The dark brown, soft bits seem to be very vulnerable. It is the rotten part of a peach. Any peach in the street thrown away, not wanted, because it’s rotten and people might get sick from eating it.
However, an old pair of hands were washing it, quickly, carelessly, because the old lady who is washing it knows no matter how much she washes it, it is still a rotten peach. Washing it is just a form, probably it’s just a habit, since when she was rich, when she could afford fresh peaches, she washed them anyway.
On the left of the big bowl, there is a pile of peaches, all of them are rotten, and there are some rotten vegetables too, those thrown somewhere by the vegetable sellers, because they know people won’t buy them anyway.
And you see the lady, tired, looks a bit helpless and hopeless. There are many flies around her. And nothing around her is clean. You see behind her, there is some clothes hanging in the small courtyard, of men and women.
And then, a 50 something year old man putting his arm in the air, as if he is accusing something, someone. He looked helpless and angry.
This is in the old petitioners’ village, by the high-road, in the construction site, around this old house, there are migrant workers and half-built shiny Beijing South Train Station.
A Chinese girl is listening to a reading of a poem by her artist English lover in Hackney, “This Anon very good writer, I think I prefer to Shakespeare, much easier”, says Z, from a small industrial town in China. A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers is written in intentionally broken English by the busy Mainland Chinese novelist and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo. If you are interested in a witty and whimsical take on cultural differences, this Orange Prize short-listed novel is a must-read, despite the difficulties of reading broken English.
The “dictionary” is not a dictionary. It is chaptered by new words Z learns during her journey of self-discovery through eclectic London and Europe, and her relationship with her sexually disoriented lover, whose name is never revealed.
Xiaolu Guo explained to BBC’s Book Club the reason that she chose to use naïve language is because “When you are aboard, you have this kind of child-like personality, no matter who you are.” This book is not about a cliché romance. It is about the mixed feeling of losing an old identity while living in a foreign place. It is about the sadness, beauty and pleasure and drifting.
A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers is published by Vintage in 2007.
The reasons that I’m writing about food and the nation is because I love to eat, but also because, as a proud Chinese (not yet over nationalistic I hope), I find myself frequently irritated by people from in various corners of the world generalizing the subject of and misguidedly trying to make Chinese food. This often due to the restaurants operated abroad by the Chinese diaspora, where food is cooked poorly by Chinese standards but is proudly labeled as “authentic Chinese”. This leads to great misinterpretation among non-Chinese.
It is well known that most of the Chinese overseas immigrants are from Southern China and Hong Kong, and a large number of them speak Cantonese rather than Mandarin. Chinese people look more or less the same in the eyes of Westerners, so perhaps there is a difficulty in differentiating the food as well. Many might believe that it does not matter where the cook is from, as long as the food tastes good. As a proud Beijinger who thinks her hometown represents the real taste of China, at least for some of the more important dishes, I can’t really let these issues slide. My frustration boils over whenever I am hungry for Chinese food in London, as most of the so-called Chinese restaurants available are really quite alien to me.
Two events inspired me to create this series:
The first occurred n the winter of 2008, when I happened to be in Mohe, a small town at the north tip of China with a latitude of 53° and an average temperature of -5°C in the whole year. The main highlights of Mohe in winter are sleigh rides and walking across a frozen river into Russia. People there take the income from tourists for granted and serve them poor quality over-priced food because there is nowhere else to find food when it is -25°C in the afternoon, as it was for us. In our spontaneous group, there were two people from Shan Xi, a province in China whose specialty is noodles. So one day at lunch, we were served noodle dishes for 5 Kuai per person, about 50p, which was still a rip-off by Chinese standards. We chose noodle because it was the cheapest. The noodles were tasteless, and I really didn’t feeling like eating much. But the girl from Shan Xi whispered to me, “Eat more, noodles like this won’t keep you going too long in freezing weather like this.” With thoughts of dying of starvation in the freezing cold, I ordered another 2 more big bowls. Meanwhile the guy from Shan Xi became irritated, saying: “This is an insult to noodles. No one can cook noodles like that!” He threw his chopsticks on the table and started to stare at me, wondering how could I eat so many noodles. I just replied: “In this weather, when I’m hungry, I have no more standards.”
