China Case Scenario Handbook

My mom called early this morning. I hadn't really woken up, and I thought she was calling me because it was an emergency. When I finally understood what was going on, it was this: She was talking to a student who would be going to China, and the student wanted to know what to pack in preparation for the trip. Then, I thought it would be fun to post a retrospective about what was useful when I was living and traveling in China.

For living in China, my worst-case-scenario handbook of a brain came in useful. Apart from the obvious stuff, I took food that I knew I wouldn't be able to find and food that would be easy to prepare (e.g. required just water or just one added ingredient):

• Peanut butter
• Coconut oil
• Stevia liquid
• Granola bars
• Packaged crackers with cheese (you know they come with 6 in a package in different combinations)
• Lipton rice/noodles and sauce (select varieties--some need milk and butter)
• Guayaki mate tea (of which I still have the original package half-full)
• Flavored tea (Tazo Lotus/Zen, Stash Chai, Stash Peach Flavored)
  
• Minute Tapioca
• Almond flavoring
• Cinnamon
• Sunscreen (which I replaced in Hong Kong when it ran out)
  
• Deodorant (I hear that Chinese antiperspirant/deodorant isn't formulated for people of non-Asian decent, I never tried it)
• Books (like novels-I assumed English books would be hard to come by-for the most part I was right, but we stocked up in HK and passed things around)
• Macaroni and Cheese (which can be made without the butter-we could find milk, but butter was a little more challenging and expensive)
  

I have some weird tastes, and probably want things that other people wouldn't, but this is my personal list to combat homesickness and to make sure I had something to eat if I didn't find food that I liked right away. I should've also brought dry lentils and vanilla, but I thought I would be close enough to India that these would be readily available in Southern China. For the things I didn't bring, I would write the Chinese characters and pinyin on a note pad before going out. Sometimes I would research the use of a spice in Chinese medicine, and take the written name to a Chinese medicine pharmacy. This was how I acquired two nutmeg seeds, and I was so excited, when the pharmacy workers let me smell them in the jar to make sure they were the right thing, that they gave them to me for free.

Now, in traveling, I found some other things to be useful. See photos, numbers correlate.

1. Bandana - My hair is not black. When I went somewhere outside the university, especially if it was a place where there weren't a lot of laowais (foreigners), I would get yelled at, petty cabs would stop in front of me so I couldn't cross the street, people would stop me on the street to try and sell me things...I found that wearing a bandana (usually brown) would make walking around more bearable. I don't know if it was because the color didn't stand out as much as my hair color did, or if it was that people thought I was Jewish and respected me more (the Jewish theory comes from Peter Hessler's Rivertown, which is a great book about living and interacting in China).
2. Bag - Someone told me not to take a purse to China. That was dumb advice. When I got a cell phone, I had nowhere to carry it, so I tied a bandana between my belt loops to hold my cell when I went into the city. I had to order a bag while in China. The bag I have is called Pacsafe. I ordered it from China and received it just in time to go traveling to Xi'an, but I ended up using it everywhere. The strap is reinforced and has a feature that allows you to take it off clip it to a chair or table if you're sitting somewhere. The top zipper is covered and there is a clip for the zipper pull when the zipper is shut that makes it hard to open. The bag body is reinforced with wire netting between the outer and inner layers. There had been stories of people standing on buses holding bags, only to discover when they got off the bus that the bottom of the bag had been cut out, the contents gone, or that they ended up holding only the bag's strap with the bag body and contents gone. My Pacsafe is pretty much cut-proof. Also, carrying it across my body and under my coat made it hands-free and difficult to grab.
   
