Projet Nouvelles Voix :: New Voices Project

I’m writing from a friend’s laptop in a western-style cafe with wireless internet in the Haidian district of Beijing, taking a break from my studies for my intensive Chinese law course. So much to say, but due to time restrictions, I’ll proceed in point form:

 1) Food is best on the street. For the first few weeks we dared not eat from the street vendors in front of our hotel, instead opting for the restaurants in the area. The food at the restaurants was good, but remained restaurant food. One can not eat at restaurants everyday for all meals; at one point, one desires something that must resemble some kind fo soulfood, the equivalent of a diner hotdog, or quick sandwich sub. Eventually, a few pioneers decided to chance the street food; since that momentous occasion, we have essentially colonized the “terasse” — which actually consists of some fold out tables on chairs on the public sidewalk unilaterally appropriated by the shopowners — and have a hardy meal of fried rice, dumplings, buns and brochettes for every lunch.

2) Bargaining is a test of pride. I got ripped off for a pair of shoes my first time going to a market. Although I only paid roughly 8 dollars more than I should have, it was still a pretty heavy blow to my self-confidence. The others had managed to bargain down far below me. On the way home, I conducted a post-mortem of the encounter: how I had let my guard down by actually revealing that I needed a pair of shoes, even going as far as asking for a specific model of shoe, how I had tried to identify with those merciless vendors by bargaining in Chinese, and how I probably revealed my panic through smell, sound, sight and touch. This phenomenon reproduced itself one more time after buying a shoddy dollarstore type of toy and the same posttraumatic restrospective was necessary once again to even be able to look my companions in the eye. That day, I resolved that I would never buy anything again on anything but my own terms. Two weeks later, I returned to the first market and ravaged the vendors in my pursuit of vindication, redemption, a pair of pants and two shirts — no surrender was asked, no quarter given.

 3) Imperial era buildings are all the same. The Forbidden City is beautiful and imposing — but imposing gets boring when you have to walk through it for 3 hours. Basically, imagine that the letter “a” was a beautiful arch or building, “b” an elegantly carved railing. So you see “a” and go “Ooooo” then see “b” and go “Aaaaah” then you see:

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until your feet start to blister. The temple of heaven was the same in terms of architectural style EXCEPT that the main building’s shape had permutated from a square into a circle — everything else remaining the same.

My major tip for visiting sites: Gardens and diversified topography make a world of difference. Take the same architecture mentionned above, and place it on the slope of a mountain (The summer palace) and it becomes awe inspiring. Also, Chinese gardeners do funky stuff with trees and they are all grown to have unique personalities. The gardens also have a lot of wildlife. Essentially, they are the best places to have “a moment”.

 4) Language: 1 year of mandarin classes (12 credits) was just enough to secure food, shelter and clothing.

5) Taxis: if you haven’t been to your destination before, make sure you have the place’s phone number. Building numbers mean nothing since they’re never listed on the building themselves. Most employees don’t even know the specific address of the place at which they work (missed a show by DJ Champion because of that). Also, addresses written in english or pinyin are useless, as well as addresses written in too small a font. Seatbelts are installed in the taxis, but are covered by the plastic protective sheeting placed over the upholstery and rendered inaccessible; thus ensuring that the taxi will remain in prestine condition for better resale value after your innards are splattered all over the interior.

An additional note on traffic: traffic culture in China has evolved differently. Apparently you always coast into an intersection regardless if you’re on a bike, in a car or by foot, be it a green light or red. Once in the intersection, you simply let fate take care of the rest. Very zen.

 I leave Beijing in a few days. I’ve actually already made a trip to the yellow sea. Photos to follow.

On Monday and Tuesday morning last week, I visited Kaiping, a town about 150km west of Hong Kong, famed for its diaolou. We visited only one cluster of diaolou, Zili Village, a 30-minute ride by taxi (around 60RMB) from Kaiping.

Diaolou are the heritage of returning Overseas Chinese. They are fortified towers, dwellings, constructed to sustain attacks from invaders, thieves. Their architectural influences are unique, in that they incorporate elements from outside of China, such as flamboyant balconies.

This article was originally published in Comme les Chinois.