The second event happened more recently in London, and my colleagues from our International Journalism course and I gathered together for lunch in the university cafeteria. I ordered some random pasta Bolognese and brought it back to our table. Nothing special. One of our Italian friends stared at the noodles and looked indignant. He squeezed a piece of pasta and said: “What is this? What is this?” I thought he was kidding. “This is pasta”, I replied. “This is over-cooked! They have no idea how to cook pasta!”
Food is important for many people around the world, and I feel it’s high time someone wrote some truth about real Chinese food.
Chinese dumplings are often misunderstood by people who didn’t grow up eating them. One example is what the Independent wrote on its Sunday New Good Life booklet. It tells you the “simple skills and pleasures for the credit crunch era” and in “Part 9 — Staying In”, one of the indoor activities you could do is “Dumpling Parties”.
It goes:
“Giving Dinner parties instead of eating out sounds like an attractive idea, until you consider the financial implications of buying all the food. Dumpling parties are a cheap and cheerful alternative. It costs next to nothing to make piles of delicious Chinese gyoza: just buy a pack of gyoza wrappers from a Chinese supermarket (never more than a couple of pounds for a round circular wraps), and make up the filling with minced pork (one of the cheapest cuts of meat) or tofu, spring onions, ginger and garlic. Get your guests to sit with you (along with the wine they’ve brought), piling the filling into the centre of each wrap, and attempting to create delicate dumplings. They may not succeed aesthetically, but it’s great fun, and once you’ve steamed them, the taste is the main thing. For a step by step guide, see:
To be clear: Gyoza seems to be a Japanese word to me rather than a Chinese word. In Chinese pinyin — our spelling system, we call dumplings Jiǎozi. And in standard Mandarin, we pronounce it this way:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
And if you are interested in Beijing accent, you can click on this, and actually most northerners, like people from the northeast of China, also tend to say Jiaozi this way:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
So as you can see the correst way to say this is similar to how this person in youtube performs, but it’s not really the same.
Of course Chinese is a very complicated language and not every non-native-Chinese speaker can pronounce it right. But a more important point I want to demonstrate is what is shown in the video tends to mislead people’s perception on real Chinese dumplings.
First, we mostly boil dumplings instead of steaming or frying them. (I assume this is where the English word dumpling come from — you dump the stuff in the boiling water.)
Second, which goes together with the first, is that the kind of circular wrappers you buy in the supermarket are not really suitable for making dumplings — they are not stretchy, soft or moist enough as what dumpling wrappers are supposed to be. And that’s why you can only steam or fry the ones you make from commercial wrappers because otherwise, the dumplings would fall apart upon boiling. Hence, when making real dumplings, you never dip water on the edge of dumpling wrappers — that looks totally amateur.
But of course, if you just do it for fun. I am in no position to be against it. Just try to clarify what is real Chinese dumpling.
I have also written the philosophy of dumpling-making below.
“I was brought up as a Huaqiao – someone who was going to return to China one day. Although I was born and bred in Southeast Asia and eventually adopted a foreign citizenship my cultural roots are Chinese. However, I can’t deny I have gained immensely from living outside China. I have been fortunate to be brought up from a tolerant, multi-cultural and multi-rational country like Malaya, and I’ve also benefited from living in Australia with its liberal intellectual environment. I have added many layers to my cultural identity, and believed that these layers have enriched my life. This is true for most Chinese overseas, and they must never neglect these aspects of their identities.” —- Professor Wang Gungwu
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
The story began Friday October 31, 2008, when people even in London kept talking about their vague Halloween plans. I was seduced by the taste of one of millions’ of great Chinese inventions: dumplings. Given some free dumplings by my Chinese classmate earlier, I felt I was in heaven. So that Friday night, I was determined to make dumplings – a lot of them.
Walking with 3 5-kilo-shopping bags for a mile, I had to take a break and call my boyfriend to give me some spiritual encouragement — only spiritual, since he was millions of miles and 8 hours away.
Eventually I made my way back to my kitchen, more precisely, the kitchen I shared with 4 other people from 4 other regions in the world. We were a truly international family – trying hard to form a harmonious society.
Back to dumplings, traditionally, as many people know, despite dumplings’ complex making, they have deep meanings. You make dumplings in the beginning of Chinese lunar calendar,
since dumplings are shaped like the ancient gold and silver money. Hence eating it shows the good wish of wealth for the coming year. Meanwhile, dumplings are eaten when there is gathering and parting of family members, because also the shape of the dumplings is kind of round, symbolizing solidarity.