3. Hiking sandals - I ordered some Chacos while in China. Most of the laowais I knew had them. They are sturdy, and not slip-ons. They can be washed in a washing machine (although, if you're walking around China, you may not want to wash them with clothes), and they dry quickly. I wore them traveling in warm places and generally for teaching and walking around our city.
4. Wide scarf - I bought my green scarf in our city, and I wore it everywhere. If I forgot my bandana, I would cover my hair with it. If I was cold, I would spread it out and use it as a shawl. I bought them as gifts because I like the one I have so much.
5. Money belt/pouch - Don't keep money, ID, or passport in a bag. I have one that goes around my neck and hangs on my stomach under my shirt. I don't prefer the belts because they are hot and you have to reach into your pants to get anything, which is somewhat immodest. One of my colleagues had a similar pouch to mine, but the string attached was very long, so he put it around his neck AND in his pants. I found no problems keeping things safe by my stomach, though.
6. Hand-sanitizer - We called it "sauce," and we would pass it around when we first sat down to eat together at restaurants or after getting off the bus. I've heard that hand-sanitizer doesn't really work, but it makes you feel better when you're about to eat and you just got off the bus where people were blowing their noses into their hands.
   
7. Facial cleansing cloths - There are some travel packs of pre-moistened facial cloths. I took some from the US thinking they might come in handy. On the way to Xi'an, my colleagues and I stayed in a "hotel." The cost was 30 yuan, which was about $4 at the time. Three of us shared a bed in a room that didn't have a sink. There was a bathroom down the hall, into which we peered on arrival and we immediately decided that we would not use the bathroom under any circumstances. It looked like it had never met cleaning products before. We brushed our teeth using an outside hose, and decided we didn't need to wash our faces. I had these facial cleansing cloths, so I used one, and what came off my face was black dirt, soot, and pollution. So we all used the cloths that night.
8. Pepto-Bismol chewable tabs and travel baby wipes - Pepto is good for minor discomfort from eating something weird. Baby wipes have a number of cleansing uses, and they are nice to have if you experience (erm...) intestinal pyrotechnics.
   
9. Crystallized ginger - I used this for motion sickness. Dramamine makes me too drowsy. Ginger that is preserved like this doesn't spoil and packs a punch that takes care of that sick feeling or takes your mind off it.
10. Pocket dictionary - Not a phrasebook. If you don't know much about Chinese, reading a phrase from a phrasebook will be unintelligible to native speakers. However, if you can look up keywords about what you want, I think it's better. I bought my small dictionary in China. It was 3"x 6"x 1" and included English-Chinese, Chinese-English, with pinyin and characters. The print was very small, but it was useful. One time I was trying to ask a seller if she had a certain product. I took my dictionary out and showed the word, but she said it was too small, so I recopied it in my notepad. Another time, I had a great conversation with a carving artist, from whom I ordered numerous name chops (stamps), just by using my Chinese and filling in blanks with key words from my dictionary. On subsequent visits, he used his son's cell phone, which had a Chinese character to English translation ap. He was patient in conversation and would always ask me to have tea after placing or picking up an order. Ah, Southern China Hospitality...
11. Trail mix or granola bars - Trail mix was a delicacy, since we didn't even have many of the ingredients. I mixed peanuts, sub-par raisins, and M&Ms to make trail mix a few times, but it wasn't the same. On Ten-Ten holiday, the holiday for hiking, we hiked to a Buddhist temple in the hills. One of my distinguished colleagues had a bag of Trader Joe's trail mix, and it was heavenly. Granola bars were nonexistent in our city, so I stocked up in Beijing and HK. Both are good carry-along snacks.
    

Has anything been invaluable for you while on vacation (domestic or abroad)?
-吴碧芙

TAC (Thursday After Class)

Looking through my China photos, I found the pictures from our last group barbecue. We used to go every Thursday after class, around 9pm, to have barbecue at the university's East Gate, where there was also a smoothie stand and the small restaurants that we frequented. Everyone would meet for beer and things barbecued on sticks, ordered with the instruction yidian la ("a little spicy"). This stand appeared in the evening and was completely open to the air. The blades of the fans were missing, and instead metal wires with plastic bags attached to the ends spun on the fan apparatus to keep the flies away from the food. The grill was next to the stand, also open to the air, with an exhaust fan to the side of it, in order to draw the smoke away from the customers.


