So Many Things to Try!

Overall, I found the food in China to be hearty and comforting compared to the light, bright flavors of Vietnam. It was also considerably colder in Fuzhou (usually in the 40s or 50s), so I craved warm comfort food a lot.

The first meal I had on campus, which I ended up having nearly once a day, was a bowl of soup from the cafeteria’s made-to-order soup station. It was so awesome.

It worked like this: first, you pick up an orange basket and choose your soup ingredients from the refrigerators. There were tons of options: cauliflower, taro, seaweed, lots of mushrooms, fungus, eggs (hard boiled or fresh), tofu, bean sprouts, greens, tomato, fish balls, crab, sausages and much more. There were a few different noodle options too.

Next, you give your basket to the cook in the window, who places all your ingredients in one of the individual boiling baskets in a huge pot of broth to cook. It takes 5 or 10 minutes, but it is so worth it. Outside the window are bowls of garlic paste, chili sauce (I’m officially addicted), scallions, ground pepper and vinegar to mix in.

Eating it is kind of a process, and it takes a while. By now I’ve become pretty good with chopsticks I’m proud to say, and I actually prefer them for noodle soup. Chopstick natives eat soup with two hands by scooping up a little broth with a flat ceramic spoon in their left hand and plopping a few noodles on top using their chopsticks in the right hand. The perfect bite. Eventually I figured it out, but it was awkward for a while.

Almost all the food at the cafeteria was made-to-order. One station even offered fresh, hand-pulled noodles, and you could watch them being pulled all day long. I don’t think anyone was quite as excited about that as I was. The Hwa Nan cafeteria wasn’t unique either. Hardly any ingredients are actually packaged or processed in China no matter where you get a meal, except probably the flour, sauces and spices. Otherwise it’s all fresh. And it’s incredibly cheap, at least by my standards. A bowl of soup at the soup station was between 6 and 9 Yuan, which is about $1.00-$1.50. But Sophie told me she didn’t like eating at the cafeteria because it was so expensive. It’s all relative.

Apart from noodle soup, most of what I ate was some sort of vegetable stir-fry with white rice. The vegetables in China were awesome. So many mushrooms! Bean sprouts, bok choy, kale, cabbage, tomatoes, eggplant, and so much more. Tofu is really common too.

In fact, my greatest food-related discoveries in China often weren’t actual dishes, but just individual ingredients. Here are some of the best:

Taro

Some of my Asian classmates were familiar with taro prior to our trip, but I had never seen it before. Oh my god, it changed my life. Taro is a root vegetable similar to a potato in texture, but not in flavor. It is much sweeter and more smooth, but not quite like a sweet potato. They have a slight lavender color to them too. I’ve now had it fried, baked, boiled, freeze-dried and frozen in ice cream. But by far my favorite incarnation was when I had mashed taro with sesame seeds at Sophie’s house.

It was amazing: creamy, starchy and unctuous (not exactly sure what ‘unctuous’ means, but I heard Padma Lakshmi say it once, so hopefully I’m in the clear). I hope to god I can find it at home. I don’t know if I can live without it anymore.

Dried Sweet Potato

Speaking of potatoes, one of the literally THOUSANDS of weird packaged Chinese snacks was dried sweet potato. Dried fruit has become my staple snack on the trip, so I was down to try it. It took some getting used to though. I still don’t quite understand how such a naturally dry food can become chewy as it is dehydrated, but apparently it can.

It is very mild tasting and not very sweet. And it’s bright orange. I actually mistook it for mango at first because most Chinese packaging doesn’t have English translations.

It wasn’t anything mind-blowing, but I decided to throw it in because I ate it so often in China.

Chestnuts

Though a bit tough to peel, chestnuts became one of my favorite snacks in China. You can find them steamed and roasted at little shops and restaurants all over the place. Chestnuts are sweet and nutty tasting, but much more starchy than a regular nut. They are kind of like a cross between a walnut and a potato in flavor. They are delicious little surprises in stir-fry dishes, but they must be a huge bummer to prepare. Their shells are pretty tough, and you can’t really peel them without a knife.

Pamelo

These guys are a lot like giant grapefruits, but with a much milder flavor. You peel the skin and eat them in slices like an orange, but they are like four times the size. Our school convenience store sold them and peeled them for free! They are SUPER filling though, and it is hard to stop eating them once you’ve started.

