"...I've been learning how to not trust people, and I'm glad I failed. Sometimes we depend on other people as a mirror, to define us and tell us who we are. And each reflection makes me like myself a little more."
(My Blueberry Nights - Wong Kar Wai)
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Friday, March 26, 2010
Under ground
Again I ventured out of my self-imposed exile and willingly exposed myself to other expats. There is this bar here the kids from my Chinese class (almost all English and barely 20) like to frequent. From what I had heard about it, I dreaded this place, but I was craving some live music, preferably something loud... with guitars... So when my friend Liu Xing pointed me to a concert by a finnish band (Snipe Drive) labeled as Indie Rock, I didn't think twice. And, boy, it was fun. (Maybe also due to the fact that on a Tuesday night the place was quite empty. The classic binge drinking only starts Wednesday night - which in turn means my Chinese class is totally empty on Thursday and Friday.)
It does exist, the Chinese Indie Scene! Albeit still small and incredibly mixed, it seems to collect anything that is slightly alternative, from Emo to Hiphop (I saw my first Chinese with dread locks), well, I didn't see any punk yet. I find it kind of astonishing that the Chinese music scene is still so underdeveloped. Even the totally Underground band 单行道 Dan Xing Dao (its songs can only be found online) sounds like standard Chinese pop (we listened to one of its "national pride songs" in class, supposedly many of their other songs are too critical of the government, so they don't find a label). It can't be because it's Asia, as in Japan they have punk, metal and all sorts of music. What's up, China?
A question that might also be asked concerning google's recent move to leave mainland China. As I am neither an information freedom activist nor a computer geek (frankly, I have no clue about the technical details), I will leave the comments in more capable hands. If you don't know how censorship in China works, you should read this article first. Then we have one criticizing the New York Times for its naive praise of google's moral standards, and a more in-depth analysis here. Fine, you might argue my choice is selective :)
It does exist, the Chinese Indie Scene! Albeit still small and incredibly mixed, it seems to collect anything that is slightly alternative, from Emo to Hiphop (I saw my first Chinese with dread locks), well, I didn't see any punk yet. I find it kind of astonishing that the Chinese music scene is still so underdeveloped. Even the totally Underground band 单行道 Dan Xing Dao (its songs can only be found online) sounds like standard Chinese pop (we listened to one of its "national pride songs" in class, supposedly many of their other songs are too critical of the government, so they don't find a label). It can't be because it's Asia, as in Japan they have punk, metal and all sorts of music. What's up, China?
A question that might also be asked concerning google's recent move to leave mainland China. As I am neither an information freedom activist nor a computer geek (frankly, I have no clue about the technical details), I will leave the comments in more capable hands. If you don't know how censorship in China works, you should read this article first. Then we have one criticizing the New York Times for its naive praise of google's moral standards, and a more in-depth analysis here. Fine, you might argue my choice is selective :)
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Toona scrambled eggs
No, that's not a typo. Toona is no fish but the name of a Mahagoni tree. Its young leaves are edible and as I was to discover, yummy. They are only in season for a short time in spring, for obvious reasons :) the adult leaves are not recommended for eating anymore. So far, I've only had them with eggs. I'm hard pressed to describe the flavour... some people say it's onion-like, but I find it has none of the sharpness of onions. If anyone knows of another use, tell me quickly, before spring is over :)
梅干菜 Mei gan cai (dried mustard greens) has become another favourite of mine. I think similar salted preserved vegetables exist all over China, but I find the Jiangsu variety especially tasty. It's usually combined with meat - it's a perfect counterpart for slow-braised fat pork belly, or stuffed in steamed buns with some ground pork. Apart from being quite salty and having a very satisfying chewy texture, it's also quite umami (savory/meaty) or 鲜味 xian wei (literally just means good flavour), as the Chinese call it.
Some brain food as well: insightful discussion by Harvard faculty and alumni .
梅干菜 Mei gan cai (dried mustard greens) has become another favourite of mine. I think similar salted preserved vegetables exist all over China, but I find the Jiangsu variety especially tasty. It's usually combined with meat - it's a perfect counterpart for slow-braised fat pork belly, or stuffed in steamed buns with some ground pork. Apart from being quite salty and having a very satisfying chewy texture, it's also quite umami (savory/meaty) or 鲜味 xian wei (literally just means good flavour), as the Chinese call it.
Some brain food as well: insightful discussion by Harvard faculty and alumni .