I liked that there were enough vegetarian food choices in the stands, including tofu skin that was wonderful with the spice mixture on it.


My food (above) from top to bottom (kind of): tofu skin, sprouted garlic shoots (green), mantou (bread rolls), cilantro wrapped in tofu skin, green peppers (underneath).

The owner always remembered who ordered what, and how much they owed, so we could pay at the end of the evening if we wanted. We sat at metal folding tables and plastic patio chairs under a tarp, and wait for the food we chose to be delivered to the table.

Last Thursday I was traveling. This Thursday I will miss the weekly barbecue and all of my friends from China.

-吴佩芙

The Leaning Tower of Lianzhou

The two cousins accompanied me to Lianzhou and we stayed with their older sister. The evening of the first day we ate snacks by the river. This was where I tried a snail, which is a local specialty. I ate one, and it was ok, but sucking on the snail and biting off the head to eat seemed more disturbing than the idea of eating snail in the first place, so I didn't try it again, but at least I tried it once.

The second famous attraction in Lianzhou is the leaning tower. It seems to have been built with some kind of Buddhism in mind, but the exact reason is not completely clear. It leans slightly because of a problem with the foundation years after it was built.

At the top levels the stairways and passages get shorter and narrower, but high on the top-most level there is one of the best views of the city.


After returning from Lianzhou to Guangzhou, I stayed for two nights with Cousin James, who has an apartment there. We had dinner with his girlfriend on both nights and we spent Monday looking around the city, where I bought an English book for the trip back to the US, and we had the best foot massage ever for 40 RMB.

I took the early bus today, back to Shantou where I had to start again with bartering for a cab after just stepping off the bus. Now I'm at my apartment and getting ready for the inspection and check-out procedure tomorrow before flying home on Thursday!!

-吴佩芙

A Time for Spelunking

I just returned from a visit with the cousins to Lianzhou, which is a small city in Guangdong Province. I went from Shantou to Guangzhou first. Despite the "theifs and racketeers" my student warned me about, I found Guangzhou to be a nice city, although a little large. I waited for the first cousin at the mall, and then we met the other cousin at the bus station, where we hopped the 5-hour fast bus to Lianzhou.

Every city has it's own claims to fame, and Lianzhou has the Subterranean River. It is a huge cave with amazing rock formations, so far down into the ground that the cousins joked that if you went much further, you could go to America.


Just looking down from the entrance, as we waited for a guide, was pretty amazing. It's called the "Big Mouth Cave," because the cousins explained the opening of the cave looks like a big mouth. Their four-year-old niece was a little frightened by the size of it. It's true, though, that it looked like the mouth of Monstro (the whale who swallowed Pinocchio).


The bottom left formation is called a "lotus flower," and the pieces really look like the petals of a flower. We walked up and down staircases for 40 min. and the tour ended with a 20 min. boat ride on the small cave river.

-吴佩芙

I'm no longer afraid of spiders...

...except the kinds that eat birds, which my distinguished colleague reminds me are prevalent in the mountains and hills of this area. However, I have a few jumping spiders in my apartment, whom I have asked to jump under something so that I can't see them anymore. So we live happily in this way. Sometimes I jump when I see one, but the jump is followed by the thought: It's just a spider! Thank goodness!

We have geckos here too, more than in Arizona, but I don't mind those either. If I see one scurrying across the floor, the same thought goes through my mind: It's just a gecko. And I call it "Baby bihu (house lizard, 壁虎)" and talk to it in Chinese. I usually pick it up and put it out on the front balcony.

In China, small harmless spiders are a small harmless worry when there are 2-inch roaches threatening to squeeze through the cracks and streak across the room when you turn on the lights. Roaches give me the heebie-jeebies (a word that I taught my students during a slang warm-up this semester). Even thinking about them makes me jump and have formications.