I only had the yellow pomelos, but the insides look pretty much the same to matter the color. They are surprisingly easy to peel. Once the outer rind is gone, you just have to work around the pith. Also kind of labor intensive, but very rewarding.

This is not my cat.

Fungus

Similar to mushrooms but with a much different texture, fungus like this was everywhere in China. They feel kind of like a human ear when you touch them (sorry if that’s gross) and they have a little bit of a rubbery crunch. They are awesome in soup and in egg stir-fry.

I know they don't look like much, but just wait until you've tried them. The texture is really unique.

Chili sauce

There are SO many different kinds, but by the end of my visit, I poured some type of spicy sauce on to practically everything I ate. The most common was the dried chili oil that I put in my soup everyday. A word to the wise: the oil is much spicier than the actual chili pieces.

My absolute favorite was a smooth, vinegar-y sauce that I ate with these incredible mushroom dumplings on my last day in Fuzhou. It wasn’t sweet at all, and it wasn’t too spicy to be used as a dipping sauce. That was probably my second favorite meal in China, right behind the homemade lunch at Sophie’s house.

Food in Fuzhou was much different than any Chinese food I’ve had in America, probably because of the huge selection of ingredients. But I have to say, it was just as oily if not oilier than American Chinese food. A few of my friends had to stop eating at the cafeteria because the oil made them sick. It was pretty heavy, but I like to think the vegetables cancelled out the greasiness a little bit J.

But wait! I can’t go without a word on the weirdo Chinese street food snacks. They were definitely out-of-this-world, and not necessarily yummy. I think pictures are the only way to go here:

The Chinese love kitschy little treats in small packages, and I swear, 90% of them had some kind of stuffing or filling. They were very colorful and creative, and I certainly won't find them anywhere else in the world.

College Culture

As much as it was comforting and familiar to live on a college campus again, life for Hwa Nan students is much different than life for American students, at least at Puget Sound. As I mentioned before, the Pacrimmers were much bigger spectacles in China than in any other country, and our celebrity and limited timeframe definitely prohibited us from really getting accustomed to Chinese college life. Nevertheless, I think it is interesting to compare the attitude and outlook of Hwa Nan students to those of my peers.

I don’t know whether it was due to the all-female dynamic, Chinese family structure, government influence or some other cultural difference, but the students at Hwa Nan stuck me as being a bit less mature and certainly less personally driven than most of the college students I know. The campus had a high school-like atmosphere, the girls seemed naïve to me, frequently shrieking and giggling, walking in small, tight groups, dressed to the nines for class each day, and seemingly much more concerned about social life than their studies. I felt guilty and misunderstood when I insisted that I had to finish writing my final paper, which was due the next day (25% of my grade!) instead of getting my nails painted with a girl I met one night. Excelling in academics wasn’t a priority for most girls, and when asked why they chose Hwa Nan, most answered that it was simply one of the few universities that accepted them – they reacted as if it were a no brainer. The grueling college entrance exams in China certainly make or break futures.

When I told my mom about Hwa Nan being a school for girls, she immediately assumed that it had a feminist, female-empowerment mission, which I never found to be true. Girls just go there to get a degree and a “ticket to the middle class” as one of the English professors put it. Many of the girls I met didn’t necessarily seem happy or motivated to be proactive about their futures at all, and female solidarity as not a priority for anyone.

The girls seemed to have very superficial relationships with their professors, and according to Marjie, a UPS graduate who is now teaching English at Hwa Nan, they are used to being lectured at rather than participating in class discussion. It is common to see girls speaking to each other, not even discreetly, during lectures and even during their classmates’ presentations. Education is a stepping stone and not a pursuit in itself it seems. This definitely may not be true about other Chinese universities and students. But at the very least, I think I can say that generally speaking, education in China isn’t the luxury that it is in the United States.

The more I thought about the Fuzhou university district atmosphere, and the more I talked about it with other Pacrimmers, the more it began to strike me as being incredibly mechanized, rigid and almost repressive for the students. As I’ve said, the only contact with life outside campus is a 30-60 minute bus ride downtown, as there is literally nothing within walking distance but other campuses. Pretty much the only people on that bus are college kids. Each campus is gated, even the biggest ones, with security guards on duty 24/7. Students need to flash their school IDs before being allowed in. Hwa Nan is even surrounded by a mote. It may have something to do with irrigation or plumbing, but still, not exactly welcoming.

