Food

First, let me begin by apologizing for my recent lull in new posts. The following entry is one I've been brewing for quite awhile now, and after gathering the necessary photographs it is finally ready to be served.

Food, an essential defining characteristic of any culture, is the most important part of my life here. Every dish brings with it a story, every meal an opportunity to try something I never have. In fact, of all the instances of culture shock I've felt since arriving in Beijing, none compares to the overwhelming alien feeling I get from a trip to any Chinese establishment that sells food. The supermarket is no exception.

Someone confirm for me that I have not gone crazy -- the Chinese supermarket is at least ten times brighter and more colorful than the American equivalent. There's so much going on here I could spend hours in every aisle playing 'What the heck is that?' and taking pictures (which I did successfully for about three minutes before a security guard came and told me to stop). And for every additional product and color you can find within these walls, the glorious supermarket administration has hired about two extra workers, such that the establishment is overstaffed to the point of comedy. One woman's sole function is to ask dairy section passersby if they would like milk or yogurt.

The supermarket is an exciting place full of countless potential taste excursions at bargain prices, but is also entirely too overwhelming if you do not yet know what you're looking for. For this purpose we have restaurants and on-campus snack-shacks. For the first few days, whenever I passed by the snack stand on the first floor of the BLCU Conference Center, I made a point to try out one new Chinese drink a day, chosen at random until I had a solid understanding of China's beverage offerings. Aside from the expected Coke, Sprite, and Pepsi (which are slightly less fizzy but decidedly the same flavor as in the US), typical options include iced red and green teas, milk tea, pickled plum juice (insanely popular among natives, but rather difficult to stomach I find), a variety of iced coffee flavored beverages, orange drink (more like Tang than any kind of juice I've ever had), chocolate, strawberry, and regular milks, and Sprite with green tea flavor (someone tell me if this is a uniquely Chinese phenomenon or if you can get it in the US and I just don't know), of which my favorite is cold milk tea. Coffee, as we know it in the States -- hot water filtered through ground beans, is nowhere to be found save Starbucks (pictured below), which has undergone some variation of its own. I had to buy a box of instant packages just to savor the taste. Last but not least I will include yogurt in the beverages category because traditional Chinese yogurt (which you can buy on the street in little clay jars for 2 kuai) is meant to be consumed through a straw. It is also flavorless and delicious.

But it would be a crime to forget solid food. Generally speaking, my experiences at Chinese restaurants have consisted of large numbers of people ordering several dishes and splitting the bill. Because menu-reading is one of my weak points, I don't always know what I'm eating, but I usually like it. Real Chinese food is vaguely reminiscent of the food you'll find in an American Chinese restaurant, the principle differences being that it's a thousand times better and that you don't feel sick after eating it (most of the time). Average, every day food is also impossibly cheap. There's a restaurant on campus that sells 50 dumplings for 20 kuai (about $3.33 US). But the most striking and unique feature of Chinese cuisine are the flavors you can't find in the US. For example, blueberry and cucumber flavored Lays potato chips, red bean anything (don't know why this hasn't caught on, it's delicious), green bean / pea ice cream (pun it up, it's delectable), chocolate and sticky rice covered ice cream, green tea flavored candies, and any number of deserts coated in a thin layer of doughy rice dough (I clearly have no idea what it is).

The 'traditional' Beijing breakfast consists of an egg and a fried dough stick, which I don't particularly care for. I usually opt for red bean paste filled baozi, small rolls made with rice flour. Lunch varies, depending on whether or not we have Zhongwen Zhuozi or 'Chinese Table' with our teachers. On these special occasions twice a week, the teachers take us out to a restaurant where they order massive quantities of food for us to try. On my own or with friends I usually get dumplings or a bowl of noodles with some kind of meat. These kinds of dishes are as similar as they are delicious, so it doesn't really matter whether I know what I'm ordering, or even whether I get what I order. I thank God every day I'm not a picky eater.

The only way I can think of to give you a good idea of the kinds of food I've eaten here is to list some of them, so here it goes: lamb's back, Beijing roast duck (pictured above), spicy beef noodles, spicy string beans, stringed tofu, pockmarked tofu, really old eggs mixed with tofu, beef stew, tomatoes and scrambled eggs (particularly common), red bean pie, taro pie, pork, chicken, and vegetable dumplings (eaten with vinegar NOT soy sauce... something I learned quickly here), zongzi (sticky rice with filling wrapped in bamboo leaves and boiled... sort of like a Chinese tamale, eaten traditionally during Dragon Boat Festival and pictured below), spinach and peanuts (common appetizer), black mushrooms, and various cabbage/lettuce-like leaves soaking in watery dressing. I usually coat everything I eat in the spicy sauce that can be found in almost any restaurant, which is basically ground up chili peppers sitting in their own oil. Chinese people get a kick out of this, a fact that must be related to the quick judgment they pass on foreigners who can't eat spicy dishes.