A few weeks ago, as I was walking to ACC to work out I saw a glitter of gold on the ground. This was the first day of sun after a few days of rain. I looked down to see a iridescent beetle, stuck on his back and flailing to flip over. I grabbed a leaf and turned him over. It was the most beautiful natural thing I had ever seen, mixed specks of gold on a background of emerald green that sparkled in the sun like a gem. I grabbed a piece of paper with the intent to wrap him up, go work out, and then take him home to take a picture. However, a slow and steady escape artist, he worked through the folds in a few minutes and flew away before I could put him back inside. I lamented that I wasn't able to take a picture, and would probably never see another more stunning insect ever again.

Today I went to exercise early, and on my way back, I saw the iridescent beetle again, on the ground. This time I wrapped him in a towel, but as I was arranging this, a man who swept the streets took an interest and came over to see. He picked up the beetle off my towel and started shaking it around. I thought he was going to crush it. "No, wo yao! Ack! No, no, no.." He said something like "Bu yao dinxin" and put it back on the towel. I have no idea what he said, maybe "You don't want to touch it," or "You don't want a beetle," or "You don't want to capture it." As I rewrapped it and started walking home, the sweeper laughed and shook his head: Crazy laowai!

Well, I did get my picture, and the beetle is still alive on the balcony, although I'm hoping he will fly away before the cleaners come today.

-吴佩芙

Toes

Some of my distinguished colleagues and I decided to go downtown yesterday. Some of us hadn't had a pedicure before, even at home. However, we were persuaded when we saw that one of our colleagues had some cute nails done at a nice and clean salon. She said that we could get fish painted on our toes, and she told us about some hideous design examples she had seen. (Well, maybe not "hideous" but a little too bright, a little too busy, and a little too China-fabulous.) We each got either fish or flowers, and it was a fun girl's day to celebrate the end of the year and the beginning of the rest of our lives. Can you guess which toes are mine?


I couldn't resist the fish, and I think the did a good job. My first pedicure, and maybe my last for a long time, was very fun and cute. Some of us also went to buy some gongfu tea sets, keeping in mind room in our suitcases and breakability of tea sets. I found a pattern I really like though, and a little yellow travel set in a zipper case (without a base) for under 2 USD.

We came home and got dressed for our year-end party. It was held at a nice hotel with a buffet dinner and then there were speeches and karaoke. It was also my first time singing any karaoke. I sang "I Just Called to Say 'I Love You'" by Stevie Wonder and "Top of the World" by the Carpenters (and was quite impressed that they actually had that one).

We took an extra hour to get to the hotel, though, because our fancy coach broke down right after we got out of the STU gate and onto the busy road. We got off the bus, and then they said it was fixed, so we got back on the bus. It wasn't fixed, so we got off the bus, (did the Hokey Pokey), and finally a new bus was called.

If you still haven't guessed, here is an extreme close-up of my toe painting:


-吴佩芙

Bucket

This week I have a special visitor, Bucket (as in: "Please-don't-kick-the-") or shui (bao) tong 水桶 in Chinese. He was found one month ago poking around a dumpster on a cold rainy day. He was tiny and skinny, and he wouldn't eat. He needed to be fed with a dropper every two hours, which meant that I would go visit and make sure he was ok, while my distinguished colleagues and neighbors were in class. Lately, he's been staying with Bi Fu Ayi (Aunt Beth) because my neighbors went away for the weekend, and now they have guests.

Bucket helps out around the house. Last night he was sitting on the floor and looking straight up at the curtains. A little tiny roach-type animal was resting there. I flicked it off and flailed around trying to kill it while it was flying, while Bucket still sat, staring calmly at the spot on the curtain where it had been.


If I'm lying on my back, he will knead his paws on my stomach and purr. He's very sweet.

-吴佩芙

Di San Xian Three Fresh Earth Vegetables

One of the dishes we love at the Banyan Tree restaurant is called Di San Xian (literally "Earth Three Fresh"). The three fresh Earth vegetables are potatoes, eggplant, and green peppers. My distinguished colleagues went to the restaurant earlier this semester to have a "cooking class" to write down some of our favorite recipes.