Anyway, I could be totally off base with all of this, but a lot of what I observed gave me the feeling that freedom and individual prerogative are not only less of a priority for Chinese people, but less of a possibility. Many of the people I met seem to have bought into their role in the big China “machine,” and they seem to trust that if they do what they are “supposed” to do, they will achieve a comfortable life. No one seemed to have exceptionally lofty aspirations.

I know I’m making judgments based on very little evidence here, but this is just me thinking out loud. No offense.

Qi and Cheese in China

Land o' Lakes is in China! You go Minnesota.
This has nothing to do with my blog post...

China brought a lot of anticipation and a lot of stress. It happened to be the final country before our Christmas extravaganza in Hong Kong and the arrival of many of our families and loved ones for winter vacation. So our time in China was often spent making travel plans, attempting to muster up Christmas cheer and make the arrival of the holidays as special as possible. Oddly, one of the places I found comfort was in one of the three Starbucks in Fuzhou, which happened to have its grand opening while we were visiting. I’m not a coffee drinker or a café-goer at home, and if I ever did decide to spend an afternoon in a café, it certainly wouldn’t be a Starbucks. It would be a Caribou J. But the moment I stepped into this place, I felt a little pang of comfort and American pride. The soothing smell, the cleanliness, the holiday cups, the photos of Seattle on the walls and the cheezy Christmas slogans. And the BATHROOMS! China is great for many reasons, but the public facilities are not one of them. I won’t go into the details but suffice it to say that they are pretty awful. So when I stepped into Starbucks’ brand new, chicly lit bathroom complete with a seated toilet, air freshener, toilet paper, soap AND paper towels, I took an extra minute or two to wipe.

The holiday music was such a nice surprise too. Harry Conick Jr., Joss Stone, Paul McCartney, and my favorite: “Mistletoe and Holly” by Frank Sinatra. It made studying for our two classes (taking more than one class at a time seems so impossible now) significantly more enjoyable.

Let me take a step back for a second to explain the whole China situation. As I mentioned in my Thanksgiving post, the group was stationed in dorms at Hwa Nan Women’s college in the outskirts of Fuzhou, a fairly large city in Fujian Province. Many of the Chinese students spoke English, but it wasn’t uncommon for them to nervously avoid speaking to us on account of the celebrity status we achieved the moment we arrived. We were definitely the entertainment of the year for these girls and I felt like I was being watched wherever I went.

But the reactions to our group went both ways. The other 50% of the Chinese students couldn’t get enough of us. All they wanted to do was spend time with us, whether it was out of a desire to practice their English or to associate themselves with the famous foreigners I’m not sure.

Anyway, Hwa Nan was one of about a dozen colleges in the university district of Fuzhou – a vast, sprawling region at the foot of a surrounding mountain range, which I never did learn the name of. 

The campus seemed huge when we first arrived, but it turns out there are only about 2500 students – comparable to Puget Sound. There is a nice pond in the center, one of which can be found on many college and business campuses in China for the feng shui value.

The dorms were simple and cold, in temperature and atmosphere. Buildings aren’t built with heaters anywhere in the south of China, even though it can get to be between 40 and 50°F. Only the Foreign Teachers Building had portable heating units in the living spaces, which we were lucky to have been able to access. But the dorms gave us all we needed. The female Pacrimmers stayed four to a room on bunks, each room with one shower, sink and squat toilet. We had warm comforters, a water heater and a few small foam cots to place on our bunks.

It was sparse and not super comfortable for me, but I’m not complaining. We were pretty lucky actually, considering the Chinese girls live eight to a room, without laundry facilities or mattresses. That’s right, they sleep on nothing but reed mats spread over the wooden bunks. And I thought my back was sore…

We ate in the cafeteria with the other students and had class everyday in a REGULAR classroom! It’s CRAZY how normal it was. We didn’t have a whole lot of opportunities to explore the area, because there is literally nothing around Hwa Nan but other university campuses. There were various “student streets” a short walk away with fast food vendors (nothing like American fast food), clothing shops, knockoffs and lots and lots of bubble tea. The college students’ only connection with the outside world came from the 89 bus line, which ran into the heart of Fuzhou. It was right off of this line that the Starbucks was located.