This typical “Chinese” food was put up on my table in a busy round-table Chinese restaurant in Montreal when I was 23 years old, by then I had lived in Beijing for 22 years. If you say Beijing is not typical in China, that could be an excuse though. I asked two of my Canadian friends what was that. They told me it was Chinese dessert. I said: “Really? As a born-and-bred Chinese, I have never seen that before!” I was surprised and so did they.
Apparently, “A fortune cookie is a crisp Asian American cookie usually made from flour, sugar, vanilla, and oil with a “fortune” wrapped inside. A “fortune” is a piece of paper with words of folk wisdom or a vague prophecy. In the United States and Canada (although also available in other parts of the Western world), it is usually served with Chinese food in Chinese restaurants as a dessert. The message inside may also include a list of lucky numbers (used by some as lottery numbers) and a Chinese phrase with translation. The exact provenance of fortune cookies is unclear, but various immigrant groups in California claim to have popularized then in the early 20th century, basing their recipe on a traditional Japanese cracker. The cookies are little-known in mainland China or Taiwan.” —-Wikipedia
According to Jennifer Lee from the New York Times, Fortune Cookies may in fact come from Japan.
When you go to the Chinese restaurants in Leicester Square in London, one of your must-order dish might be Beijing Duck. And you will happily see something like the picture on the left. Then when the duck is served, you will see a few pieces roughly sliced, nothing else, and very delicious. But actually, that is not Beijing Duck, that’s Hong Kong Roast Duck.
According to the China News,the history of the roast duck can be traced back to as early as the Yuan Dynasty (1206-1368) when it was listed among the imperial dishes in the Complete Recipes for Dishes and Beverages, written in 1330 by Hu Sihui, an inspector of the imperial kitchen. Details regarding the cooking process were also described in this early cookbook.
It says the first restaurant to bear the name Quanjude — the most famous Duck Restaurant in China — opened in 1864 during the reign of the Qing Emperor Tongzhi. Due to its high standards, the restaurant’s fame spread rapidly and for many years the supply of roast ducks could hardly satisfy the demand. For this reason, the restaurant was rebuilt and expanded in 1948. In 1954 a branch (known as Hongbinlou) was opened in West Chang’ an Boulevard and another in Wangfujing Street in 1959. These additions, however, still did not solve the problem, and with the opening of the Quanjude at hepingmen in 1979, it was no longer necessary to make a reservation a week in advance to taste Beijing’s most famous culinary delight.
Beijing Duck looks like something on the right. You may want to ask what is the difference? A traditional Beijing Duck should consists of 108 pieces, each piece should have 1/3 of skin, 1/3 of lean meat and 1/3 of fat. And obviously the ducks served in China Town is nothing similar to this number.
“Britain is the junk-food nation despite obesity crisis”, says Fiona Barton from the Daily Mail.
“Britons’ fondness for hamburgers, chips and pizza has left the Americans trailing.Almost half of us say we enjoy fast food too much to give it up, taking the UK to the top of the world’s junk food league. A survey puts the US in second place.The healthiest eaters are the French. Fewer than one in five admits to fast food cravings. The research, for the BBC, found 45 per cent of Britons “liked the taste of fast food too much to give it up”. In the US the figure was 44 per cent, while third place went to the United Arab Emirates, where 35 per cent are junk-food addicts.
And according to China News, “Chinese kids are ‘addicted’ to foreign junk food”.
“Munching on french fries and sipping cola while walking down the street has almost become a fixture in the daily life of Chinese youngsters, a sign of the success and even fruition of foreign fast food corporation in China. McDonald’s, KFC and Japan’s Yoshinoya have become the companions of urban Chinese new generation within only 20 years, with McDonald’s golden arches and the amiable smile of the KFC Colonel on almost every Chinese street. In drastic contrast, traditional Chinese hot-pot and dumpling restaurants are losing appeal to Chinese kids.”
“A survey shows that about 80 percent of Beijing middle and primary school students are fond of foreign snacks, 43.6 percent of them go to McDonald’s, KFC or other foreign fast food eateries every month, and 6.1 percent go every week or every day.”
Yet interestingly, Chinese take-away food is the most popular now in Britain, leaving Indian food behind, according to Giles Coren from the Times.