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Kung Fu Logic
What do you do if something hurts when doing it a thousand times? Exactly. You do it two thousand times! Please don't ask me what to do if that is still painful. I'd rather not find out. My new Kung Fu school (I left the one with the kids and the beating teachers, for several reasons, most of all they did not practice traditional Gong Fu), which I found with the help of Liu Xing (as everything else in China - the internet has the answer to all questions) seems very traditional, in the sense that they believe in pain but not entertainment value. Which meant that in the whole two hours I was there today I got to practice exactly one move. And as homework I am supposed to walk 1km every day... no big deal, right? Well, try that with bend knees and you'll see what I mean with pain. I have been doing this since Monday, so only for three days, and of course it still hurts! And what did Master say today? Well, if it still hurts, you should do it for 2km each day from now on.
I switched from training Shaolin, which is taught as a purely external art here, to 形意拳 Xing Yi Quan , one of the three internal arts (if you are interested in more background on Chinese Martial Arts - Wikipedia is actually a useful resource). I had not planned to do so, because I kinda like the kicking :) but more than once I ran against the wall of prejudice "Shaolin is not for girls!" I have to say, in some respects China is quite a sexist society. I still haven't figured out exactly how far equal rights go. You certainly have to give the communists credit for getting rid of brutalities like foot-binding and putting girls in school and women to work. (Not that I meant to imply that the latter two are brutalities!) But as in most developed countries, the leading positions in politics and business are still filled with men, and if a family only has the money to send one child to school, you can bet it will be the son, not the daughter. The old Confucian values like "a girl has to be soft-spoken and obey her father and husband" seem to go a long way. At least the "a girl should not be too educated" (if you think I'm making this up, read "A Moment in Peking" by Lin Yutang ) has been eradicated, as is proven every year when they publish the names of the students with the best results in the nationwide university entrance exam. Almost always girls. But I can't help but feel that Chinese girls are extremely obsessed with appearance (I always wondered how it's possible that their is a hair salon at every corner, but they are actually full of customers any time of day - la derniere crie is the perm for boys though... looks just outright ridiculous, sorry to say). But then, this is probably not so different from the States, where there is the chaste of "college chicks" only going to Ivy League Schools to get a "Mrs."
Coming back to Kung Fu... the way it seems to be taught at traditional schools is to start with Shaolin (kicking, punching, flexibility training) for little kids and once they get older, they can progress to internal arts, which means they learn to put actual power behind the moves they learned as kids. In the non-traditional school, Kung Fu is mostly for show. Now, of course, a lot of people start with 太极拳 Tai ji quan (which we like to pronounce Tai Qi, but the name doesn't have anything to do with 气 Qi) as adults. And if you pay (their considerable fee), they will teach you. You can turn up your nose at that, but the school supports a pretty nice training room and two full time teachers with that. The Master is about 50, has been practicing for 30years, the other teacher goes by the title of 师兄 Shixiong, which is a combination of 师 shi - teacher and 兄 xiong - older brother. He is not quite a 师傅 shifu (Master) yet, although he started Kung Fu at the age of 5. He actually grew up in the Shaolin temple (imagine a boarding school turned Buddhist temple with Kung Fu training every day from dawn till dusk - yes, that still exists. The Shaolin temple in Henan province is now a big tourist attraction and not cheap to visit, but the whole town is full of Kung Fu schools). Now, I don't want to get into any arguments about how traditional this school still is - ehem - but at least my "older brother" got some serious training in the 15 years he spent there. His right fist is about twice the size of his left - a result of iron palm training. And man, he's got power. So I let him and the Master convince me that I should study Xing Yi Quan instead of the not-for-girls Shaolin. I like my hands the way they are, thank you :)
In contrast to Tai ji quan, Xing yi quan has actual applicability for fighting (I don't think I have the space here to debate the finer points of this argument, but feel free to drop me a line if you want to). Its movements are very fast and powerful, and focus on stepping and punching. No elaborate kicks and jumps :( But the most important aspect is to learn to focus your jin - your power. Apparently this is done by standing in one position for about an hour - that's all I can say so far after two classes :) And the best thing about the school? They are open every day 10h to 21h. Apart from the evenings when they teach Shaolin and Tai ji quan, I could go and hurt myself, ehm, I mean practice every day! Imagine what this does to my motivation to do my actual job...
And on a totally unrelated note: I think this is funny. Reminds me of the subway in Nanjing. They're building two new lines, of which nothing was visible when I got here last August, the first one is supposed to open in May, and whenever someone (me included) hears that, they ask "which year?" Yes, this year. Everything here grows incredibly fast. The price we pay is the always hazy sky... at least you can't get sunburn!
