Not as bad as Starbucks in the Forbidden City, but a close second. Don’t get me wrong, I like Ronald and his beefy friends, but there’s a proper place for everything. Shame on you McDonalds China. Tsk tsk.
Captured: October 24, 2008, Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, China.
You can take the boy out of the Chinese village…
Even in multi-million dollar (correction: Yuan) condos, old habits die hard in China. The fact these fish were outside an office begs a question or two:
I’ve spent an afternoon or two watching fish dry from my balcony. It’s not as bad as watching paint dry, but close. That begs further questions but I’ll leave them be.
Dim sum and milk tea - A typical breakfast in China, on the go, on the street. One piece of culture I can’t adapt to: I’d rather have bacon and eggs, and, coffee and tea. Either. Or.
Captured: September 19, 2008.
Asians around the world are preparing to celebrate Mid-Autumn Festival aka the Moon Festival. September 14 will be the date for the 2008 festivities. The festival is popular in China, Vietnam, Korea, and other east-Asia nations.
I’ve talked about other Chinese holidays (Seven-Seven and the Dragon Boat Festival). The Mid-Autumn Festival originates from a folktale about a rabbit, an archer and his beautiful wife, immortality, and celestial bodies.
This is no simple holiday, like Christmas. There’s no man in a red suit giving you presents. It’s complicated stuff; you need Cliff’s Notes to keep the characters straight. Luckily, dear reader, you have an intrepid journalist deep in the heart of (south) China, willing to go to any length to get the skinny on this fête.
…there was an immortal named Houyi, part of the court of the Jade Emperor, the King of Heaven. Before they wed, Houyi’s lovely wife Chang’e, had been an attendant to the Queen Mother of the West (the Emperor’s wife).
Houyi the archer and Chang'e the lady on the moon.
The immortals, probably because they had little else to do (and bowling had yet to be invented) liked to squabble. Houyi somehow aroused the other immortals’ jealousy. Being petty, they slandered Houyi before the Jade Emperor. He and Chang’e were banished from heaven. The couple lived upon the earth and hunted to survive. Houyi became a famous archer.
In the days of yor, 10 suns circled the earth, a different one each day. Then: Catastrophe. All 10 suns appeared in the sky the same day. The earth was a mess. Crops were scorched, people received nasty burns (SPF ratings, like bowling, had not been invented yet) and without the invention of electricity there wasn’t a cold Coke in sight.
China’s Emperor Yao commanded Houyi to shoot down nine of the 10 suns, lest The Middle Kingdom be destroyed. Houyi, skilled bow-and-arrow dude that he was, complied and shot the fiery balls of gas from the heavens. The Emperor was pleased and gave Houyi a pill that granted eternal life, but warned the archer to fast and reflect for one year before taking it.
At home, Houyi hid the pill in the rafters and started to prepare himself as instructed. Enter Chang’e. She noticed a beam of light from the rafters and discovered the pill. Houyi returned and she swallowed the pill to mask her discovery. He wasn’t pleased, and berated her for her transgression. The pill had given her the power to fly, and that she did, into the sky. Her husband chased her until a strong wind forced him to return to earth.
Chang’e ended up on the moon. her flying powers spent. She coughed and half the pill fell from her mouth. She lived with the Jade Rabbit, that according to Chinese mythology, resides on the moon. The rabbit, an apothecary to the immortals, was put to work trying to replicate the second half of the pill so she could return to earth.
The Jade Rabbit, resident of the moon.
Aside: There are many explanations for the rabbit on the moon. Some versions say Chang’e took the rabbit with her, another says the rabbit was already in residence, having been given a place in the moon palace after sacrificing himself for three hungry sages.
Somehow, Houyi built himself a palace on the sun. Once a year, on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month - Mid-Autumn Festival - he visits his wife, thus explaining the moon’s brightness on this day. Houyi was the yang (male symbol) and Chang’e, the ying (female symbol).
Trying to decipher this tale is difficult. In one version Houyi is a tyrant that saves the world from the suns and then takes the throne. He has his court wizards prepare a elixir of immortality so he can be king forever. Chang’e doesn’t like her husband’s despotic rule and steals the elixir so he can’t lord over his subjects for eternity. Another tale is similar to the story of Pandora’s Box.
Mid-Autumn festival is the second most important Chinese Holiday (Spring Festival, or Chinese New Year being the first). It’s a time for family reunions and a celebration of the harvest.