Well, that's about it for food. Of course, this is the sort of thing that will continue to bring new adventure after new adventure for the remainder of my stay here, especially considering the influence of my HBA-arranged 'Chinese Family', one of many that have volunteered to take students out to eat, see Beijing, and welcome them into their homes. I'll write about them in another entry, but for now...

再见
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Beijing Countryside: Living With Farmers

At the end of last week, we all had to decide where we were going to go for our week-long social study project between the first and second four weeks of class. As much as this week was one of my main reasons for choosing HBA, I knew the pressure would be on to pick a worthwhile study location. The options were many and varied, including everything from touristy trips to Qingdao and the Shanghai World Expo to more culturally significant excursions to Inner Mongolia to staying in Beijing and studying local businesses.

Despite my original excitement about the oversubscribed Inner Mongolia trip, during which students enjoy a day riding horses and sand-surfing in the desert, followed by an authentic Mongolian barbecue that night, I elected to travel with a few others to the nearby province of Hebei, where we will be investigating the life of a developing farm-town. The schedule is still not set in stone, and much of it will depend on the research topics we choose, but it looks like there will be opportunities to visit an elementary school, work and talk with local farmers, attend a farmer's market, and eat a few meals with some of China's poorest and hardest working people.

I have no idea what my research topic will cover, but I'm sure it will come to me when I get there with little need for brainstorming. Last Wednesday HBA had a professor and former Chinese government think-tank member come to talk to us about the disparities between life in Chinese cities and life in the surrounding small towns. One of China's most pressing social issues is accelerating the development of these poor areas to match the living conditions of cities like Beijing and Shanghai. The problem is that high-paying city jobs attract both families who want more for their children and top graduates from China's best universities. The result has been a surge in urban population with little hope for development in poverty-stricken rural areas, and according to this article, a rapid increase in job competition amongst recent college graduates. The government's plan is essentially to solve many of these problems at once by developing a number of medium-sized towns around large cities like Beijing within the next ten years. I don't know if it's possible to force-feed suburban sprawl to a people in such a way, but it's certainly interesting, and serves as an affirmation that I've chosen a fruitful social study project location.

This entry is mostly just a hold-over until my treatise on Food, which has taken nearly a lifetime to write because of the workload but is finally almost finished. Until then...

再见
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Chinese Medicine

Saturday night, I started to feel sick. But with nothing more than a minor sore throat and an impending low feverish feeling, I chalked it up to a long day of yelling in the hot sun at Mutianyu. By Sunday morning things had only worsened. Back home, I normally wouldn't have gone to the doctor for symptoms like these, but being in a foreign country so far away from home, I thought it best to get myself checked out early. To the yiyuan I went. Turns out I have strep throat -- the (Western trained, probably American) doctor prescribed me some antibiotics and sent me on my way. But that's not what this story is about.

To get to the hospital, we had to take a cab. I sat in the back while the HBA secretary sat up front and dealt with the driver, a feat I was in no state of mind to attempt. Although I did not understand the entire conversation that followed as we made our way through the crowded streets of Beijing, I was able to pick out a few simple -- and shocking -- sentences.

'You should take him to a place where they practice traditional Chinese medicine...'

'This isn't what you've called a normal fever. It's a different type of sickness...'

'There's a certain type of tea that will make this go right away...'

As the ride continued, the driver began probing deeper into my chauffeur's personal life...

'Are you married yet? You're getting old, you should get married soon...'

As disturbing as it is to receive such advice from a taxi driver, the situation represented a fantastic and rare opportunity to explore the views of an ordinary Chinese citizen. On the relatively international BLCU campus, chance encounters like these are few and far between. Listening to this man in from the back seat in feverish lethargy, I could not help but think back on everything I'd heard and read before coming here...

Beijing is at once an ancient and a fledgling city. Rapid modernization has brought together sparkling new infrastructure and traditional Eastern ideas in a way that is uniquely Chinese. At the confluence of these two are people like my friend in the cab, driving a modern car to make a buck while clinging tightly to antiquated notions of Eastern medicine.

For now, I'll stick to Azithromycin, which after two days has already ameliorated the swelling considerably. What an intriguing adventure getting sick in China has turned out to be.

