I consider myself a pretty adventurous eater. I like to try new things and flavors, and the occasional mystery meat, but I'm a total wimp compared to Matt. Duck brain and bills, livers from various beasts, finely sliced pig ears and chunky knuckles, chicken toes, fish eyeballs, fins, and cow stomach are just a few of the items he's tasted since moving to China.
Yesterday at lunch I had another opportunity to pass on a Fear Factor eating experience. Matt and I were invited to join the office in a round table lunch in honor of Joyce's last day at work (she's getting married soon and will join her husband's business after the wedding), a welcome to new employee Carina, who's filling Joyce's position, and a celebration for Euan's 30th birthday, which according to the lunar calendar takes place on Sept 27th this year (the mystery of the lunar calendar will have to be revealed in another post, another day. I still don't quite get it).
The lunch consisted of standard fixens' like "sour" cucumbers, eggplant, mystery livers, spicy beef, sauteed mushrooms, green beans, a thin broth soup, and white rice. We washed it all down with hot daisy tee to drink.
The meal contained a bonus, though! At the bottom of the soup serving bowl hid 9 very large bones, I think from a cow. After we'd consumed the majority of the food on the table - about the time you would order a dessert at a typical American restaurant - the serving staff scooped one large bone into a bowl for each person at the table. They then brought us each a plastic glove and small straw sealed in plastic. Mavis demonstrated how you pick up the bone (hand covered in glove) and gnaw off the tiny chunks of cartilage remaining on it. The grand finale, or "dessert" if you will, came when she inserted the straw into the open end of the bone to suck out the marrow! Based on Matt's facial expression, I passed once again.
Last weekend I bought a bike. I've been wanting a set of wheels for a while now. We looked into shipping our bikes from home over here, but it would have cost several hundred dollars and just didn't seem worth it. Matt's been saying for a while now that I should get a scooter, but I'm not convinced I really need that much power to get me where I'm going. Besides, I like being a passenger rather than a driver on his hog.
The main reason for getting a bike is so I can commute to and from work. I also like the idea of getting a little workout in without having to spend time in the gym. I don't have a gym membership because I don't see myself making time to go, yet I sure would love to lose the last of this post-baby blubbery roll lingering around my middle section.
The bike is plain white and lacking gears, but that's ok, because it's really flat here. Unlike Atlanta, there are no hills between my house and the office. I bought the cheapest one available at Decathlon, a 2-story French sporting goods store that's very similar to Sports Authority. It cost about $80, and is identical to at least a third of the bikes parked beneath our building.
When I told my coworkers about the purchase, they were surprised and worried. "It's not safe to ride a bike in Shenzhen!" Roger exclaimed. "It will get stolen if you leave it in the car garage!" Mavis lamented. "Your face is SO red." Kathy stated the first day I rode it to work.
While I won't deny any of the above, I'm not discouraged. My first day riding the approximately 4 miles to the office it took about 35 minutes to get there. I passed a woman selling grey chickens (live and flopping on the sidewalk with their feet bound), an elderly Asian man playing a flute under a tree, and a fleet of middle school aged boys in blue school uniforms. It was exhilarating!
We will never truly fit in here, even if we learn fluent Mandarin. Our eyes and skin scream foreigner and elicit impromptu chirps of "Hello! Hello!" whenever we go out in public. But riding this bike, I'm able to blend just a little into the masses, which in my book is pretty darn cool.
This past Wednesday was a holiday in China known as the Mid Autumn Festival. Red Chinese lanterns were hung around our complex as decorations for the holiday. Dangling from the trees, they lit up at night and cast a soft red glow through the palm leaves. They are were only around for a few days, but they gave us a glimpse into what it must be like to celebrate Chinese New Year here.
Last Friday evening there was a DJ set up in the middle of the complex, in an area we like to refer to as "the circle". It's centrally located among the 9 high rise buildings of the complex, and different colored bricks on the ground define a circle pattern that looks like a bulls eye from above. A balloon arch surrounded the circle and a dancing yellow tiger shook hands with kids and held babies for photo ops (he was really a young Chinese boy in a costume resembling a cartoon version of a high school tiger mascot).
We think this was in honor of the Mid Autumn Festival celebration, but we couldn't read the banners hanging from the trees or ask the Chinese people around us what was going on. It didn't matter though, as we felt welcome. Volunteers passed out candy and glow sticks to Dean and the kids dancing around us. We stood for about 20 minutes listening to Chinese music – or rather, tunes that sounded familiar, with all the words in Mandarin. We heard a rendition of “Flying Purple People Eater” as we were leaving. I sang along in English and hummed the parts I didn't know. It was one of those moments where Matt and I look at each other in amazement and laugh about how surreal it is we live in China.
Like the Dragon Boat Festival we celebrated in May, the Mid Autumn Festival has a special food associated with it: mooncakes. It’s a tradition to enjoy this food with tea while gathered together with family. On a clear night, you marvel together at the fullness of the moon in late September.
I had a tough time describing what a mooncake is to my mom on Skype earlier this week, so I looked it up on Wikipedia. Here's a pretty accurate description I pulled from the definition they give: typical mooncakes are round or rectangular pastries, measuring about 10 cm in diameter and 4-5 cm thick. A thick filling usually made from lotus seed paste is surrounded by a relatively thin (2-3 mm) crust and may contain yolks from salted duck eggs.
Wikipedia failed to mention how disgusting they taste.
To give you a feeling for what they taste like, here’s my idea of how to make a mooncake: Boil an egg for an hour so the yolk in the center is really firm. Discard white part of egg. Mash up some leftover kidney beans from dinner. Roll the yolk in salt, then cover the egg yolk with the mashed bean mixture. Make a pie crust without any sugar, and wrap it around the bean mixture. Use a carved wood block stamp to make a beautiful impression in the top of the “cake” to fool innocent people into thinking it must taste wonderful because it looks so pretty. Add preservatives, and insert into an even prettier box decorated with metallic accents, glitter, and lyrical poetry. Pass your gift to the unsuspecting victim and marvel at the speed with which they spit it into the trashcan.
I’m exaggerating, but really, who puts a salted duck egg in a pastry?! Where’s the chocolate pudding, jelly, or Bavarian creme version? Or marshmallows? Give me a moon pie over a moon cake any day of the week.
Fortunately, not all mooncakes contain the egg. I tried 5 different kinds, and only one was edible to me. It was a fruit-filled version which Dean quickly claimed.
We wanted to buy a box of mooncakes for Dean’s Ayi, so I went to the local grocery store and was amazed at how many different options there were. There are so many brands to choose from. The packages range from cardboard boxes to tins and even elegant carved wood boxes, but all look beautiful and inviting, like the giftable Christmas food aisle at Target in December. I picked a red tin with pretty embossed pink flowers on the front. Hopefully the cakes inside were good.
I wish I'd had my camera on me to take pictures of the grocery store displays. By the time I finished picking out a box, I started wondering if you could judge how bad a mooncake would taste based on how elegant and elaborate the package is. Do they make up for terrible tasting cakes with over-the-top packaging filled with glitter, glitz, and holographic bling?
The Plaid Far East office was closed three days in observance of the holiday, Wed-Fri. This sounds great, but we all worked last Sunday and today and tomorrow. So you lose a weekend and a half, but you get three days off in a row.
Fortunately, there is another holiday coming up next week that lasts from October 1 – 7. The office is closed during this time as well, but we will work weekends to make up for 2 of the weekdays.
In the end I get 4 vacation days out of the mix. Sounds wonderful and I am not complaining, but I will not have Thanksgiving or Christmas off of work.Or at least, not unless I take them as vacation days, since these are not celebrated in Shenzhen. It's kind of like we're celebrating the holidays early this year.
I’m told there will be some Christmas decorations up at the local mall or some stores in December, but if we want to see anything done up the traditional way, we’ll have to head to Hong Kong. I’m really hoping we can find Asian Santa. Dean can’t miss out on having his photo taken with Santa Claus! I've already started searching on the internet in my spare time, but no luck tracking him down yet, except as a guest celebrity at Hong Kong Disney. I'll be sure to post more details when I track Asian Santa down.
Mandarin characters and the way words sound are very different from English, so our attempts at pronouncing Chinese names are usually pretty brutal. To make it easy when dealing with foreigners, it’s customary for the Chinese to use an English name. For example, the Plaid Far East staff is made up of Simon, Euan, Kathy, Roger, Mavis and Joyce (plus soon-to-be Cathy, a new hire starting this Sunday).
Sometimes the English name sounds like their traditional given Chinese name, or sometimes it’s assigned by a teacher in school. In the case of Euan’s new baby boy Zack, the name came recommended by a coworker in our Atlanta office when she saw the spelling of his Chinese name. Occasionally the name is selected because the person believes it’s popular and attractive, or it is the name of a well-known celebrity.
Most of the time when we meet people, their name is what we would consider easy to pronounce and fairly common in the U.S. Other times you encounter someone that’s a little off the mark, like a guy who applied for the recent opening in the office. I couldn’t help but snicker when I saw “Knight Jam” at the top of his resume. Clearly he did not have a native English-speaking friend assist him in the name selection process.
A few years ago I (Emily) was given a Chinese name by my coworker Euan. He debated about it for over a week, telling me it was a big decision for him and not something he could give me instantly. In the end, he decided my name should start with Lang, since this is the beginning of my last name, and it is Chinese tradition to call people by their last name first. Lang is the surname of a famous Chinese volleyball champion who competed in the Olympics - - - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lang_Ping - - - and I think a famous ping pong player as well as a pianist (side note - Lang Ping’s English name is “Jenny”)
The second name he assigned is Ting, which has many meanings depending on the accent marks or characters used when it’s written. The two that were most influential in his decision were “to listen” and “graceful”. He also thought it just sounded good together with Lang.
So my Chinese name is Lang Ting, which can be interpreted as “well-known gracious listener”.
Matt was recently given a Chinese name by the bartenders at Cheers. I wasn’t there when it happened, so there may be details leading up to this that I am unaware of, but he is now known as “Da Lao Hu”. The English translation for this is Large (male) Tiger. By default, Dean has been assigned a related Chinese name of “Xiao Lao Hu”, or Small Tiger / Tiger Cub. At 14 months old, this is a good descriptive name for him, but when he’s older he will need a name that fits him better.
It’s good I already had a name assigned so the bartenders at Cheers could not lure me into the Tiger family as well. My coworkers tell me the name “Mu Lao Hu”, or Female Tiger, takes on the same meaning as the word “Bitch” in the English language when it is used to describe a woman.
Today was a beautiful sunny morning, but by early afternoon it was dark and thunder rolled across the sky. It's the rainy season in southern China, and we often feel as if we live inside a storm cloud. My coworker Roger loves to inform me almost daily of the latest typhoon or tropical storm brewing off the coast.
It makes sense to carry an umbrella on a daily basis since the weather is so unreliable right now. However, swarms of people carry open umbrellas when the sun shines in Shenzhen.
One of the first times I left the office for lunch, my coworker Kathy accompanied me with umbrella in hand. As soon as we stepped out into the beautiful sunshine, she popped it open and held it over my head. I looked at her like she was crazy! I didn’t want or need a shade over my head for our short walk.
She told me it would protect our skin from the sun and prevent unwanted tanning. It didn’t matter that we would only be outside for about 3 minutes while walking to a local restaurant. Fair skin is desirable here, and she is a very fashionable woman, so she avoids all exposure to the sun when possible.
My favorite fair weather umbrellas are made of a shimmery iridescent material with lace and sparkly rhinestones around the edges. They remind me of Victorian parasols. I’ve never seen anything quite like them in the States. I told Matt I would love to have one and he found a kiosk in a local mall selling them for 300 RMB, or roughly $45 a piece, but I don’t want one that bad. I’m not even sure they’re waterproof.
I'm getting used to seeing sunny-day umbrellas, but it still amuses me every once in a while, especially when I see drivers of scooters peeking out from underneath them as they zip on by.
Dean’s usual routine before bed is to take a bath, drink warm milk, brush teeth, read a bedtime story, wave goodnight to the world outside, and curl up in the crib.
Tonight we were winding down the routine by reading Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown. I could tell he was getting very sleepy, and I lowered my voice in the cool, dark room. As I read the words “Goodnight mittens”, Dean began waving his tiny hand in the air in front of the book, as if to say goodbye. He hesitated as I turned the page, and then began waving again to say goodnight to the characters and objects in the story. When it was time to say “Goodnight room”, he pulled the book to his face and kissed it good night.
After the story was over, we pulled back the curtains hiding the large windows in his room and waved goodnight together to Hong Kong Island, the boats in the ocean, the bridge crossing the water, and the lighthouse outside. When we were done and the curtains were closed, he gave me a giant wet kiss on the cheek, then reached for his bed, where he quickly snuggled up with blue blankie and a soft elephant toy.
That was it. I haven’t heard a peep from him since, but a part of me wishes he would wake up right now so we could read that story over and over again.
This morning Dean woke at 5:30 a.m. ready to play. After trying a few unsuccessful techniques to coax him back to sleep, we decided instead to head to the roof of our building to watch the sun rise over Hong Kong island. Check it out!
Thank goodness for timers on cameras so we could catch this rare family shot.
The little guy is officially 14 months old now and looking much less like a baby every day. Last night I put shoes on him (another rare occasion) and we went out for a nice dinner at an Italian restaurant called Grisinis. He stuffed his cheeks with bread sticks and cheese gnocchi, my new favorite dish to eat there.
Today marks five months since we departed Atlanta bound for Shenzhen. We’ve come a long way, baby, in so many ways. I’m excited I can now post pictures to this blog, and I’ve got to get some of it out of my system. Here are several fun photos representing a few highlights we’ve experienced in China since moving here in April of this year:
4/14/10 Arriving at the Kempinski Hotel exhausted and ready for bed, Dean was immediately snatched into the arms of the woman who checked us in. She was giddy with excitement to hold him.
A few days later visiting Hung Fa Temple, we felt like celebrities when swarmed by Asians eager to have their photo taken with a foreigner baby. I reported previously that Dean received his first kiss from Tamar, an adorable Columbian baby girl who lives in our complex, but I forgot about the complete stranger in this photo that kissed him on the lips! We're really stockpiling juicy stories to tell future girlfriends.
In May, Brian and Will visited us and helped Matt tackle full-time dad duty while I was on a business trip. They were our first visitors, and since we didn't know much yet about the area where we lived, they explored a ton of new places on foot. Here they are taking in the view from our balcony.
On the aforementioned business trip I attempted to eat a duck foot. I consider myself very adventurous when it comes to food, but this was over the top. I turned the photo to black and white so you can’t see how green I am. I managed to chew it, but it refused to go down my throat and instead ended up in my napkin.
Also in May, we hired Ms. Yiao, Dean’s Ayi, with help from my coworkers since she doesn’t speak any English, only Mandarin Chinese. We discovered new ways to communicate, like Google Translator and a constant game of charades. She's working out great.
In June, Matt bought a scooter and became a little more mobile around the city. And Mom and Dad Adgate visited for 2 weeks.
In July, we took a wonderful but quick trip to Atlanta for 2 weeks. We celebrated Dean’s 1st birthday...
and then it was on a plane again, and we settled back into life in Shenzhen.
August was all about work for Emily, but towards the end there was some relief. Diana traveled to Shenzhen for work and stayed with us for a few entertaining days afterwards. Here we are posing with a candy maker in Splendid China, a fun place Matt and I discovered on our first trip to China together in 2009.
Two days after Diana left, Kim arrived in Hong Kong for work and stayed with us for a week afterwards. This is a shot of Kim and Matt in a cable car on their way to see the world's largest outdoor statue of Buddha. Here we are in Kim’s hotel lobby, the amazing Kowloon Shangri-La.
