin mastery:
