We took a cooking class this morning which consisted of a visit to the market for ingredients followed by instruction, cooking and eating. Green papaya salad, Hanoi spring rolls, and lemongrass chicken were on the menu.
The team took on the task under the professional tutelage of Master Chef Huang.
Amy Jo demonstrates her patented stuff, fold, roll n hold spring roll technique.
We enjoyed the sweet taste of success!
Noodles have played a prominent role in our diet so far. Among other things, they can be difficult to manage with chopsticks.
Our first (and second) breakfast at Moganshan centered on noodles.
wait staff: “Would you like noodles for breakfast?”
cgl: “Yes, but what else do you have?”
wait staff: “Just noodles.”
cgl: “OK. We’ll have noodles.”
The chopstick skills were improving by the time we hit the town of Xingping where we enjoyed Guilin mifen (Guilin rice noodles) and Pepsi.
And Pho Tai Nam on the streets of Hanoi was a breeze by the end of week two. The Fanta helped disperse the overdose of hot sauce.
We are now in Hanoi, Vietnam after a 12 hour overnight train ride from Nanning, China.
Next stop, back to the countryside, this time in southern China in the Guillin province. This area is known for its amazing karst limestone outcroppings that look like huge gumdrops, and its dreamy, almost surreal landscape. Again, we found ourselves there off-season, but in a way this added to the appeal… being socked in by fog and mist with these huge lush gumdrops emerging from the rivers. We arrived in the night so did not witness the splendor until we opened our curtains in the morning. See following photo taken from our hotel. One of the kids, “This is what I thought China was going to look like.” This was a fabulous week spent biking, hiking, sitting by the fire, meeting fellow travelers, scrabble, reading, home school, ping pong and badminton ( I do count this as PE in our home school as my boys are actually able to turn ping pong and badminton into full contact sports).
Having our fill of China, we next turned our sites south on Vietnam in search of sunshine and Pho.
I spent over 12 months in China during the period 1989-92, mostly in Nanjing, but also in Beijing and traveling throughout the southwestern part of the country. When I first visited China as a student in August 1989 (a couple of months after the May and June events in Tiananmen Square), I found a country dominated by bicycles, with few foreigners and few foreign products. McDonalds would open its first China outpost that year. English was not spoken. The only motorized vehicles on the roads were tractors, trucks, public buses and the occasional government sedan. There was no highway system. There were no subways. (Beijing had a limited system from earlier years.) The cities were dark at night; devoid of street lighting. In the winter a haze of smoke from locally burned coal (for heating and cooking) hung in the air.
What a difference 20 years can make. China is on the move and has been since I left in December 1992. There have been huge infrastructure improvements to roads, trains and subways; communication improvements that come with cell phones, the internet and computerized train ticketing systems; and changes to consumption patterns that come with the creation and growth of a middle class. If you want to see where most of the world’s steel and cement are ending up, visit China.
In terms of the physical landscape, I would put the advent of the personal automobile at the top of the list of changes. The streets that were once designed for more bicycles than motorized vehicles are now dominated by cars. Bicycles have been sidelined. The “bike-only” lanes are narrower than they were and bicyclists now compete with motor scooters in those lanes. Parking bicycles on the sidewalks was a common practice, now it’s cars on the sidewalks. And the chaos of bicyclists bending traffic rules pales in comparison to the chaos and hazards that come with automobile drivers bending those same rules.
In terms of the non-physical, I find the biggest changes in the service industry. First, there is one now. The tender shoots of entrepreneurship were just breaking the surface in the early 90s, but the idea of customer service was still dormant. “Mei you” (which translates as “can’t do it” or “don’t have it”, but which really means “piss off”) was the common response to any question at a train station ticket booth, hotel front desk and even at restaurants. During our recent two weeks in China I did not hear “mei you” a single time. Hotel staff were courteous, and the train ticket sales people (although they never smiled) were very helpful. Still, I’m happy to report, China’s service sector retains a certain “Chineseness” that those of us who’ve spent some “quality” time there have come to know, and, if not to love, at least to expect.
For those who have not yet visited China, but who want to see one possible version of the future, visit China. For those who want to appreciate what the US Environmental Protection Agency and our Clean Air and Clean Water Acts have done for our environment, visit China. For those who want to witness growth that took us 100 years unfold before their eyes, visit China. For those who want to see what living under Big Brother feels like (internet censorship, license plates photographed at every opportunity), visit China. Just be careful crossing the street.
Our home school officially opened for business in Nanjing. So far we have been very heavy on the social studies, pretty light on the science (but for a lecture on centripetal force and friction as they pertain to lazy susans found on many Chinese tables). We visited the tomb of the first Ming emperor Hong Wu. We also visited a very powerful memorial exhibit on “The Rape of Nanjing” – documenting the atrocities committed by the Japanese against China and specifically the city of Nanjing in 1937. The boys have been learning about dynasties, imperialism, the Opium Wars, the Asian involvement in World War I and II. They also read “The Red Scarf Girl” which documents the life of a girl growing up in China during the Cultural Revolution. It’s so much more interesting than spelling and cursive, moderately more interesting than Algebra, which I have secretly found to be really, really fun.