And that pretty much brings us up to speed, since Kim headed home last Monday. I can’t wait to find out what adventures the next 5 months will bring us.
I am SO excited to be able to access our blog from a computer using a VPN, but I can't figure out how to insert photos without messing up the HTML code beyond repair. Grrrr. I hate it when technology wins.
Back to old faithful - the cell phone method - for now.
On another note, today is my Grandma Adgate's birthday (Dean's Great Grandma). Wanted to give a quick shout-out to her to have a very happy day!
9/13 update to this post: Matt, the technical guru that he is, figured out how to copy and paste photos into previous posts. Hooray!
It’s a very rainy and dreary Saturday morning here in Shenzhen. I just put Dean down for a nap after a Skype call with mom and dad and I’m catching up on doing a few odds and ends, like transferring photos from our camera to our computer and learning how to use the VPN Matt set up. It should allow me to be able to post pictures and videos to this blog.
Up to this point, all blog entries had to be typed on my cell phone keypad and posted through the internet, or I emailed them to myself and then copied and pasted into a tiny web browser window. It’s a pain, a bit tedious and takes a lot of time, but my cell phone routes through a U.S. server and therefore gives us open web access.
The great firewall of China monitors very closely what we can and cannot view, and blogs are on the DO NOT VIEW list along with Youtube videos, Facebook and many news sites.
When we first moved here it was so frustrating to receive an error message from Google saying we could not view material on the topic we searched. Even subjects like “Hong Kong” are often blocked. Somehow Matt stumbled on a way to search using Google’s Canadian version and that worked for a while, but I guess someone (or something?) caught on to us and blocked us from accessing that as well. I’ve learned a few ways to get around, like using other search engines or trying many, many different words for the topic I’m searching, but it’s still not the same as having full web freedom.
The VPN (Virtual Private Network) is like a tunnel to a U.S. server. Matt could tell you all about how and why it works, but the way I understand it is we’re redirecting our internet connection to bounce off of satellites in the U.S. instead of China via a paid subscription.
OK, so here goes – a few of my favorite pics from the first week in September:
9/3/10 Kim and Dean look out from our living room. I imagine Dean is telling her in baby talk all about the boats he watches go by every day.
9/4/10 Matt and Dean on the balcony of the room we stayed in at the Dameisha Beach Sheraton. Thanks Kim for hooking us up!
9/5/10 Dean and his buddy Anson, my coworker Mavis’s son.
Welcoming my coworker Euan’s baby Zack Ma into the Plaid family. These are all of my coworkers, plus a few significant others and Kim, who was in town visiting from Atlanta.
The Chinese don’t do baby showers before the baby is born, but it’s a tradition to gather friends to welcome him into the world after turning 1 month old. We met for lunch at a delicious Chinese restaurant and gave red envelopes with money in them as gifts. I also passed along some of Dean’s clothes that are now too small for him. The style is very different from what babies here wear, but Euan’s wife Joyce seemed very excited about them.
We have no plans for today or tomorrow other than relaxing and enjoying our time together as a family. I love lazy weekends.
Today I went to lunch with Simon, who is Chinese and head manager of the Plaid “ Far East ” office. I told him lunch was my treat, and he went to find a table where we could sit and enjoy a meal of pork, eggplant, rice, and bok choy.
When I finished paying, I looked and saw him sitting at a small round table with another Chinese man eating his lunch. Think fast food table – perfectly sized to fit 4 friends or family members. I wondered if they knew each other since they were sitting so close. When I walked up and raised my eyebrows and smiled for an introduction, Simon mentioned that the man was almost finished, and we could have his table when he was done. The guy looked like he still had a lot to go before finishing, and I’m certain Simon did not consult with him first, but I sat down as instructed.
Within 2 minutes, a new guy sat down across from me. He did not know Simon or the 1st gentleman either. Our food came and we started eating. The 1st guy got up to leave and within another minute, another stranger was in his place, close enough to me to bump elbows.