The food of the festival is the Moon Cake: Lotus seed paste wrapped in a thin pastry. Egg yolks or salted eggs are often the center of the cakes. It is a heavy delicacy, often eaten in small portions with tea.
From Wikipedia:
Traditional mooncakes have an imprint on top consisting of the Chinese characters for “longevity” or “harmony” as well as the name of the bakery and filling in the moon cake. Imprints of a moon, a woman on the moon, flowers, vines, or a rabbit may surround the characters for additional decoration.Mooncakes are expensive and considered a delicacy, and production is labor-intensive and few people make them at home. Most mooncakes are bought at Asian markets and bakeries. The price of mooncakes range from $10 to $50 (in US money).
The holiday can be traced back to 1060 BCE, to the Chinese Xia and Shang Dynasties. It was during the Tang Dynasty (5th to 8th centuries) that it became very popular. With the recent change in national holidays, Mid-Autumn festival is now a day off. Previously it was celebrated but not granted “day off” status.
What do people for Mid-Autumn festival? Simple: Go to a restaurant or someone’s home. Eat a big meal, drink, and consume moon cakes. A less-than-reliable website has a different idea, it lists the following as the activities engaged in:
A mooncake - the food of Mid-Autumn Festival.
I should be Wiki’s man on the ground. That list is not entirely correct.
Happy Mid-Autumn Festival. I’ll be thinking of you while eating moon cakes.
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Is it possible to die of bacon poisoning? This isn’t a question often asked. I may be the only person in the history of humankind to raise this query.
I love bacon. I ran gleefully home when my local store starting carrying the plastic-wrapped, fat-streaked, heart attack-inducing meat product. I cooked the entire ½ pound package of pork goodness and ate it all in one large sandwich.
Gluttony is a sin, but why one of the seven deadlies I’ll never know. I had a Jewish coworker at summer camp that ate bacon like a hungry savage each time it was served. She knew it was her only opportunity to consume the smokey breakfast without religious stigma.
I did find this gem on an article entitled: Stop poisoning your sex life: minimize your intake of five kinds of food, and your beefsteak will continue to sizzle well into your adulthood.
1) Fatty meats: More bacon means less porkin’. Myth has it that gorging on red meat is manly, but fatty cuts of beef, bacon, sausage and full-fat luncheon meats can be wack for your wood. “Most men know that saturated fat and cholesterol narrow the arteries that nourish the heart and increase risk of heart attack,” Lieberman says. “But they also narrow the arteries that carry blood into the penis, which contributes to erectile dysfunction [ED].” These arteries, by the way, are some of the smallest and will be the first to jam up with plaque.
Perhaps I have evolved beyond the need for intimate contact with my wife. If we had children they would want to eat my bacon, leaving less greasy treats for me. How much is too much? Is it possible to OD on bacon, requiring medical intervention? Is bacon poisoning a possibility? I don’t know. A quick search of Google pointed to some pages regarding traditional food poisoning, as well as illness induced by nitrates and a nasty host of bacon’s chemical companions. I’m too lazy to dig into the matter fully. I’ll consider myself a case study. When I find myself in a Chinese ER, sweating pork fat, the truth will be known.
This is a little tale about cooking Chinese food.
Mr. and Mrs. Stevo work at the same school, live in the same apartment, but rarely see each other. Lunch is a big deal when they eat it together. A meal eaten together, not in a school cafeteria or restaurant setting, is a rare thing.
Back in those heady newlywed days of 2006, Mr. Stevo often cooked lunch for his lovely bride. This was before Mr. Stevo realized that being a department head required certain sacrifices, cooking a delicious daily lunch for his beloved being one of them.
A few weeks back Mr. Stevo decided to cook a delightful Sunday midday meal for his beautiful, yet snarky and occasionally demanding, wife. (No that’s not insulting, simply the truth. There’s nothing wrong with snark. Some of you reading this will whole-heartedly agree.)
At the market Mr. Stevo bought two kinds of mushrooms (he still doesn’t know what kind, exactly), pork, a fish, and Chinese cabbage. While his wife slaved away, tutoring students on a Sunday morning, he sliced ginger and garlic chives, chopped pork, tore cabbage, and washed the delicate fungi. Prep work is the most important part of cooking Chinese food.
Back when he cooked regularly, Mr. Stevo attacked his lack of knowledge of Chinese cuisine as he attacks most things, with a near-religious zeal (yet, he has no zeal for religion. Strange, no?). Read the full story
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