Nouvelle Cuisine

I think I've mentioned that we're terrible holiday makers here at the Fire Direction Center, and we're pretty bad at being adorable-ex-Chinese-orphan-adoptive parents, too.See, the thing is, we're supposed to be all turning-Chinese when the traditional Chinese holidays come around; giving red-envelope money and blasting fireworks for the lunar New Year and doing moon-viewing and moon-cake eating for the "Mid-Autumn Festival", a.k.a. Moon Festival. It's a total Portland China-adoptive-parent thing and one reason our pictures are on the cover of the Portland FCC's "Busted" magazine as the Worst AP's Evah.

But here's the problem.

We all HATE fucking moon cakes.

Seriously; the greediest of us (Missy) thinks they taste like raw noodle dough. The Peep wouldn't at them if they were the only food in the house and he was starving, and neither Mojo or I really enjoy them, finding the flavor a combination of bland and slightly cloying and the texture pasty and unpleasant.

So.

We've decided that our nouvelle Moon Festival cuisine would substitute Moon PIES for mooncakes.Since we concluded that if the ancient Chinese had had access to Moon Pies, they would have been on them like Republicans on a Second Amendment bumper-sticker.

Lotus seed paste and salted duck eggs versus graham crackers, marshmallows, and chocolate?

Are you kidding? Mmmmm...moon pies!(h/t to Ambassador Doodle for the funny post and the mooncake/moon pie graphic)

...tips with silver...

I don't know whether I've mentioned this, but we as a family don't do much along the "holiday" line.We do tend to follow the social dicta at Christmas, more to prevent the urchin riot that we'd have to suppress if we forewent the traditional evergreen/presents/Santa menage than because of any real religious belief or even, in my case, at least, a particular fondness for "the season".

The Fourth is just an excuse to blow shit up.

I try and remember to hang my Army flag outside on June 14th, and we are good trick-or-treaters come All Hallows Eve.

But other than that, not so much.

So when I say that we really didn't plan for much celebration of the "Autumn Moon Festival" you should probably not be surprised.This is also well in keeping with our tradition of being shitty adoptive parents. According to the most respected Chinese Adoption Authorities - that is to say, 95% of the adoptive parents in the Portland area - at this time of year we should be all moon cakey, Houyi, and Chang'e-ey. We should be carrying brightly lit lanterns, lighting lanterns on towers, floating sky lanterns, burning incense in reverence to deities, planting Mid-Autumn trees, collecting dandelion leaves and distributing them evenly among family members, and jiggin' to some dragon dance tunes.

Not. And especially not going home to have a big meal with the fam so the grands can pester the grandkids and complain about their kids, the uncles can get drunk and watch football, and the older kids sit out back in the cold smoking and bitching about having to do this every year, as our guide said was the real Chinese way to celebrate the mid-autumn festivities?This from a family that can't be bothered to cook a big meal for Thanksgiving or go to church at Christmas?

Yeah.

Right.

Ha.

But the funny thing is, we DID do some Moon Festivally-things this weekend.

Friday night we took blankets, pillows (and Pillow Pets) and a telescope out to the vast asphalt expanse of Astor Elementary playground and looked at the moon. Except that palled after a while, so the kiddos ran around while Mojo and I looked at Jupiter and its four Galilean moons, which was cooler.And today we went downtown to the Lan Su Chinese Garden, took in some lion dancing and scoped out the foliage. Then went and at spaghetti for lunch which, as I explained to little Miss as she scarfed it down (girl is in the middle of a growth spurt, I swear, or has picked up a tapeworm...), was actually a Chinese invention.

Then we went to Starbucks. So, OK, we weren't THAT autumn festivally.

But, hell, I think we deserve an "A" for effort.