I know I have been talking a lot about how I had been planning to tackle China with renewed vigor and curiosity, and tackle China I did. But thoughts of the holidays encouraged me to make room for a few non-Asian indulgences.

One of my favorite memories of my time in China was the discovery of the Anne of Green Gables series on DVD in the Foreign Teachers House library. When I say library, I mean amalgamation of English books (mostly classics) and various VHSs and DVDs that had been left behind over the years by Western English teachers during their one or two year teaching gigs at Hwa Nan. The DVD selection is limited to say the least and I was so happy to discover not only that it contained such a major part of my childhood entertainment, but also two other Pacrimmers who shared my love for the fiery redhead. Thank you to Selina and Rachael! I thoroughly enjoyed our hours spent ogling over Gilbert Blythe.

One of the biggest influences on my experience in China was my Chinese buddy, Sophie. She and 24 of her English-speaking classmates were chosen to serve as our guides to Fuzhou culture, much like the PAs in Vietnam. I was SO lucky to have been paired with Sophie, as many of my peers’ buddies didn’t care to keep in touch with them. But Sophie was awesome. She was like a firm but loving big sister to me, always steering me in the right direction in busy crowds and making sure I wore enough warm clothes on cold days. Her family lived about an hour away from campus and she frequently took the bus home, but was more than willing to make the hour-long journey back to Hwa Nan anytime to spend time with me.

I will never forget the afternoon she rode the bus all way to campus just to pick me up and bring me to her home for an incredible Chinese meal cooked by her father. It was one of the best meals of my life for sure, not only because of the incredible unique food, but because of her family's generosity. This was the first time I had really been able to observe family life and domestic culture in any of the countries we’ve been to, and it gave me a much more intimate understanding of the lifestyle of many modern Chinese people.

Apart from Sophie, my next strongest link to Chinese culture was through our Chinese Philosophy class, and the fieldtrips it entailed. It was fascinating to draw connections between the teachings of Confucius, Lao Tzu and other classical philosophers, and modern Chinese culture. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to the most relevant and interesting course material, which had to do with Mao and they way his Cultural Revolution tried to discredit the “old ways,” until the final day or two of class. But I guess that’s the nature of having classes that only last 4 weeks. Stuff goes fast.

One of our best field trips was to WuYi Shan, or WuYi Mountain, the site of the great philosopher Zhu Xi’s ancient retreat center. This place had some good qi, and in order to fully experience it, we took a (chilly) bamboo rafting trip, hiked into the mountains and observed traditional life in the countryside. Of course, in typical PacRim fashion, this was all accomplished in a mere two days.

And I haven’t even begun to talk about the FOOD! More to come.

Thanksgiving in China

It’s 10:00 pm on the eve of Thanksgiving and I’m sitting in the teacher’s lounge of Hwa Nan Women’s College in Fuzhou, China. I take a much-needed rest on the leather couch and try to get my mind off of my throbbing fingers. I’ve spent the last hour perfecting my dad’s spicy cranberry sauce recipe on the stove for tomorrow’s feast, which entailed the seeding and dicing of several Chinese hot peppers. I’ve made the mistake many times at home of thinking I can handle hot chilies without gloves, and each time I end up regretting it. But I have an excuse today: I haven’t used a cutting board or a stove for over 3 months, so I am a little overexcited. I’ve missed my kitchen!

Fuzhou is the closest to place to home we’ve come so far on the trip. For the next month we will be staying in dorms, (though I’ll admit they’re nothing like any dorm I’ve seen in the States) eating in a cafeteria and interacting with other English-speaking students. We have access to a library (albeit limited), washing machines (!!!) and (most of) the comforts of home at the on-campus convenience store. Things are at our fingertips again! We get so spoiled at college.