再见

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The Great Wall

On Saturday, HBA made arrangements for any interested students to visit the Great Wall free of charge. Unwilling to pass up such a fantastic opportunity, I eagerly hopped aboard the chartered 'New Moon Bus Limited Company' vehicle to Mutianyu, an older part of the wall with relatively few tourists compared to major sites like Badaling. After about an hour's drive through some of the poorest villages I've seen here so far, we arrived at the base of the Wall. Because the structure itself is built along the crest of a mountain, you can't just drive along next to it, climb up, and start walking. It's actually enough of a hike from the parking lot to the top to have you working up a sweat before you even get there.

The view from the top of the Mutianyu section is impressive. The Wall extends as far as the eye can see in either direction (admittedly not very far given the Beijing pollution, but you know what I mean), negotiating sharp inclines and winding curves in a way that appears almost natural. What an astonishing feat of human engineering.

With a whole day ahead of us, we decided to turn left (which I'm assuming is west) and walk as far as we could before the renovated part of the Wall ended and the wild, time-worn part began. Contrary to what I had thought, walking the Wall is not at all like strolling down an ancient elevated walkway. It's more like intense hiking -- like climbing a bona fide Stairway to... um... Nirvana? The sun is unforgiving. The shade provided by the towers -- insufficient to beat the heat. All along the way vendors pressure you to buy their overpriced water, which you absolutely need to stay hydrated. (Luckily we'd brought plenty of our own.) For me, the physically demanding nature of the geography called into question the effectiveness/necessity of the Wall's original function as a means of protection against invading nations. The mountains themselves seem to form an impenetrable natural barrier which no army would ever attempt to scale.

After about a three hour walk, we reached the 'non-tourist area', where the Wall becomes unrecognizable beneath a forest of vines and shrubbery. We carefully attempted to traverse this section for a few minutes before realizing that it was pretty much impossible. The silhouette of the overgrown wall, however, continued far into the distance.

Having now seen a small part of the Great Wall, I feel inclined to visit other sites. One of the disadvantages of such a large-scale tourist attraction is that you feel like you haven't really and couldn't ever possibly experience it in its entirety. Hopefully I'll be back.



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HBA: The Program

Class -- like the enormous building where we attend it -- is overwhelming, to say the least. We meet Monday through Thursday 8:00 am to 12:00 pm with a 50 minute one-on-one session in the afternoon. The morning is split into dabanke (lit. 'big class'), which is given in lecture format, and xiaobanke (lit. 'small class'), which consists of four students and a teacher, who prompts us with questions that require the use of each day's new vocabulary to answer correctly. Having tested into third year Chinese here, my daily workload is as follows:

• Read one three to four page chapter of our textbook.
• Memorize approximately 90 new words and their characters from this chapter.
• Complete a one page homework sheet from the current day's lesson.
• Memorize a short paragraph from the current day's lesson to be recited the next day in our one-on-one session with a teacher.

Every Friday we take a test on the week's four new lessons, after which we are expected to give an eight to ten minute presentation on one of the topics covered. This means writing a pretty hefty essay (400-500 characters) every week. (For those of you potential Light Fellows reading this in the future, that's four times as much as one is ever expected to produce in L4 Chinese.) The course is fast-paced and unforgiving, but totally doable. You have to keep in mind that when you're here, you have all the time in the world to devote to learning the language.

But HBA is certainly not all work and no play. The pre-departure meetings held by the Light Fellowship made a concerted effort to remind students not to let the daunting workload get the best of us, but frankly I've been so busy with things outside the classroom I haven't had time to think about how much work I have. For example, yesterday I met with my language partner, one of many Beijing Language and Culture University students about our age, who are assigned to hang out with us for three hours a week and basically take us wherever we want in Beijing. I plan on asking her to take me to a clothing shop so I can laugh at, take pictures of, and probably buy T-shirts with poorly translated English expressions on them. (My favorite so far is 'Passion Because South Africa People Style'.)

On weekdays, we also have the option to participate in several extra-curricular activities including cooking, calligraphy, and erhu (traditional Chinese instrument) lessons. On the weekends, HBA organizes trips to Beijing's many sites of cultural and historical significance. This Saturday we'll be going to the Great Wall.

Well, that's pretty much all I have to say about the program for now. Under the language pledge and the weight of a demanding workload, I'm learning a ton everyday. But before I go I'd like to share one unrelated but still noteworthy point of interest. Today is Dragon Boat Festival in China. Without getting too far into it, it's a holiday. As far as I understand it, because this year Dragon Boat Festival falls on a Wednesday, the government decided to swap several days of the week and last weekend. Schools and government offices remained open through Saturday and Sunday, and closed either Monday or Tuesday in anticipation of today. This struck me as extremely foreign. It's one thing to be able to give everyone a day off for a national holiday, but to literally change the weekend? That's powerful stuff. Good old Chinese government.

