just a little fun

Ben and I (okay, let's be honest here--it's mostly me) have been messing around on yearbookyourself.com. It's this fun little site where you can upload a picture of yourself, and then see what you would look like if you were in a yearbook photo from the 1950's to 2000. Here are just a couple of our fun results.

This never ceases to crack me up. This is a 1990 version of Ben. Love the mullet. Maybe Ben should look into it.

This is the 1960 version of me. I think it looks very much like a picture I've seen of my mom, except she didn't wear glasses.

what's for dinner #1--jiaozi

Before we came to China, we asked our nephew, Tommy, what kinds of things he wanted us to take pictures of while we were here. He had two very specific things in mind: where we live, and what we eat. With that in mind, I've been meaning to write a post about food for awhile now, and I've been collecting pictures here and there, with the intent of posting them all at once. Unfortunately, I'm not so good at bringing my camera with me when we go out to eat (or anywhere, for that matter) so I don't always get a shot of the interesting things we've had to consume. So, here's the first of what may become a series of entries on what we eat here in China.

I think it's kind of hard to imagine what Chinese food is really like if your only experience of Chinese food has been at Chinese restaurants in the States. We eat some dishes here that are similar to those you can find at your average American Chinese restaurant. For example, one of the first things I ever learned to order was sweet and sour pork (althought I have to say that the sweet and sour sauce at even your most dumpy, hole-in-the-wall restaurant here really is far better than that gloppy pink stuff you find at most American Chinese buffets).

But on the other hand, many dishes here are unlike anything you would expect. For example, many things here (in Tianjin, anyway) are not stir-fried in sauce, or deep-fried like eggrolls, but rather steamed or boiled. Take jiaozi, or Chinese dumplings, for example, which are really unlike anything I've ever eaten at any Chinese buffet in the Midwest (although you can find their equivalent in Chinatowns and nicer Chinese restaurants with dim sum). I guess you can sometimes find fried dumplings on a Chinese buffet, filled with a tight little wad of sweetened meat, but they are nothing like the jiaozi we eat here. Jiaozi here are generally boiled, and can be filled with any number of things, from seafood to beef to pork to mutton, cabbage to fennel to onions to . . . really any meat/vegetable combination you can imagine. Meat fillings aren't usually sweet-ish, but rather savory, and usually include a vegetable and sesame oil flavors. I've seen dumplings accompanied by a kind of sweet sauce in the U.S., but I think that may be a southern China thing. Here in Tianjin, we like them savory and sour.

I went to the Zhou's home (my sister-in-law's parents' home) yesterday for jiaozi lunch. Poor Benny was too sick to leave the house, but they were kind enough to send some home with me. I wish I had taken some shots of the pre-boiled jiaozi. There were several very large bamboo trays of them, all lined up neat and pretty, ready to cook (when you make jiaozi, you make a big batch, because they are pretty labor-intensive to make from scratch). I did, however, get some shots of those I brought home. These were pork and cabbage, and pork and garlic sprout jiaozi.

Jiaozi are usually dipped in dark vinegar, and you can add mashed garlic or red peppers to the vinegar, according to your own taste for them. That's how we eat them at the Zhou's house. A jiaozi restaurant that we have been to a few times serves vinegar and whole cloves of garlic to chew on, along with your jiaozi. Sam says that's his favorite way to eat jiaozi, but I have a hard time bringing myself to bite into a whole clove of garlic. At our house, (when we are eating leftover or frozen jiaozi) we sometimes have chopped garlic in our vinegar, but more frequently just vinegar, because we're too lazy to chop the garlic, and we don't really keep the red peppers on hand.

I think they're best when they're hot and fresh, but they're pretty good leftover, too. And, as I discovered this morning, not bad for breakfast.

Anyway, it's a good thing we like them, because we still have this entire bag left over, even after eating them for dinner last night, and breakfast this morning.

today's quest

Our big goal for today was to buy a bike. Another bike to replace the "lost" one. We've spent a lot of time discussing this quest. The main issue at hand is, are we going to buy another new (expensive-ish) bike, which will probably be stolen in another week? Or are we going to buy a used (i.e., previously "lost") bike? There are pros and cons to both. With the new bike, it will be more expensive, and it will probably be stolen again, but I won't feel like I'm contributing to the vicious cycle of stolen and re-sold bikes that is so prominent here. On the other hand, a second-hand bike will be cheaper, and will be less likely to be stolen, but probably once belonged to someone who was almost as upset to find it "lost" as I was when mine was "lost."