I switched from training Shaolin, which is taught as a purely external art here, to 形意拳 Xing Yi Quan , one of the three internal arts (if you are interested in more background on Chinese Martial Arts - Wikipedia is actually a useful resource). I had not planned to do so, because I kinda like the kicking :) but more than once I ran against the wall of prejudice "Shaolin is not for girls!" I have to say, in some respects China is quite a sexist society. I still haven't figured out exactly how far equal rights go. You certainly have to give the communists credit for getting rid of brutalities like foot-binding and putting girls in school and women to work. (Not that I meant to imply that the latter two are brutalities!) But as in most developed countries, the leading positions in politics and business are still filled with men, and if a family only has the money to send one child to school, you can bet it will be the son, not the daughter. The old Confucian values like "a girl has to be soft-spoken and obey her father and husband" seem to go a long way. At least the "a girl should not be too educated" (if you think I'm making this up, read "A Moment in Peking" by Lin Yutang ) has been eradicated, as is proven every year when they publish the names of the students with the best results in the nationwide university entrance exam. Almost always girls. But I can't help but feel that Chinese girls are extremely obsessed with appearance (I always wondered how it's possible that their is a hair salon at every corner, but they are actually full of customers any time of day - la derniere crie is the perm for boys though... looks just outright ridiculous, sorry to say). But then, this is probably not so different from the States, where there is the chaste of "college chicks" only going to Ivy League Schools to get a "Mrs."
Coming back to Kung Fu... the way it seems to be taught at traditional schools is to start with Shaolin (kicking, punching, flexibility training) for little kids and once they get older, they can progress to internal arts, which means they learn to put actual power behind the moves they learned as kids. In the non-traditional school, Kung Fu is mostly for show. Now, of course, a lot of people start with 太极拳 Tai ji quan (which we like to pronounce Tai Qi, but the name doesn't have anything to do with 气 Qi) as adults. And if you pay (their considerable fee), they will teach you. You can turn up your nose at that, but the school supports a pretty nice training room and two full time teachers with that. The Master is about 50, has been practicing for 30years, the other teacher goes by the title of 师兄 Shixiong, which is a combination of 师 shi - teacher and 兄 xiong - older brother. He is not quite a 师傅 shifu (Master) yet, although he started Kung Fu at the age of 5. He actually grew up in the Shaolin temple (imagine a boarding school turned Buddhist temple with Kung Fu training every day from dawn till dusk - yes, that still exists. The Shaolin temple in Henan province is now a big tourist attraction and not cheap to visit, but the whole town is full of Kung Fu schools). Now, I don't want to get into any arguments about how traditional this school still is - ehem - but at least my "older brother" got some serious training in the 15 years he spent there. His right fist is about twice the size of his left - a result of iron palm training. And man, he's got power. So I let him and the Master convince me that I should study Xing Yi Quan instead of the not-for-girls Shaolin. I like my hands the way they are, thank you :)
In contrast to Tai ji quan, Xing yi quan has actual applicability for fighting (I don't think I have the space here to debate the finer points of this argument, but feel free to drop me a line if you want to). Its movements are very fast and powerful, and focus on stepping and punching. No elaborate kicks and jumps :( But the most important aspect is to learn to focus your jin - your power. Apparently this is done by standing in one position for about an hour - that's all I can say so far after two classes :) And the best thing about the school? They are open every day 10h to 21h. Apart from the evenings when they teach Shaolin and Tai ji quan, I could go and hurt myself, ehm, I mean practice every day! Imagine what this does to my motivation to do my actual job...
And on a totally unrelated note: I think this is funny. Reminds me of the subway in Nanjing. They're building two new lines, of which nothing was visible when I got here last August, the first one is supposed to open in May, and whenever someone (me included) hears that, they ask "which year?" Yes, this year. Everything here grows incredibly fast. The price we pay is the always hazy sky... at least you can't get sunburn!
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Needles and Pins
When I started this blog, I envisioned it mostly as a travel-food blog with my occasional feeble attempts to understand Chinese culture. Never would I have thought it would be me whining about the weather and being sick all the time. Be that as it may, I figured I'd make the best of my ailments and make them at least entertaining for my readers... So, I went to see a traditional Chinese doctor.
No, I didn't have to make my way through a cramped back alley with steaming buns and bleeding chicken heads. The Chinese doctor actually has an office in the clinic or hospital like all the other branches of (Western) medicine. It's even covered by my university health care and much cheaper than western medicine, as I was to discover.
Chinese medicine is known for just using the measuring of your pulse to determine what's wrong with you and focuses mostly on balancing one's 阴 yin and 阳 yang (cold/hot or dark/bright or female/male - the characters contain the symbol for moon 月 or sun 日, respectively), for example if a patient has fever or inflammation, it means she has too much yang in her, so she is prescribed stuff like herbs or berries or in extreme cases dried animals to be cooked into a tonic that are associated with yin qualities. I got a prescription for about ten different components, of which I only recognized two as camomile (or some Asian relative thereof) and Wolfberries - which I believe are yin, but if someone knows better, please let me know. I have to say, I think the doctor did not quite take me seriously. He questioned my translator (poor Xu Feng knows more about my medical record now than most my family members) why I didn't go to the Western doctor. Well, I don't really think constantly being on antibiotics is a good measure to prevent ear infections. He thought I was just curious, which I guess is true to some extend, but I had actually hoped to get something out of this.