Di San Xian is one of my most favorite Chinese dishes, and I didn't try it until I came to China. When I made it at home, I didn't have all of the ingredients. The basic seasoning is from fresh ginger, garlic, salt, soy sauce, and sesame seed oil. I almost forgot about the cooking oil, lots and lots of cooking oil. It's good as a treat. My pic looks quite similar to the restaurant, although without corn starch, the flavor soaked into the vegetables instead of making a sauce.

-吴佩芙

Zongzi Party: Part Two

In the evening, when the zongzi were finished, the students brought about eight or nine rice cookers and pots, all filled with soup, to the student cafeteria. In the afternoon, my student had asked me what kind of soup I liked. I said that if there was meat in the soup, of course, I probably didn't want to eat it, especially if it was pork or chicken. I suggested fish, but she said the smell of fish soup would not be very good. I agree with that, but if there must be something dead in the soup, fish is the most tolerable. So eventually there was a solution to make one pot of vegetarian soup.


About five of my students were there, so they talked to me and wanted to tell me the story of Duan Wu Jie. It was the first time my student had ever made vegetarian soup, and the first time many of them had every tasted vegetarian soup. They seemed surprised that it worked and had a good flavor.


The three vegetarian zongzi that were tied together were found, after a brief period of frantic worry. I had only put rice and split mung beans inside, but they were good.

-吴佩芙

Zhongzi Party: Part One

My students in the Law School organized a party to make zongzi (English: "rice packets") for the Dragon Boat Festival, and they invited me to join them for making zongzi in the afternoon and to eat them, along with soup, in the evening.

I've made zongzi before with Dan's parents two years ago in SF, and I was quite touched by the story of the holiday. It is said that a poet, who was loyal to the ancient Chu state, was banished for opposing an alliance between Chu and the state of Qin. After 28 years, Qin took over the Chu capital. Because he had been against the alliance, and because he loved his country, he committed suicide by drowning himself in the river. The local people, who loved him, threw zongzi into the river, so that the fish would eat the food, instead of his body. The dragon boat races are said to originate from the idea that the people went out in boats in order to retrieve the body.


I'm amazed at how these parties happen. There is always too much food or too many extra ingredients, or some ingenious substitutions. Today we had too much filling for the amount of leaves we had. We ran out of stems needed to tie the zongzi together, so we ended up using regular string. We were set up under the awning outside the student cafeteria. The students had arranged for one of the cafeteria booths to cook them when we finished making them.


One of the boys was the expert, and he showed me how to make the triangle zongzi. When the leaves would rip, or tying them seemed impossible, the girls passed the zongzi to him to fix or tie. Because different provinces and different families make different types and shapes, we ended up with many creative shapes and sizes. Mine were the smallest ones.

The three I made were vegetarian. My student looped them together with string, so we would know which ones they were because I don't want meat, and nobody will want my meatless ones.

-吴佩芙

Chop chop

On Wednesday I went back to the art shop to pick up my new chop. I took a distinguished colleague along, and she ordered four chops for friends and relatives. The laoban served tea and gave us tea packets to take home. He said that I already have a chop, but it has my old Chinese name on it. I wanted to get a new Chinese name because my old Chinese name (wu pei fu, 吴佩芙) has the same sound, although different characters, as a Chinese warlord （吴佩孚） who was the enemy of the Chinese Communist Party, in the early part of the 20th Century. When people heard my name, I suppose their reactions were similar to a Chinese student telling us their English name is "Benedict Arnold," although I haven't heard of a student with that name...yet. I was not too broken up about it, but I asked my Chinese teacher for a new name last semester.

The new name (wu bi fu, 吴碧芙） is much more effective. It means "Emerald Lotus." I put it on my school email signature, and a number of Chinese people whom I have emailed, have replied and then written "PS- Your Chinese name is very beautiful." The new chop I got was big, and so the artist added the character yin, which means "stamp" or "chop."