I've tried to convince myself that, by contributing my brand new bike to the steal and re-sell system that is so pervasive here, I have earned the right to buy and ride someone else's stolen bike. Sort of like a pyramid scheme. I've paid in, even if it's just at the very bottom. I should get something out of it. But unfortunately, I am not easily convinced.

With that in mind, I refuse to buy a second-hand bike. Ben, on the other hand, is much more comfortable with the idea of moral relativity, and thinks buying a second-hand bike is just much more practical. He's probably right, but we decided that if we were going to buy a second-hand bike, it was going to be his.

So, we set out today to buy a bike. That's all well and good, except it turns out that I don't really know where to buy second-hand bikes. I thought I knew where some guys were selling them, but it turns out I was wrong. Then Ben thought he knew another place where we could buy one, but it turned out that they were only selling second-hand electric bikes, which wasn't really what Ben had in mind.

After many hours of walking around, sort of looking for bike sellers and sort of just strolling, we bought this:

No, I don't know what it is. Something some guy was selling on the street. It's kind of like a sweet sticky rice-cake thing, with dates in it. We walked by the guy selling it, and Ben's face lit up. I asked him, "Do you want to buy some of that?" and he got so excited, like a little boy at an ice cream shop. So, we bought some. The only problem is, now we don't really know what to do with it all. I mean...there's kind of a lot of it.

and the real winner is . . .

Here's another quick update on that Chinese-speaking contest. Apparently there were winners, as we found out about a week later. I got third place. As far as I'm concerned, that's great. Good enough to place, but not good enough to have to go through the whole process again at the next level of competition. Thank goodness that cultural experience is over.

careful what you wish for

I know it's been a little while since my last post. Or maybe a not-so-little while. I could offer many reasons for my absence. Last week was midterms, which consisted of four tests in two days--I haven't experienced midterms so intense since I was an undergrad. And then there was the fact that we had a little taco party at our place last weekend. Ben and I spent quite a bit of time shopping, preparing, and cleaning house before our guests arrived. (I'm sure it comes as no surprise that I am no better a housekeeper in China than I ever was in the U.S.) So, there have been some things that have been keeping us semi-busy. But on the other hand, life here has become fairly routine. I have been feeling like I've settled into a pretty stardard daily schedule, and within that, there's really not so much to write about.

In fact, just a couple days ago, I was working on a post about how nothing exciting was really happening around here right now, how I was so sorry for my blogging absence, and how I wish I had something more to report. I finished a quick draft of the post, and then had to run out the door before posting it, because I was about to be late for class. I scurried out to the front walkway in front of our building to grab my bike . . . only to find that my bike had been stolen.

This is actually a pretty common occurrence around here. In fact, my friend Juana had her bike stolen from right in front of our classroom building, in broad daylight, just a week ago. It was locked--double-locked, actually--at the time. Bikes are stolen so often here, it's kind of a joke. Like, people ask you, "Has your bike been stolen yet?"

Nevertheless, when I found mine was stolen (or "lost" as the Chinese would put it) I was so frustrated. Argh! I had had the bike for no more than a week. It was a new bike, as opposed to one of the second-hand (i.e., "lost" and then re-sold) bikes that most people ride, which is probably why it was taken. I guess it was a little too new and pretty for quick fingers to resist. But I barely got a chance to enjoy it myself. Plus, now I had no form of transportation to get to a class that was going to start in 15 minutes.

Anyway, the whole experience sent me into a kind of tailspin. I had no choice but to walk to class (and get there about 30 minutes late--it's a pretty hefty walk from our place to my classroom building). As I was walking, I just kept getting more and more angry. I know it makes no sense, but by the time I arrived at my classroom building, I was mad at the entire country of China. What kind of place makes it so easy and common to steal bikes? Who are these jerks who think it's okay to steal bikes. Don't they know how late they were making me for class? How could no one have seen someone taking my bike? And why didn't someone stop these people? It was almost enough to make me hate China.