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Beijing: The Journey and First Impressions

到了北京阿！Well, I'm finally here, and let me just say things did not go smoothly. I chose an indirect flight with an airline called China Eastern, which (based on the reports of a few other HBAers) I do not recommend. CE is apparently notorious for arriving late and ruining everyone's travel plans -- case in point: my first flight from JFK to Shanghai was delayed three hours, causing me to miss my connecting flight to Beijing. The airline tried to appease the inconvenienced with a night in its staff hotel and a hot breakfast in the morning, but when I found out several other classmates had had similar issues the day before, my anger was renewed.

Transportation issues aside, a flight of such great length was a new experience for me. I drifted in and out of sleep for most of it, waking only for the occasional in-flight movie or meal. After sleeping a few hours in the China Eastern hotel and taking a final hour-and-a-half flight to Beijing, I was jet-lagged and confused, but ready for the reveal...

The sky in Beijing is gray... a lot. Locals say it's the weather, foreigners say it's the pollution, it's probably a combination of both. Nevertheless there are apparently very few 'nice' days here -- not a huge deal, but not seeing the sun is depressing after a few days.

Food is cheap... and delicious. Of course, the cost of living in Beijing is generally lower in every respect than in the US, but food is conspicuously inexpensive. My breakfast this morning cost the equivalent of one US dollar. Lunch for five this afternoon was two dollars each. A giant 600 mL bottle of Yan Jing beer, which people seem to drink any day of the week and any time of day, can be had for about 50 cents. I don't want to elaborate too much here though, expect a full entry on food to come.

This brings me to currency. I exchanged $150 US for about 999 Chinese RMB at Shanghai Pudong Airport. My wallet immediately became useless. As you can see in the picture below (missing a 50 yuan bill, which I just didn't have at the time of the photo), the bills are all different sizes, which becomes extremely frustrating if you use one of those small flip wallets that hold only a few cards and some cash. It's also exceedingly difficult to organize the money in any logical way that doesn't cause a huge delay when you're in line at a restaurant or supermarket. Again, not the end of the world.


The dorm facilities are exquisite. HBA is housed in the Beijing Language and Culture University Conference Center. Each student receives a single which includes a bathroom, television, electric teapot, and yes, air conditioning. It's hot outside. Some students had minor problems with TV and air conditioning not working the first day, but they were all quickly resolved by the very friendly Conference Center staff. It's safe to say the rooms are the only part of Beijing that feels like home. Everything else is new, exciting, and a little overwhelming.

I spent the first few days getting organized -- purchasing a cell phone (complete with texting and and enough minutes for two months: $40 US), setting up my room and internet, finding the bank, the supermarket, etc. I have a lot to get used to here. Living on your own at school in the US is one thing, being in a foreign country on your own is another altogether. Anyway, we have our first day of class tomorrow, which means I have a lot of work to do, so until later...

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About the Title

Having chosen a most esoteric title for this blog, I feel I owe somewhat of an explanation.

My grandfather, Richard H. Gilliland passed away last Thursday. He lived a long and fulfilled life, part of which he spent in Beijing, serving his country as a United States Marine during WWII. Pop, as he was called by his grandchildren, was the reason I became interested in China. I grew up on his stories from the war, sprinkled with broken attempts at the few Mandarin words he'd picked up overseas. As I continued to explore the language, he and I would often exchange thoughts on China's past, present, and future over sandwiches and old photographs. He loved the fact that the family had come full circle -- I'll be turning 19 in Beijing just like he did.

I want to dedicate this blog and my trip to my grandfather's memory. Although I won't exactly be fighting a war during my stay, I'll be futzing around the same city and seeing the same sights at the same time in my life as he did. In his final days, one of the things Pop wanted most was a picture of me on the Great Wall like the ones he'd taken years ago. This blog is the place where that photo will eventually come.

Which brings me back to the title. In brainstorming ideas, I knew I wanted to incorporate a little bit of my grandfather, a little bit of China, and a little bit of myself. 'Chopsticks and Rice' is the obvious China reference, with Pop and Dick (which is what everyone else called him) representing my grandpa. Finally I threw an 'H' into 'Rice' to get my own name without completely destroying the integrity of the original word. I love puns.

Well that's all for now -- gotta pack pack pack. My next post -- hopefully regarding the smooth and flawless travel process -- won't be for a while as I will not have guaranteed internet access until Monday.

再见

Richard 'Dick' Howard Gilliland

1927-2010

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