I’m currently sitting in the main library of Carlton Unversity in Ottawa waiting for my session at the Canadian Anthropology Society.  I spent most of yesterday out in the rain exploring tourist areas, and man, their Chinatown is one run down looking area of town.  Actually, from my west-coast perspective, all of Ottaw-uh is pretty dumpy, but then again, us Vancouverites feel that a 30 year old building should be a heritage house so maybe our country’s capital isn’t so much old and weary, but instead is well-aged and quaint.  But I digress.
 
What stuck to me is how alike Chinatowns are throughout my ‘travels.’  In Ottawa I saw some kids buying drugs in front of a Chinese grocer.  In Vancouver it borders the lower east side, the pooerst potal code in Canada.  In New York I saw a lot of groups of young men sitting around gambling and I could only assume they were somewhat gang related.  I wasn’t about to ask them though, so maybe I’m wrong.  Regardless, Chinatown’s have been portrayed as the ’scary’ side of town and the picture that I’m painting plays perfectly into this stupid little stereotype.  While I hate the media-hyped image of a dark, scary Chinatown filled with gangs, drug dens, and shifty Asians it, to a greater or lesser, extent is rooted in a partial truth.  Now I could talk your ear off on the social implications of ghettoization and how these negative elements of Chinatown are rooted in bigger sociological issues, but I’ll refrain.  Instead, I think of what the alterntative can/might/should be.  Working in Chinatown in Vancouver for two years has shown me a direction that many Chinese communities have pushed for…Chinatown as a tourist attraction.  Certainly this is true in Vancouver and Montreal.  But the ‘Chinese’ that is put forward in the touristy Chinatown is so kitschy and simplified for consumption that it hurts me to think that I worked for a summer as a Chinatown tour guide.
 
So is the answer for Chinatown woes to pander to the gaze of the tourist?  Ai ya thats depressing.  But what’s the alternative?  One could be the fact that In both Vancouver and Montreal their Chinatowns have old-folks homes to foster a greater sense of Chinese community.  While having a lot of old Chinese people in Chinatown is nice and probably does foster a sense of communty is this enough to revitalize the communty to ‘pull up our bootstraps’ and banish the Chinatown/ghetto connection?  Maybe, I guess we could wait and see, but my sense is that its not enough.  Another approach is the development of communty and cultural centres in Chinatown, SUCCESS in Vancouver, Chinese Family Services in Montreal for example.  Again these further develop notions of a united community in Chinatown.  Certainly this is a good path, and having worked with both organizations now, they do really good work.  But the work they do is geared towards either new immigrants (who certianly need the support networks), or older generations of Chinese Canadians.  As a result their programs are kind of ‘old hat’ and the services they provide to the communty (while important) mainly service only a portion of the Chinese community.  
 
So far all I’ve done is bitch and complain about the state of Chinatown.  However, I’m a fan of answers instead of more questions so I’ll throw in my two cents.  I’m going to argue (feel free to disagree) that what Chinatown needs then is an injection new hype and interest that isn’t based on the tourist, old folks homes or the already existant Chinatown communty.  Chinese immigrants of recent diaspora generally have no connection or even interest in Chinatown.  Why would they? None of their relatives had blow up for the CPR.  Its a different history than their own and to be brutally honest, Chinatown looks pretty slummy.  Moreover, new immigrants generally are financially better off in coming to Canada and don’t necessarily feel the need to utilize the social services of the communty and cultural centres that are based in Chinatown. 
 
But why are new Chinese immigrants Rob’s “answer” to a new Chinatown? With their inclusion, perhaps we will an injection of capital, which would certainly help the area.  Maybe, there’s no certainty that more money will come, but its a possibility.  For me the most important part of integrating new Chinese immigrants into the traditional ‘home’ of the old Chinese Canadian community is a meeting of minds and experience of all peoples who fall under the broad category of “Chinese Canadian.”  I always love talking to new immigrants about their experiences moving to Canada, good, bad or anything in between.  My sense is that others might feel the same way.  Dialogue between people who experienced racism thorughout the 1950s and people who moved here from Hong Kong can only help us learn more about one another, and thats never a bad thing. 
 
Moreover, all those old people hanging out in Chinatown need someone new to talk to.