The only problem with my new name is that it sounds like "beef" in English. I'll just continue to use whichever one is more convenient at the time.

-吴佩芙

The Magic Shop of Unknown Treasures

Yesterday was the third time I had gone to the artisan shop for name chops. I want one with my new name and another for a friend. It's magic because I don't really know how to get there. The last times I have gone, I've gotten on the 17 bus to the old city. I don't know where to get off the bus, but I have a receipt with the address stamped on it in Chinese. I get off the bus when I think things look familiar, then I ask someone to point me toward the address on the receipt. Luckily, I've always gotten off the bus really close to the correct street, and I've always been headed in the right direction before asking for help.

Yesterday when I got to the shop, it was closed. I stood in front, trying to use my cell to call someone who might be able to help. The shop owner rode up on his motorcycle just then. I spent a few minutes looking at the chop stones. The one I chose is a multicolored marbled stone with a carving of a lily pad and fish. I picked out the carving style, and then I was invited for Kongfu tea before leaving, as is the Chaoshan hospitable custom. I have ordered 7 chops all together, which probably makes me a good chop customer.

I used my limited ability in Chinese (Putonghua) to have chit-chat, over about 6-7 shots of Kongfu tea with the owner and his friend. They offered me cigarettes. They asked about where I was from, what I did, how much money I made, all polite conversation topics in China. Of course, I rounded my salary down to the nearest 3-thousands. He asked if I took the chops back to America. I said that the five chops he had carved were already in America, sent to my parents and friends. He seemed a bit emotional thinking of the idea that his work had traveled so far.

I asked which bus to take to get to Walmart from that part of the city. The owner and his friends decided it was the #24. As I got up to leave, the owner asked me to have one more cup of tea, and said he would take me to the stop because he didn't know for sure which bus it was. So I rode for 1.5 blocks on the back of his motorcycle, which was less horrifying than I had imagined. The bus I needed was #12. I didn't have change. I said maybe I could buy a bottle of water. He told me to stay there, he took my ten, and he came back with a bottle of water and change.

I made it to Walmart and graded at the Bread Diary. It was a successful day.

-吴佩芙

When Shoes Die

I had been trying to convince myself that I did not need to pack my Sketchers on the trip back to the US. I told myself that I could buy better shoes when I got back. Afterall, my Sketchers were heavy, old, and had lost all of their traction. These factors did not outweigh the fact that I loved them, and they still seemed wearable. I've always wanted brown shoes that look like bowling shoes, with stripes and different tones of brown, but I could never be sure that they would be as cute and as comfortable as my Sketchers. Still, I had decided to leave my shoes, when I went to put them on for the last time, and I realized that the sole was completely falling off.


Now I don't feel so bad. I got a lot of use out of those shoes, traipsing around Xi'an, Hong Kong, and Beijing and hiking over Shantou Mountains. So sad! But it definitely made my decision easier.

-吴佩芙

Sick and Tired

I got sick yesterday. It wasn't pretty. I threw up a few times during the night, and I had the worst aching in my joints, and I couldn't sleep. I ended up finding subs for my classes and having a student help me go to the hospital.

The doctor said I had an intestine infection. So far I've been taking the medicine and eating rice porridge. The joint pain has diminished, at least to the point where I can sleep.

My students were very concerned. Some students came after class and made porridge and brought flowers. Students from my later class made me a card.


Isn't that cute?

-吴佩芙

Life is a Bowl of Waxberries

I haven't seen waxberries (yang mei) anywhere else than China. I've bought them preserved, but yesterday I found them outside the Main Gate and Mr. Handsome's fruit stand. They are made up of tiny pieces, huddled around a large pit in the center. Intensely tart and a little astringent, they also have a delicious undercurrent of sweet.



Mr. Handsome himself is not actually handsome, but a pretty good and honest fruit seller. I asked how much the waxberries were, and I was completely surprised to see them there. He told me the price and added that they were hen hao chi, that is, very good to eat. He always says everything is hen hao chi.

-吴佩芙