Also fun was wandering around Nanjing University where Coalter studied in college. It was barely recognizable to him given the immense changes in China over these years. While he experienced bicycles everywhere and total darkness and silence after 8 pm since there was little electricity in the city, we experienced a city with skyscrapers and neon which felt like Times Square as we were driving in at night. One of the kids, “It’s like New York with Chinese letters.”
As an aside, I will point out that Coalter’s Chinese is really good, even after 20 years. He would contest this. But we thought he was only able to show off ordering Dim Sum in New York and to flirt with waitresses. Turns out he is able to converse quite comfortably and was able to get us out of a few scrapes, albeit ones he got us into in the first place 🙂
Next we headed back to the city, Nanjing, mostly as a means to get to our next non-city destination. This was my first true Chinese train experience – crowded, smoky, dirty, only one cheek able to fit on the seat. While I am by nature a pretty calm, easy going person who doesn’t mind being dirty, I am battling a mounting germ phobia, what with all the respiratory secretions flying around. I’ll leave it at that. This mere six hour train ride took some serious deep breathing and meditation. But overall, trains are really fun. Full of life… chatter, hawkers, music, food, strange smells. There are lively exchanges going on between total strangers, a far cry from the quiet, isolating, almost sterile train experience at home.
We have seen so much since leaving Shanghai. When we had our fill of large city, we headed out to Moganshan, a small mountain village retreat, originally established as a European hill station. It was quite a journey getting there (as are all travel days in China) but well worth the effort (which included a cab, a train ride, haggling in Chinese for a second cab (Coalter) to take us the rest of the way when no nobody seemed to know where it was, an irate taxi driver who had no idea he had to drive us all the way to the top of the mountain, vomiting child in the back seat). We finally arrived to find the whole village was shut down for the winter. We were almost the only people in the whole town, the only guests in our large hotel. Very eery. While we had peace, solitude, stunning views of mountains and bamboo forests, we had no heat (sleeping in down sleeping bags in the hotel, eating in front of a space heater with long underwear, hats, gloves, down jackets), one dining option, no way to get cash (which was running out and the bank closed for the winter). But we had beautiful hikes through bamboo forests, sunshine and fresh air ( a real commodity in China if you have been reading the news about the pollution – which is staggering). All in all, a funny adventure that we are sure to remember forever.
After sleeping for about 15 hours, we awoke fresh and ventured out to explore Shanghai. I have never been to China so had no expectations. I was not very hopeful after our cab ride in from the airport on about 40 miles of highway elevated over modern, industrial sprawl through thick, white haze. However, I was greatly surprised by how walkable and charming the city is, at least our section in the French Concession. Coalter, who spent a significant amount of time in China 20 years ago, is having a hard time reconciling all the changes and development which have occurred here over this time (I’ll let him expound on this). For example, Starbucks. Yes, I am ashamed to admit that we had our first meal in China at Starbucks. But we were starving and jet lagged and actually were having a hard time finding any other eateries that were open in our posh little area of town. For those of you who know my husband, this was nothing short of a crime (he initially refused 100% so I bought a coffee to walk around with and he kept stealing sips of it, completely conflicted by his high morals and his desperate need for good strong coffee). Sweetie, it’s the new China, just go with it.
The highlights of our urban hike included an outdoor market with lots of very interesting things to eat, and I don’t necessarily mean that in a good way. Also fun was watching a courtyard of elementary school children doing their morning exercises, marching in elaborate patterns as you might imagine they did during the days of the Cultural Revolution, only this time it was to Lady Gaga or Brittany Spears or someone like that. Henry was wondering if they knew that one of the lines said, “hell yeah, I’m a mother f…ing princess.” It’s truly a global village. It did give me the idea of incorporating morning calisthenics into our homeschool. Eating lots of greasy food and more sedentary than usual. Something’s gotta give.
Well we are finally here and I am finally writing my very first blog entry! What a process, extricating yourself from your life for a while. We had a hectic week of packing and preparing the house for house/dog sitters, preceded by many months of methodical planning (not to mention years of just talking about a “big trip.”). Predictably, I was awake all night the night before leaving thinking, why am I doing this??? 24/7 family time for five months. No job. No routine. No school or soccer practices. Homeschooling, my God. Also predictably, about half way through the flight, flying somewhere near the Arctic I thought, wow, no school, no routine, 24/7 with my people, I’m flying over the Arctic to China…. how amazing!! For better or for worse, the adventure has begun.
The boys, now ages 12 and 9, are doing great, they are already turning into pretty seasoned little travelers. And what’s not to love? They get unlimited screen time on airplanes in contrast to our pretty strict screen time rules at home. They watched 14 straight hours of movies on the plane ride over, no lie. It was a site to behold. But they are troopers. They take the hassles of travel in stride, they view the world with fresh eyes, they are infinitely open to new experiences, and they are able to see the humor in some of the ridiculous situations one finds themselves in while traveling to new places. For instance, we all had a big laugh on day 1 after making our way one by one to the living room of our Shanghai apartment at midnight, completely awake due to the time change, in our underwear, eating Luna bars thinking “this is weird.”
AsianSpring 