Well, practically. I’m making a lay-over in Vancouver for a couple of days before the second leg of my journey… but Vancouver’s like some kind of Canada-China hyperbaric chamber anyways, where the vessel, though  actually remaining in Canada, has its cultural contents pressurized to Chinese norms. Rob has kindly given me a week worth of activities to accomplish in the span of my two day sejour. I’m expecting it’s meant to keep my mind off the cultural bends that only happens naturally when one is submerged too quickly, into the depths of probable awesomeness.

Back to 1993, October. My family immigrated to Montreal. I was 11 years old. I knew little bit of English. Using my poor English, I was able to get by in the city like ordering my food in McDonald.

My first day of “French” primary school in Montreal? Ha.. It was a very long, but easy day. I didn’t understand a word of what the teacher was saying. I pretended to concentrate to her, but I was concentrating in my daydreaming instead. No one tried to explain to me what was going on there. The teacher only speak French, and she didn’t bother to explain anything to me. So, since there was nothing else I could do, I day dream.  I was the alien in the class. My task was to observe what these human were doing, how they behave in the class and try to communicate with them. During the recess time, the only permit language was French, so I was not able to make any conversation with other human. During the interchange of the class, I tried to ask one of these human of what was going on in the class using English. But, this poor human didn’t understand a work of me. I assumed that two things: Either she could not speak English, or my English was too poor to make her understand me. I went home. I felt that I didn’t do a thing and I was a bit lonely. It was the first time that I was totally in my own little world: No communications with others.

The second day, my teacher was upset of me because I didn’t hand in my homework. I was surprise! Was there any homework? I didn’t know. I didn’t even understand a word of her, how could I know that there was homework to do!??!?!?? I was frustrated, and started to hate school a bit.

I was on my alien mission for two weeks before I was able to capture a bit the language. I was still not able to communicate with any people. The only word I knew was “Bonjour; Merci; Au revoir; and Je ne sais pas”. The third week on my mission, I started to learn counting numbers, months, and date.  Then, I learn about seasons, color, fruit, head to toe, and some grammar: just like a preschooler. I was 11 and I was taught like a preschooler. My ego was hurt.

I was walking on Beijing’s big tourist street, the Wangfujing Dajie (王府井大街), and saw this ad for selling steak to Chinese people, it seems.

Alright, it’s exam time, so I figured I better just forego the idea of writing comprehensive pieces and just start posting in installments or I would never get anything written. 

So Poker’s really big these days. Most of my friends participate in weekly poker nights, and regal me with accounts of their most glorious moments, though I admit the excitement kind of gets lost on me in the more technical aspects of the game. I was always pretty bad at poker since I never really knew how to determine the odds of drawing a hand beyond such precise terms as “likely” and “shit out of luck”. A friend of mine has tried explaining some of the finer details of the game to me, and I’ll concede I have absorbed some of this new information, not so much as a sponge or permeable membrane would, but rather as a thick sheet of porous rock might.

 Anyways, moving right along, I recall growing up listening to Kenny Rogers’ classic song, “The Gambler”. It’s not like it was a popular song at the time, but I went to a summer camp which seemed to be caught in some kind of temporal rift between eras with terrible hairstyles. Anyways, it does not take an English litterature degree to figure out that the hobo’s description of poker is an analogy for life. It sounds like a mighty fine lesson when you just gloss over the words — “every hand’s a winner, every hand’s a loser” etc etc — but to be honest, after some recent reflection on the song, I find the lessons offered by poker rather wanting, as if it had an odor to it (as befitting a hobo). I believe that Mr. Rogers had the right idea of looking at life as a game of luck management; however I believe he chose the wrong game, and that in fact the song would have much more depth, and taught wiser lessons, had he used the game of Mah Jong in its stead.

The lines which make up the meat of the song and which consequently everyone remembers are these two stanzas: 

“You got to know when to hold em, know when to fold em,
Know when to walk away and know when to run.
You never count your money when youre sittin at the table.
Therell be time enough for countin when the dealins done.

Now every gambler knows that the secret to survivin
Is knowin what to throw away and knowing what to keep.
cause every hand’s a winner and every hand’s a loser,
And the best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep.”