What I was not prepared for was the 针灸 zhen jiu (accupuncture and moxibustion). I had read about that in my Chinese textbook (remember when you're starting to learn a foreign language and the first lessons are "at the train station" or "at the doctor's office" - well, it turns out to be useful when learning Chinese in China). According to Wikipedia
So, I'm still working on drinking my herbal tonic, it tastes quite disgusting, but I have been told it's really harmless for Chinese medicine. I have to soak the herbs, flowers and tree bits in water for a while, then cook it for 20 minutes and drink this twice daily for three days. Nowadays Chinese medicine also comes prepared in pill form, but according to my friends that's not as effctive as the freshly brewed kind. No wonder, if you have to drink bitter tonic every day, wouldn't you want to get better quickly?
And btw, I only paid 4yuan for three bags of herbs. They sell them in most pharmacies. Usually they carry both western and Chinese medicine. And it's not just measuring the pulse and looking at your skin - the doctor asked a lot of questions what my problem is. So much for the magic of it...
No, I didn't have to make my way through a cramped back alley with steaming buns and bleeding chicken heads. The Chinese doctor actually has an office in the clinic or hospital like all the other branches of (Western) medicine. It's even covered by my university health care and much cheaper than western medicine, as I was to discover.
Chinese medicine is known for just using the measuring of your pulse to determine what's wrong with you and focuses mostly on balancing one's 阴 yin and 阳 yang (cold/hot or dark/bright or female/male - the characters contain the symbol for moon 月 or sun 日, respectively), for example if a patient has fever or inflammation, it means she has too much yang in her, so she is prescribed stuff like herbs or berries or in extreme cases dried animals to be cooked into a tonic that are associated with yin qualities. I got a prescription for about ten different components, of which I only recognized two as camomile (or some Asian relative thereof) and Wolfberries - which I believe are yin, but if someone knows better, please let me know. I have to say, I think the doctor did not quite take me seriously. He questioned my translator (poor Xu Feng knows more about my medical record now than most my family members) why I didn't go to the Western doctor. Well, I don't really think constantly being on antibiotics is a good measure to prevent ear infections. He thought I was just curious, which I guess is true to some extend, but I had actually hoped to get something out of this.
What I was not prepared for was the 针灸 zhen jiu (accupuncture and moxibustion). I had read about that in my Chinese textbook (remember when you're starting to learn a foreign language and the first lessons are "at the train station" or "at the doctor's office" - well, it turns out to be useful when learning Chinese in China). According to Wikipedia
Moxibustion is a traditional Chinese medicine therapy using moxa, or mugwort herb. Suppliers usually age the mugwort and grind it up to a fluff; practitioners burn the fluff or process it further into a stick that resembles a (non-smokable) cigar. They can use it indirectly, with acupuncture needles, or sometimes burn it on a patient's skin.Ugh. I don't think any of this was actually involved. All I can tell is that he stuck two about 10cm long needles into my neck, just below the ear, which were then heated up using some kind of heating lamp. I think the idea is that the heat can drive out infection. Uhm, in my case it hurt more after than before and caused swelling where he had stuck the needles. While sticking them into my neck he exclaimed to everyone's amusement (including the waiting patients - there is not much privacy in Chinese doctor's offices, or anywhere in China I suppose) that my ear would look extremely different from a Chinese ear. That explained the pain, I suppose...
So, I'm still working on drinking my herbal tonic, it tastes quite disgusting, but I have been told it's really harmless for Chinese medicine. I have to soak the herbs, flowers and tree bits in water for a while, then cook it for 20 minutes and drink this twice daily for three days. Nowadays Chinese medicine also comes prepared in pill form, but according to my friends that's not as effctive as the freshly brewed kind. No wonder, if you have to drink bitter tonic every day, wouldn't you want to get better quickly?
And btw, I only paid 4yuan for three bags of herbs. They sell them in most pharmacies. Usually they carry both western and Chinese medicine. And it's not just measuring the pulse and looking at your skin - the doctor asked a lot of questions what my problem is. So much for the magic of it...
Sunday, March 7, 2010
It's official now...
someone up there hates me. Spring was only a little teaser, now we're back to snow! But I was not the only one who was fooled. The peach and plum trees also thought it would be a good idea to start blooming.These pictures are from Nanjing Normal University's campus, which is not far from here and has - lo and behold! - lawns one can step on! So I finally found a good place to practise Kung Fu... well, if spring ever decides to put in another appearance. Sigh. Meanwhile, I'm back to hiding from the cold. Just wish I hadn't eaten all the sledge dogs...
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