I laughed out loud and told Simon that I doubt something like this scene would happen in the U.S. , except in unusual circumstances. As an American, I’m used to enjoying a much larger amount of personal space around myself. I would probably eat my food standing up or walk away and find a bench to sit on instead of sitting down in a mall food court at a small table next to a complete stranger. In China, personal space is practically nonexistent.
I just looked at the date for the last post on our blog and realized it has almost been a month. Wow!
We were fortunate to have two dear friends visit us in August – Diana and Kim. Both came to Hong Kong for work at two different conferences set one week apart, and then stayed with us for a few days afterwards. Matt helped them explore the town, take a scooter ride to visit me in the office, eat good Chinese food (there are a few restaurants around ;), experience “Seaworld” (a local place with restaurants serving food from around the world), and shop ‘til they dropped. We even squeezed in a trip with Kim to Dameisha Beach last weekend – a nice sandy beach about an hour from our house.
It was wonderful to share the experiences and places we’ve discovered in Shenzhen with friends from Atlanta. We’ve lived here for almost 5 months now, and time just keeps ticking by. Some days seem to take forever, while others fly so fast I wonder why I am crawling into bed so soon after waking up.
August was an exciting time in Dean’s life, as he learned to walk on his own 1 week after turning 13 months old. I was fortunate to be home the day he stood up and took 5 steps in a row without holding on to anything. Matt and I cheered him on together, and he grinned from ear to ear. It was a great day to be a mom.
Now he’s getting around pretty well on his own two feet, and even carrying things when he walks. Matt made me laugh the other day when he said “you’re not supposed to be carrying things yet, it’s too soon according to the Parents magazine article.” He swears he just skimmed one page of the magazine I left in the bathroom last week.
Walking opened up a new social world for Dean outside the house. In the complex where we live there is a “circle” of bricks on the ground outside where many Ayis (Aunties) gather with both Chinese and foreigner babies in the evenings. The kids are usually under the age of 3, and they play together with various ride-on toys or balls. If it’s nice outside, I love to grab Dean as soon as I get home in the evening and go outside to socialize. There isn’t always an adult around who speaks English, as most of the women are Chinese, but we find ways to communicate through hand gestures and my limited Mandarin vocabulary. For the kids, language doesn’t matter. It’s all about exploring who has the coolest toy(s).
Monday evening I took Dean out in his red wagon that we got for his 1st birthday. It always causes quite a scene, as most of the other kids haven’t seen something like this before. One little Chinese boy, much to the dismay of his mother, held onto the side of the wagon and walked with us all the way to the park next door. It sounded like she was scolding him in Mandarin the whole time, but she didn’t make him let go until we were in the park – 10 minutes travel the opposite direction of where she wanted to go.
Once there, I let Dean get out of the wagon and toddle around on the grass. We never liked the idea of him crawling all over the place, especially since he puts his hands in his mouth so frequently, so this was a new experience for him. We were only in the park a few minutes when I heard someone call my name. I’ve met very few people since we’ve been here, and I was excited to see it was a woman named Jesse and her daughter Tamar, who is 2 months older than Dean. They are from Columbia and have lived in Shenzhen for three years due to her husband’s business.
Tamar and Dean played with 2 balls we’d brought along. At one point, she took a ball from Dean and turned away. Jesse scolded her in Spanish and she threw the ball down. I’m not sure what was said next, but that sweet little girl toddled over to Dean and kissed him right on the lips! She then turned and ran away. Dean got the biggest grin on his face and started chasing after her. His feet got tangled up and he tumbled to the ground, ending a Kodak moment that made my heart melt. Jesse and I laughed about the innocence and how much we wished we had a camera in hand.
So life is good for the Langford clan in this part of the world. We are heading into fall and hopefully cooler weather, though I don’t know yet what that means. Will we need winter jackets? Scarves? Or just a switch to jeans and long pants instead of shorts? Only time will tell.
Mavis demonstrated how you pick up the bone (hand covered in glove) and gnaw off the tiny chunks of cartilage remaining on it. The grand finale, or "dessert" if you will, came when she inserted the straw into the open end of the bone to suck out the marrow! Based on Matt's facial expression, I passed once again.
