Don't Stir the (Sichuan) Pot and More

Written in Shanghai, China 3/12

Don't Stir the (Sichuan) Pot

For all the avoiding of snake, cow tongue and shark fin (note below about this) we've also had some delicious Chinese food. Dumplings are a big hit with all. We've had rice and noodles served for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Peking duck, pork dumplings, fried pork and fried potato cakes help fill us up (really fried anything is good).

In Chengdu a hot pot meal, a Sichuan specialty, included two pots on our table, one with spicy liquid (oil and spices) and the other with not spicy liquid (fish based) boiled in a pot recessed in the middle of our table. Then from the menu (including cow tongue and turtle) we picked pork meatballs, sausage, thinly sliced chicken, cauliflower, and lotus (root?) among other things to dip in the liquids. The food arrived raw and we placed it either the spicy or not spicy liquid until it was cooked. Turns out the more we stirred the spicy side the spicier it got (a fact we only found out happens as the meal went on and the food got spicier and spicier...). A loose canister in the bottom released more and more spice as it was moved around. Even Ben ate the spicy food turning redder and redder as he ate, as we all did, but he kept going. (Shark fin: Ads, on small screen t.v.s on the back of Chinese taxi seats, are working to convince people to avoid shark fin soup. The fin is cut off the shark and the rest of the shark carcass tossed away causing tremendous amount of waste but more critically leading to a decimation of the shark population.)

How We Get Around - Magic Cards

To get around cities in China as most people, understandably, only Mandarin and/or their local dialect we've given taxi drivers written names of where we want to go. Here they don't use the Roman Alphabet but the Chinese Characters so we've relied on kind friends, hotel desk clerks, guide books with English and Chinese characters and what we call, "Magic Cards." The business cards written with addresses and often small maps written in Chinese characters for the Asels neighborhood or for our hotels. We've had the kids each put a 'magic card' in their pockets in case we get separated they can find their way back to us. Remarkably that is an incredible amount of information in English. The safety guidelines on air planes, train station stops, street signs, hotel signs, menus include pictures and often English descriptions. Quite a surprise.

Happy Family

While China has opened up incredibly in the last twenty years, with modern highways everywhere and people in modern clothes - jeans, sweatshirts, cell phones, etc.., there are still relatively few 'foreigners' in many cities and very few 'foreign children. (In Shanghai a city of 21 million they pride themselves on having many foreigners - about 30,000 - but you don't see 'foreign' children,). Plus China, we some exceptions, has a one child policy so with two 'foreign' children with us we've drawn attention. People often said, "Happy family," in English as we passed by.

We got a lot of stares - especially Ben. Amelia is the height of many adult Chinese women but Ben is clearly still a little kid (Amelia's height has made getting child discounts a challenge sometimes - when we say she is 11 but she's taller than the ticket seller). People have come up to Ben stared at him and asked to take pictures with him (something we had read about could happen before we got here). We stopped in one grocery store near Xian and, while the store had seemed almost deserted when we arrived, after I stepped outside and came back in to the store I saw a crowd had formed around Paul and the kids at the cash register. Little kids have run over to our table and peeped at us in delight. In a taxi at a red light, a little boy on a bus started waving at Ben and Ben smiled and waved back. Soon a bus load of people were bent over peering in to tour taxi . One woman came up to Ben and stood right behind Ben and stopped and starred at him in the outdoor market (people are not very subtle when they stare). She was tiny - shorter than Ben and dressed in more traditional clothing than most of those in Shanghai, wearing a long sleeve silk shirt and black pants. Ben responded, as we have been doing, by smiling and saying, "Ni Hao," making the woman break in to a big smile and peels of laughter.

Much love and happiness to all, Jackie