One piece of beautiful land

I made my home amidst this human bustle,
Yet I hear no clamour from the carts and horses.
My friend, you ask me how this can be so?
A distant heart will tend towards like places.
From the eastern hedge, I pluck chrysanthemum flowers,
And idly look towards the southern hills.
The mountain air is beautiful day and night,
The birds fly back to roost with one another.
I know that this must have some deeper meaning,
I try to explain, but cannot find the words.
(Tao Qian)
The wind returns; my little courtyard is green and overgrown,
The willows seem to have grown again this spring.
I lean for a long time on the railings; alone, without a word,
The sound of bamboo and the new moon are just like in days gone by.
The playing and singing have not yet ceased; the wine cups remain,
The ice on top of the pool begins to melt.
Bright candles and a faint fragrance are deep in the painted hall,
It's hard to think I must allow my temples all to turn white.
(Li Yu)
The east wind blows over the water, the sun sits by the hill,
Though spring has come, the idleness persists.
Fallen blossom is scattered amid wine and tinkling pendants by the rail,
She listens to playing and singing in a drunken daze.
The pendants are now silent, her evening wear undone,
For what man's sake is she to dress her hair?
Her fair appearance too will pass as time slips by,
At dusk, she leans alone upon the railing.
(Li Yu)
Who can explain why we love it- West Lake is good.
The beautiful scene is without time,
Flying canopies chase each other,
Greedy to be among the flowers, drunk, with a jade cup.

Who can know I'm idle here, leaning on the rail.
Fragrant grass in slanting rays,
Fine mist on distant water,
One white egret flying from the Immortal Isle.
(Ouyang Xiu)
Across the world this June, the petals all have fallen,
But the mountain temple's peach blossom has just begun to bloom.
I regretted so much that spring had gone without a trace,
I didn't know that it had only moved up here.
(Bai Juyi)(An appreciation of the late winter beauty of the Lan Su Chinese Garden and a lovely day spent there with my little daughter.

Hey! This isn't a quesadilla...!

I can only imagine the scene at Shanghai's swinging-est Mexican cantina. But apparently I wasn't imgining quite far enough:

Maybe I'm being unreasonable, here, but...shouldn't you know whether you're a prostitute or not?

And if YOU don't...how does the bouncer know?

Ths must be one of those cross-cultural things they don't explain at the Families with Children from China get-togethers. Lion dances? Yes. Kung fu? Yep. Moon Festival? Gotcha covered.

Figuring out whether or not you're a prostitute?

Not so much.

Well...damn.

Flying Money

While trying to come up with a think piece that doesn't come down to, in essence, a recapitulation of the "Sweet Baby Jesus, what a rotten, slimy, repugnant, Constitution-shredding, spastic, grab-ass-tic piece of monkey shit Dick Cheney and his fellow Republicans are" theme, I ran across this fun little comment about teeny tiny denomination paper money in the China P.R. in James Fallow's blog.
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In case you haven't followed his adventures in China it's worth a look in from time to time. He clearly has an "outside-in" look at the country and the culture and doesn't speak the language. Of course, that's not a problem here, where our cultured and clever Kelli brings her literate brand of travel writing to delight us with accounts of her travels and her take on the wait for adorable little Chinese orphans to adopt...

The Chinese have a great tradition of paper banknotes - the top illustration is "flying money" and a mint plate from the 13th Century A.D. But I have to say that the current PRC cash set-up carries this tradition perhaps further than it needs to go.
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In our toing-and-froing across Shamian Dao I managed to pick up a pocketful of these damn things. They're the half (5 Jiao), one-fifth (2 Jiao) and one-tenth yuan (or "renminbi", to give the currency its official name. In essence, they're a paper fifty-cent piece, a sorta-quarter and a dime.
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I note with interest that at one point back in the Fifties the PRC actially issued notes for the sub-silver coin level of currency, the "fen". The fen is the hundredth part of a yuan - in essence, a penny. I can't imagine what the fuck you'd do with a paper penny, but the word "tinder" comes to mind.
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One thing I found interesting in Fallow's observation was his comment that the entrepreneurs of cool and swingin' Shanghai consider these paper "coins" uncool and strictly for the rubes, but that he is running into them more often in Beijing.
We certainly encountered them in Guangzhou, all except for the 20-fen note, which is supposedly rare perhaps for the same reason that you seldom encounter a $2 bill in this country (which is, that most business can be conducted in tenths or halves - fifths is just, frankly, clunky).