You don't need to tell me it's not logical--I am fully aware of that--but the experience has put me in a pretty bad head-space for the past couple of days. I've read that this kind of thing is all a part of the transition to an unfamiliar culture--you go through periods when a seemingly small thing (like finding your bike has been stolen in a country where everyone's bikes get stolen) will just send you into a (hopefully short-lived) downward spiral of frustration with the new place where you're living. I guess I'm a textbook example. But knowing that doesn't make me any less frustrated, or make it any easier to just pull myself out of this mode.

In the meantime, I'm really having a hard time caring about my studies. I've been spending a lot of time pining for home, and its wonderland of unstolen bikes and drive-thru restaurants. I've been doing a lot of online window-shopping for clothes that are both attractive and in my size, something that is in somewhat short-supply here. Needless to say, I'm a little homesick. But at least I now have something to write about.

and the winner is . . .

So, here's a little update about that Chinese Speaking Competition.

I almost didn't do it. I was still feeling lousy from my cold on Friday, and I had kind of a bad day at school. I felt like I was too scattered to be able to get up and recite a speech I didn't really know all that well. I just had these visions of myself getting up there, losing my place or forgetting a line because I was so nervous, and then just starting to cry in front of everyone. I think I've mentioned it before, but I kind of seem to cry easily here. I just did not want to start crying in front of a room of people, whose eyes were all on me.

But, my friend Steffi convinced me to suck it up and do it. That's what Germans are for.

There were about eight contestants in the beginners-level competion, which is where I am. (Two years of study in the States does not an Intermediate make.) I was the second one to go up there. The girl before me, one of my classmates, was excellent. Composed. Clear. She took her time and remembered all of it, even though she had a couple small stumbles here and there. Me, not so much. I got really nervous. I lost my place a couple times. I got distracted by people coming in and out of the room, and ultimately left out one small chunk entirely. I had to look at my cheat sheet at the end to rember the final sentence.

But, ah! the relief when it was over! I was so happy to be finished that I almost didn't even care that, toward the end of the competition there were a couple of girls who hadn't even bothered to memorize their speeches. They just read them from a sheet! How fair is that? It's not hard to correctly read pinyin spellings of Chinese words off a piece of paper. If I had known that were an option, I wouldn't have been nervous to begin with! (Okay, so maybe I cared a little bit.)

In the end, the winner was . . . all of us. They gave us all T-shirts and congratulated us on our hard work. Despite the fact that I am a very competitive person who usually likes to see a winner, and usually likes for that winner to be me, that seemed like exactly the right way for that competition to end. I know everyone worked really hard to prepare for that contest, and everyone deserved a reward for the hard work they had invested . . . except for maybe those two girls who didn't memorize.

it's all in the timing

I apparently have absolutely no natural defenses against Chinese germs and viruses. I have a cold. Granted, I was attacked from within my home (Ben was sick last weekend with a cold he probably brought home from his many sickly teenage students), and maybe anyone would expect to fall prey under those circumstances, but this isn't the first cold I've had since I've been here. In fact, I think this is the third. If it's going around, chances are I've had it, am in the throes of it, or will very soon get it.

This cold comes at a kind of bad time for me. I found out on Monday that the Chinese Speaking Competition I signed up for about three weeks ago will be this Friday. Yeek. Not a lot of fore-warning. Last Friday, when I asked when the competition would be held, I was told that it would be "in November sometime." I don't know about you, but "November sometime" does not mean the same thing as "one week from today," even if "one week from today" is actually in November.

But that's the funny thing about scheduling around here. It's not really done far in advance, and if it is done in advance, it's not often clearly communicated to those involved. This isn't the first instance where Ben or I have experienced that kind of last-minute notice. In fact, Ben experiences this kind of situation on a nearly weekly basis. He is constantly finding out that two days from now he won't be teaching such-and-such a class, because the students are participating in such-and-such an activity. Sometimes it works in your favor, like when I found out one Thursday that all my classes were cancelled on Friday, because the teachers were all participating in a sports day like the one my class had to participate in. On the other hand, it can work against you. Like when you find out on Monday that you will be reciting a speech in Chinese on Friday, and you haven't even chosen the speech yet.

Ahem.

So, in the midst of fighting off this cold, I have also been furiously memorizing a three-minute speech in Chinese, which I will present in competition tomorrow. I've memorized about 3/4 of it, but that doesn't mean I can present it well. There's a big difference between being able to stumble over three minutes of memorized Chinese, and being able to present it as if it were your own ideas. I have a lot of work ahead of me . . .