Food

I've always thought that one of the best ways to get to know a culture is to know the food, and so I'm dedicating a blog post to the awesome food I've found so far around Chengdu.

Since I'm vegetarian, I thought that I would have a tough time finding good food to eat in China and was even tempted to pack easy mac in my suitcase. But I've been pleasantly surprised to find that every restaurant that I've been to so far has had vegetarian options. The food is delicious, but often pretty spicy. Chilly oil is really popular, as well as a pepper that tastes a bit tingly rather than actually spicy. (And will numb your mouth in large doses.) In fact, finding mild food seems to be harder than finding vegetarian food, and a lot of the members of our group are finding the food hard to adjust to as a result! Sichuan is known for its (delicious) spicy food for a reason.

It really helps that we have Chinese speakers in our group, or else I would have a really tough time ordering at restaurants. The menus are entirely in Chinese and often indecipherable even for the Chinese speakers on our trip, since many of the items are prefaced with non-descriptive adjectives. (We found a store which translates to “flying tower ice cream,” and food titles tend to be similar.)

Some of the meals which I've had over the past few days include:

-Mapo tofu (spicy but good!)

-Sticky rice and red bean with a triangular leaf wrapping (“zao zi”)

-A popular dish with eggs and tomatoes

-Egg dumplings

-Eggplant and rice

-Cucumber salad

-Noodles with pickled vegetables

My eggplant (“qie zi”) rice bowl:

I had the zao zi today (the sticky rice and red bean deliciousness) because they gave them to us as a special delivery today in the middle of class. The dragon boat festival is coming up on Monday, and zao zi is eaten in celebration of the holiday.

Admittedly, I didn't really like the noodles with pickled vegetables, and the amount of chilly oil in it was a bit gross. So we've started going to slightly nicer restaurants. But it was no big deal because the entire meal cost 7 kwai, around one dollar USD. Twelve dumplings also cost me 7 kwai. Next time I get a 4 dollar drink from Starbucks in the US, I'll keep in mind that I could have bought over 60 dumplings for the same price in Chengdu! (I'm definitely going to be reverse culture shocked when I get back. Maybe I can sneak some dumplings into my luggage.)

I'm also so grateful that I finally learned how to use chopsticks a week before I left. I love chopsticks now that I can actually use them. It forces me to eat my food more slowly, rather than shoving it in my mouth like I usually do at home. The restaurants don't generally have other utensils on hand, and I would look dumb for using them anyway.

The food here reflects what I am noticing about this city. Everything is totally different but great. And, American influence is pervasive. If I ever get sick of the Chinese food here, there's good old Walmart (actually called “Trust-mart” since people don't trust Walmart, but the shopping carts still say Walmart). And everyone's favorite, good old McDonalds...

Through the Hole in the Earth

When I was little, I used to joke about digging a hole in the earth and ending up on the other side of the world. I may as well have just entered a parallel universe via a hole in the earth after 24 hours of traveling and 12 hours of wandering around this city in amazement.  Night is day and day is night.  All of a sudden, I am the foreigner on spectacle, rather than being the American walking past confused tourists blocking my path to class in Harvard Yard. Water which I usually drink cold is served to me boiling hot.

I love Chengdu. The campus is gorgeous and I doubt I will ever get over the wonder of it all. The north gate (“bei men”) is straight out of a movie.

And one need not wander long to find dozens and dozens of delicious – and extremely cheap – restaurants.    It helps that our accommodations are the standard of a hotel and that I have my American group to walk around with.  Even so, I have spent the day adjusting to my new surroundings. It is just the right amount of adventure; I am not so shocked that I want to dig a hole right back where I came from, but shocked enough that I am being pushed to expand my comfort zone.

The culture shock began even before arriving in China. On my flight to Chengdu, I arrived at the gate and could instantly find the other students on my trip because we were pretty much the only non Chinese people on the flight. I wasn't able to communicate at all with the man next to me, and so he elbowed me when he needed to get out of his seat. I also observed quite a sight, literally termed “exercise gymnastics.” In the middle of the flight, the lights suddenly switched on (I had been sleeping) and the TV started playing what seemed to be an exercise video. It consisted of a woman doing various stretches while sitting down in her seat, including moving her head from side to side and stretching out her arms. Almost everyone on the flight did the stretches along with this video in their seats, in unison. I found the whole thing a bit ridiculous, but maybe that's just because it's unfamiliar. When I asked a Chinese student about this, he was surprised that other flights DON'T have exercise gymnastics! After all, you never move around on a long flight and so it makes some sense to stretch. I guess it's a matter of perspective.

The biggest shock is not speaking the language. Everywhere that I've travelled in the past has been touched enough by American/British culture so that I can get by with English.   Especially India.   Since getting here, however, I've found myself learning Mandarin phrases for a very practical reason – I want to know how to order from a menu, how much to pay the cashier (“jiu kuai”), and how to ask for directions. A few students in our group speak Mandarin very well, but I also hope to get by without them by the end of the program.

The other big shock is being on spectacle. Basically everywhere we go, people stare at us. One woman nearly crashed her bike because she was staring at me and my friend as she drove past and couldn't stop. Apparently even in a city of 20 million people, seeing a non ethnically Chinese person is rare. And if seeing one is rare, than seeing multiple must be an anomaly.  I understand, woman on the bike: two ethnically Indian looking girls in the middle of the sidewalk are about as rare as a pair of dancing ballerinas.

New York, New York

I've decided to start a blog because I've been wanting to blog for the longest time, and also because I want to document my adventures this summer.    I've travelled a lot around the US and was born and raised in the multicultural melting pot that is New York, but I haven't had the opportunity to spend an extended period of time in another country.    That is why I am psyched to be going to both China and Japan this summer.   This week, I am leaving for Chengdu to participate in a language and cultural immersion program at Sichuan University.   And at the very end of summer, I am participating in the HLAB program in Japan where I will be soaking in more culture and teaching a mini-course to high school students.    

During the school year, there were a lot of times when I wanted to push a "pause" button and reflect on all the experiences which I've had in college so far.    I think that by experiencing another culture, I will be forced to reconsider all the strange American customs that I consider normal.    Some of the most important moments of learning that I've had at Harvard have been discussions with friends about how our backgrounds differ.    A lot of those differences have been about growing up in the suburbs versus in a big city like New York, and race, class, and gender more generally.   So one of the aspects of the program that I am most looking forward to is becoming friends with students at Sichuan University and sharing experiences across continents.   

Mostly, I'm looking forward to the adventure.   I want to be immersed in another culture because I want to be placed outside of my comfort zone entirely, and even redefine myself.   In general, I really like to know exactly what I'm doing, where I'm going, and how to get there.   Which I can't exactly control when traveling.       

I am also going to learn as much Mandarin as I can in eight short weeks.   I actually don't know any other languages besides English (and programming languages...) and so I am very excited by the prospect of being able to sort of converse with someone in Mandarin by the end of summer.    (You might be wondering how I don't speak another language and passed out of Harvard's language requirement.   My secret?  Latin.)      

Zou ba!