I ask you this: how is poker in any way an appropriate analogy for life? What kind of lessons can be drawn from a knowledge of the dynamics of poker and these lyrics? I believe there are two apparent ones, neither of which belong in a healthy mind’s outlook on life.

 (Next installment: a look at what lessons we can garner from Poker and these famous lyrics as well as the values they embody, to be followed by a final installment on great life lessons from Mahjong.)

I didn’t know you can have a new kind of comfort food in your life in your twenties.

Having moved around a bit through my adult life, I find myself constantly looking to copy certain happy memories that I closely associate with certain places or periods of time. I pine for that experience that may have been romanticized in my head or that is only possible in that particular context.

An example is my attachment to Korean food. (One of those days I’ll start talking about things that are actually not to be eaten.) I didn’t actually know anything about Korean cuisine beyond some cold and disgusting bibimbap that I once had in a teriyaki place until I moved north to Vancouver after university. It was a bad year. I desperately missed my friends in the States. I also missed having my own apartment, my independence, and Seattle’s cosmopolitanism (yes, there were minorities other than Asians). No one replied to my resume, which I was told to be too “American.” I found it impossible to connect to the Asian kids in the malls. Canada, then, simply came to mean: life in suburbs, buses that took forever to come, lack of Sunday newspapers, my favourite brands of yogurt unavailble in supermarkets (what is a girl to do?).

Until this thing called soon dubu jigai came to rescue.

It’s basically stew with spicy soup, extra silky soft tofu, an egg (added right before serving), scallions, and various toppings that you can chose to your liking (seafood, pork, beef, etc). Usually comes in a stone mini-pot, which allows that soup to stay boiling while being served. As you can already see, it include several ingredients that are guaranteed to make yours truly happy: soup, heavy spice, possibility of seafood. I ate out alone a lot, so the single-sized portion was perfect. THe first time I tasted it in a Korean place by a London Drugs store in Richmond, I was in love.

I was also unemployed, had no one to hang out with (yet!), and bored out of my mind. I started to scout the internet for recipes. I laborously gathered the ingredients (some unavailable other than Korean grocery stores), chopped everything up, and waited for it to simmer and for the tofu to absorb flavour. I made it for my sister, who first signalled her approval by exclaiming: “it’s just like in the restaurant!” Then for my parents, although by then my inability to cook for more than two persons (which continues to be a problem today) had already showed its signs. They liked it, but I didn’t put enough tofu in for four people. A little dish from a country that I know nothing about and never take any interest in became an improbable source of happiness (for three months, anyway) I cling to in that period of my life when not much seemed to be happening no matter how I tried.

Soon afterwards I moved to Montreal and started school. I was busy, but the tofu stew has become a comfort food that I find myself keep going back to, even though it has nothing to do with my childhood or anything I related to Taiwan. A few more years later, Koreantown was where I rushed to after work in midtown Manhattan; there, I would meet up with a friend from home, and we would chat about our days over two boiling pots of soon doobu ji gae, washed down with some soju. Surprisingly (or maybe not), I can make do without the kind of Taiwanese food that I grew up with, but not tofu stew from a northern country that I’ve never visited.

All this nostalgia stemmed from my visit today to Restaurant Korean House during a rare trip to the Snowdon area (I miss you ICRM). I’ll probably have to save the restaurant review for another day as this is, again, getting insanely long, but go there. Just go!!

I was working on another post, but I got this nice little story over dinner.

 We have a friend of the family, this nice old lady who lives in the same old folks home as my grandma right next to Chinatown.

Apparently she likes to drink in the company of friends. So she invites my mom and grandma over and they split a bottle of wine.

She apparently loves wine, in particular Bordeaux.

Apparently it’s also the only kind of wine she buys.

She also can’t speak french or english, and can’t read.

When asked how she manages to buy only Bordeaux, she points to the picture and says ”I recognize the farm.”

We are lovers of Cool Asian Things. We aim to provide you with comprehensive introduction to all things Asian that are not only cool, adored universally by all Asians but sometimes under-appreciated by Whites, but demonstrate the resourcefulness and intelligence of the Asian people. You may already know some of the CATs, but not well enough. You may have never heard of certain CATs, but once you do you will wonder to yourself what have you been missing this whole time.