The anxiety that normally accompanies my acclimation to a new home is strangely absent here. I’m so thankful to have a semi-normal routine here: go to class in a classroom, eat lunch, explore town, exercise and take a warm shower at the end of the day. As I mentioned in my Vietnam posts, I’ve come to a point on the journey at which I’ve begun to, not necessarily crave, but greatly appreciate a degree of normalcy. I’m all for adventure and trying new things, but I’m sad to admit that some of that intrigue has worn off. It gets exhausting after a while. I’m going to choose to look at this next chapter as a break from the heretofore relentless need to adapt, adjust and accommodate. I’ll take this next month to focus on myself a bit more and reflect on how I want to spend the rest of this trip. I have a feeling that by the time we leave for Hong Kong, I will feel refreshed with a renewed sense of adventure. It will certainly come in handy next semester during our 3 month stay in India.

As much as I hate to drag this post on after that poignant little conclusion, I can’t leave without telling you more about our Thanksgiving extravaganza that is currently underway! As you may have gathered, we Pacrimmers are preparing the Thanksgiving feast for ourselves and fifty guests. That’s right, FIFTY! That means there will be more than eighty diners. But that’s only the beginning of our obstacles. Aside from the guest list, our access to the classic, American thanksgiving staple ingredients is quite limited in China, as I’m sure you can imagine. No cranberries, stuffing, pie crusts, turkeys or pumpkin pie mix here. It’s been a challenge to say the least. But we have risen to meet it! Before we left the States, our cunning program directors shipped multiple packages of staple ingredients to the Chinese campus.  But despite their foresight, there were still a few holes that needed to be filled by the Chinese grocery stores. You would not believe the dedication and hard work of my peers. Let me just explain the lengths to which Jeremy and Rachael, Commander and Lieutenant of the Side Dish Committee, went in order to create the must-have green bean casserole. The simplest, most out-of-the-can dish in the history of American cooking quickly became the most labor-intensive and unexpectedly tedious on our menu.

First of all, to our surprise, there were no canned green beans to be found at the supermarket in Fuzhou. But we recovered from that one pretty easily.

Hurdle #1: No canned green beans.

Solution: Rinse, trim, slice and parboil fresh green beans. Not too difficult, but much more labor-intensive.

Next up was the cream of mushroom soup, another major Midwestern food staple, which we were hoping we could find or substitute. But we were foiled again.

Hurdle #2: No cream of mushroom soup!

Solution: Make it. From scratch. Who has ever actually taken the time to make cream of mushroom soup? Jeremy Baba has.

So by this point, seven of us have spent the better part of 4 hours doing what would have taken about 30 minutes at home. But just wait. It gets more ridiculous.

What is green bean casserole without the crunchy Funyun topping, right? Well, you’d be hard pressed to find Funyuns in China, so we decided make our own!

Hurdle #3: No fried onions.

Solution: Peel, slice, batter and pan-fry thousands of onion slices using nothing but a pair of chopsticks! Way to go Monica and Kari. They were hard at work for over 3 hours.

Just when you thought we had conquered the casserole, logistics swooped in to try to spoil the party. But we were ready with a meticulously planned baking schedule in hand.

Hurdle #4: Access to only two ovens to cook 21 pies, 13 turkeys, 6 pans of stuffing, and 6 pans of green bean casserole.

Solution: Wake up at 5:00am, immediately after the timer goes off on the Baking Committee’s final pie, and commandeer the ovens for a few short hours before the turkeys take over.

Luckily, Miss Rachael Gary, queen of the green beans, volunteered for this job. Thank you Rachael!

We had a blast staying up all night, each of us contributing a little piece of our love and creativity to the event. Even though I know I’ll miss the autumn colors, Aunt Kari’s homemade gravy, dad’s cranberries and the leftover turkey sandwiches, it will certainly be an unforgettable Thanksgiving.

Paradise in Vietnam

How can we be so lucky?

We must have built up some impressive karma in a previous life.

My roommate and I chat as we doze off under our crisp, white cotton sheets after a long day of sunbathing, leisurely boating and ocean exploration. Our third class is finished, grades are in, and we’re spending the weekend at a four-star resort in Halong Bay, a Vietnamese vacation destination of affluent westerners and easterners alike.

Is this really my life? I feel a little guilty describing the weekend to my Vietnamese friend Ha, who has never been to Halong Bay herself and tried her hardest to join us on our visit. What must she think of me, spending a year flying all around the world, spending thousands and thousands of dollars to get a degree in English, my native language (“liberal arts” doesn’t exactly translate in Asia), and staying at one of the nicest resorts in one of the nicest and most expensive tourist spots in her country. Ha looks at me with her usual demure, quietly inquisitive look. “Believe me, I don’t know how this is all possible either,” I insist. “I just go with the flow most of the time on this trip.”

