This is a video I took the last time I was in Baokang, Alison’s hometown. It shows her eldest sister making one of my favorites, fried poatoes.
While we were there, the whole family ate together pretty often, and da jie (literally big sister) did most of the cooking. You will see here how she expertly takes care of this dish, very straightforwardly.
Alison decided to come out from behind the door and say hi!
This is the first of the video podcasts from Guangzhou. I am going to try to take more movies of my surroundings, to give people an idea of life in GZ in 2005. Just sit back, relax, and allow these shows to be downloaded to your computer, and watch them when they come in.
To subscribe, you have to have a podcast reader, like iTunes 6.0 (itunes.com) . It is very simple. In iTunes, just go to the “Advanced” menu, and select “Subscribe to Podcast”. In the box that appears, just paste this link:
http://blog.desandies.com/feed/rss2/
Then just sit back and wait as iTunes automatically downloads the shows. You may have to go into your preferences to tell iTunes to download all the episodes instead of just the latest one. I must stress that you will have to be patient. Just leave your computer on and let iTunes do its thing. Once the first one downloads, watch it, then come back tomorrow for the next one. After that, shows will just show up in your iTunes as fast as you can grab them from my feed.
I am going to start off with 4 videos, and hopefully add more at a fairly constant pace until I run out of things to record, or Alison stops letting me play with her camera.
For each episode, you can always get the link here. If the iTunes thing is too hard, just come here and click the link at the end of the article.
A few weeks ago, August 26 to be exact, marked the end of my 4th year in China. I arrived in 2001, fresh-faced and carefree - ready to see the world, then go back home. I can’t believe I’m still here.
Let’s see, what have I learned over these past 4 years. I’m still not fluent in Chinese. I can only read maybe 1000 characters. I have been in Guangzhou for almost 3 years, and I still can barely speak Cantonese. I do think in meters and centigrade, instead of feet and farenheight now, so I guess that is one aspect that I have become accustomed to while living here.
Before I left, I ate a lot of Chinese food, at least 3 times a week, often 5-6 times a week. I wondered if coming to China would give me an overdose if Chinese food, but in fact, I am still loving the food. I have some chao niu he almost 3 times a week, honestly the same thing I ate when I was living in California. I have to admit that whenever I go to Hong Kong though, I make sure to eat something else, often Indian, or Western foods.
In terms of understanding Chinese culture and lifestyle, I feel I have made some progress. I had no idea what life was like in China before I came here, and now I feel that I have a really good idea of how a lot of people live, from the big cities to small rural towns. Living in Guangzhou is a lot like living in any big city in America, with 7-11s, traffic, and always having something to do or someplace to go. The small towns I have visited in the mountains of Hubei and Yunnan are quite different though, with their slower pace of life and clean air.
I have a pretty good understanding of Chinese history; I can hang in there on a discussion about ancient emporers or Chairman Mao. I love the famous classics of literature, from the adventures of Liu Bei and his two sworn brothers to the drama of Bao Yu in the Red Mansion. But I still haven’t figured out all the nuances of interpersonal relationships. Buisness moves at a different pace here, and casual male-female relationships follow a different set of rules. The differences are often very subtle, and at other times, quite overt.
I have learned to cook in a Chinese way, sort of. I find it extermely difficult to reproduce the things I can get at any restaurant apart from the most basic dishes, like stir fried cabbage. But I do have a basic idea of the techniques used and the favors expected. My problem is that I am trained (I use that term loosely) to do things in a different way, and to focus on bringing out a different taste, so my dishes almost always come out a little differently even when I try my hardest to reproduce authentic Chinese cuisine. I love to cook and I used to cook a lot in my former life. But Western cooking relies a lot on carmelizing vegetables, which in China is considered burning.
It has been a wonderful 4 years, and I am very glad Chris and Su (the original people who invited me to come teach for my first year.) asked me to come over and teach in China. I couldn’t be happier with my decision to come here; my life has grown and I have developed in ways I never thought possible. I just hope I can keep learning and growing.
Night Has A Thousand Eyes - Sonny Stitt