Noodle soups are consumed, adored, fussed over all throughout East and Southeast Asia, even - especially - in tropical countries. We find noodle soup the only thing that we crave constantly in the long and grueling Canadian winter (yes, even more so than hot pot, that big pot of boiling water that takes in any type of solid foodstuff imaginable, including plates of raw meat swimming in blood); and we would also happily sit in a sparse, un air-conditioned Asian restaurant in summer devouring a bowl with sweat plunging down our forehead. We love how it takes a small sip to magically warm up our body right away. We love savoring the broth, which, whether heavy or light, is always richly flavored when properly made. It also makes sense because it fills you up without having to overeat, which, indirectly, contributes to the slim physique of Asians (although apparently not in our case). In essence, we believe that noodle soup is good for the soul (for our soul, anyway).

But the term noodle soup, to Asians, is as general and vague as, say, “bread.” Here are several types of noodle soups that you may or may not be familiar with:

Pho:

We spent most of our formative years in a mid-sized American metropolis on the West coast. The main street by the college campus is lined with small pho places run by industrious Vietnamese people. They offers these no-nonsense rice noodle in lemongrass beef broth with different types of cow parts(flank, stomach, brisket) in the soup to go with, all for under US$4. Some restaurants make better broth than others, although the general level of quality was good enough for our greasy Chinese palate. The flavour was subtle but lingered long after the meal. It was divine.

Having never tasted anything like it in our beloved home Pacific island, we were impressed. We asked our Vietnamese classmate the proper way to pronounce the word (the “o” is less of an “o” than the “e” in French, with the intonation slightly goes up, “like you’re asking a question”). We pestered after our tiny and adorable Vietnamese colleague in our part-time library job for her recipe (she vowed with a uncharacteristic vehemence that she would bring it with her to her tomb than share it with us). We swore by the complimentary cream puffs that one of the pho places provide with the meal. We loved watching half-raw meat parts turning colour in the broth, and the ritual of dunking raw bean sprouts and basil all in like there is no tomorrow. We have been looking for a pho restaurant every time we find ourselves dining alone in a new neighbourhood in need a quick and cheap (and good) meal ever since.

Japanese Ramen:

(N.B.: not to be confused with those “ramen” that comes in a pack with artificial seasonings that are meant to be instant version of the real thing. Not even close.)

O, ramen. One of the greatest colonial legacies that the Japanese have left on our home island is the islanders’ enduring love for the colonizer’s cuisine. Ramen is a common day-to-day food in Japan (while the same can’t be said for sushi), where streets are littered with hole-in-the-wall ramen restaurants with customers loudly slurping the noodles*. The tradition continued in our hometown, as well as the few mega hubs of Asian immigrants overseas, e.g. New York, Vancouver, etc. The most basic choices for the broth are usually miso or shoyu (soy sauce in Japanese) . There are also fancier, more creative versions (spicy, for example) , although they are hard to come by outside of Asia. A cult hit was devoted to ramen, and how difficult its deceiving simplicity is for aspiring ramen makers.

Going to tiny ramen restaurants has become a ritual for us whenever we find ourselves in Vancouver or New York. We love huddling at the bar (which you almost always have to), shoulder to shoulder with other ramen lovers, and we stare in fascination as the chef in front of us pour that important amount of solid pork fat into your broth, a must-have ingredient for all good ramen soup. We start taking off our jacket or big sweater after our first bite. We aren’t usually a fan of pork, so we would, un-Japanese-ly and guiltily, ask for chicken in the ramen instead, but we love slurping our way through the bowl of greasy goodness all the same. We have truck up conversations and form friendship with the ramen diner next to us (twice, East Village, New York). We, again, can’t tell the nuance between the texture of the noodle in this restaurant and the broth in that restaurant (especially when they simply both taste good to us), but we nod along while our parents launch into a nasty-spirited discussion of it anyway.

It’s a family tradition, after all, and we hold it closely to our little Chinese heart.

*slurping noodles loudly is considered polite in Japan. It shows appreciation to the chef.

Coming up: Part II of II, jam bong, Taiwanese beef noodles