But that doesn’t sound so good either. I feel like ungrateful, ignorant westerner who can’t possibly understand the amazing opportunities I have been given. But I do understand, and I appreciate them so much. I swear! Especially after interacting with Vietnamese students at the same place in life as I am. They are so eager and hardworking and aspiring, and many of them wish for nothing more than to be able to travel to America or Europe to learn and work. But all I can do is make the best of this situation and every opportunity. I learned so much about cultural differences in Vietnam, and I loved having the opportunity to interact with people who were willing to cut me some cultural slack as I figured out the best way to adjust my “way” with that of Asia. I was certainly humbled by my friends, and I hope I didn’t offend them too often J.

Seriously though, Halong Bay was unreal. On the first day of our tour, we boarded a beautiful junk which took us on a leisurely sail to one of Halong’s many islands. While on the boat we were served a DELICIOUS, gourmet seafood lunch, complete with my new favorite dipping sauce of MSG and lime juice and chilies.

On the island, we were guided through some amazing caves with one-of-a-kind, naturally occurring fluorescent light patches. Not really. The cheezy lights were pretty distracting actually.

Next, we were dropped off at our first night’s accommodations: Holiday Villa Resort complex, where we each shared a private villa with one roommate. The hot shower was amazing, as were the English TV channels. Selina and I were so excited about having a TV that we spent an hour watching George of the Jungle. And we savored every minute of it. We thought that was the life, but little did we know what we had in store for us the next night!

On day two, we took another belabored sail around the islands, which was full of “I can’t believe this is my life” moments for me. The weather was perfect, with a slight breeze and a warm sun. I spent the afternoon reading and journaling in between bites of yet another gourmet lunch, this time with crab and interesting clams.

We landed at Catba Island where we explored a hospital cave built into the side of a mountain during the Vietnam War. Walking around in this thing was like being on the set of a horror movie. I could just picture Vietnamese military surgeons with primitive tools, hosing blood off of the walls and floor of those eerie cement rooms.

But the real climax came when we arrived at Catba Island Resort and Spa, where we spent our final night. It was like paradise! Two pools, water slides AND an ocean view.

The rest of the night and most of the next afternoon were spent hanging out at the beach and on the waterslides. Needless to say, I slept well that night.

Yes, I’m getting credit for this. But life on PacRim isn't a Travel Channel special all the time. I promise.

Halong is our last stop in Vietnam before moving on to China. I’ve started becoming nostalgic lately. This trip moves so fast. So far, I haven’t come to miss and appreciate a place until after I’ve left. It’s just like home and your family; somehow you love them in a brand new way after you’ve been away for a while. But this is the first time I’ve started missing it before it’s gone. We’ve really put down roots here. It reiterates one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned on this trip: relationships and shared experiences make this life great. Nothing is quite as significant if it can’t be shared.

I’ve been informed that I’ve hit the 3 month slump. I didn’t know it existed until a few days ago, but my friends Erin and Selina, both of whom have studied abroad before, have been telling me about the emotional plateau that many of their friends hit right around the 3 month mark. The romance of the travel experience wears off and things that would have once intrigued you or warranted a photograph are overlooked. It becomes less about the journey and more about getting to the destination.

Sadly, I’m realizing that the romance has worn off in a lot of ways, and I’m beginning to tune out much of the novelty of my circumstances here. I’m starting to crave routine and instead of being intrigued and curious about each new place, I’m more easily annoyed and exhausted. There is of course no way I would trade this experience for one anywhere else in the world, but the excitement had to wear away at some point. I’ve indulged in western food recently, which I never though I’d do. I went to a movie last week, and I ate an entire bag of popcorn just because I missed it so much. Perhaps it’s the cushy lifestyle we’ve been living in Hanoi that has reminded me more of the comforts of home. I’m becoming more and more comfortable with not going “all out Asian” all the time.

But I have to remember that I’m doing all this for myself. As long as I’m getting everything out of it that I want, I have no reason to feel guilty. China will be a fresh start and a chance to explore again.