I am not at all good with money. I will freely tell you this; my lovely bride will shout it to the housetops - I am just plain rotten with money. I'm one of those "How can I be broke I still have checks left?" sorts of people. Our household works in the early samurai tradition: the husband simply hands his money to the wife, who then hands him a stipend. But in my wildest, most profligate moment, I have never thrown away folding money. Never.
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Until now. We returned from China with wads of this fishwrap and I just stuffed them into a pocket until they became too irritating and then gave them to the Peeper to play with. When last seen they were being used as little construction site warning flags. I was reminded of the stories of the tiny paper saddleblankets that Sioux and Cheyenne children made from greenbacks taken from Custer's men.

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Sometimes cultural differences make it impossible for an idea - at the Little Bighorn the idea was "paper money" - to cross the societal divide.

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And sometimes - as in Guangzhou whilst adopting adorable little Chinese orphans - the damn stuff just is too much work to spend.

Okay. See, Mei-mei, this here is Prince Pickles and...

"Prince Pickles is our image character because he's very endearing, which is what Japan's military stands for," said Defense Ministry official Shotaro Yanagi.

Remember way back when I said that we wanted to make sure that our adopted daughter is as fully conversant with her native Chinese culture as possible?

(Okay...umm...that was actually...umm...yesterday)

This is the kind of thing I was talking about when I commented on the difficulty, as a Westerner and a non-language-speaker, of "getting" stuff about Asian culture. Just when you kick back in your ignorant Caucasian way and say to yourself: there now, that's not so different, is it...all of a sudden there's..."endearing, which is what Japan's military stands for???"

Huh?

What fresh hell is this? What military since Cain whacked Abel stood for "endearing"??? So is there a cutesy little Chinese People's Liberation Army character out there somewhere that Mei-mei should know about? Comrade Pickles? Hero of the Red Banner Pickles? Is this a pan-Asian thing? Does the PLA stand for "endearing", too? Or is this just a Japanese thing?

WTF!

Call me stodgy. Call me reactionary. But I liked it when armies were mean and nasty. Sure, they might kill you and burn your village down, but at least you knew where you stood with them.

Stuff like Prince Pickles just makes my brain itch.

There. That's better. Whew. Never mind, Mei-mei, China has nothing like Prin...

Well, damn!

Chinese New Year: Post-Pig-Party thoughts

Just got back from Portland's FCC Chinese New Year big do. This year we moved from the old digs at Legin over on 82nd and Divison to the Convention Center (aka the "Twin Peaks") downtown. All the usual suspects: adorable tykes singing and dancing, the shaolin artistes (martial, not fine), puppet shows, raffles and the lion dancers (tho the Peep was busted halfway thru the raffle and we had to miss them...). The food was Panda Express rather than Legin - and they ran out of potstickers before Mojo could have any!!! But the kids were cuterageous, Mojo chatted with the Single Moms at our Table (including Kelli of Waiting for Sprout), the Peep ran wild through Twin Peaks, played with his trucks, daddy helped him do a Jackie-Chan-style-flying-kick on the kung fu dummy and generally was a little whirlwind of energy. A good time was had.So there I was watching and listening to the aforesaid adorables (see above - this is from 2006 when we still foregathered at Legin, tho) doing something that I assume was traditional and Chinese...and I got to thinking...what the heck would we be doing if we WERE Chinese? I mean, when we get together to celebrate something American, do our kids sing "O Susanna" or "The Old Folks At Home"? Do they square dance? Do they perform "Our American Cousin" or a vaudeville show?

I know that the average Chinese is probably more "conservative" and traditional that the average American (who isn't...) but I have to think that it's hella likely that a 21st Century Chinese resident of Beijing or Guangzhou is going to be belting out the karaoke rendition of whatever the top of the pops is in Beijing and doing the Hunanese version of hip-hop rather than crooning tunes popular with great-great-grandpa's generation. Yes? No?

What ran through my head was that the FCC CNY was more along the lines of a school pagaent, with all the traditional songs and dances and "see what my little (kid's name here) has learned about her/his heritage" stuff, while the real CNY is probably more like our Thanksgiving, with Grandma making heaps of potstickers (mmmmmm...potstickers...) for the clan, Uncle Fang and Uncle Zhi getting potzed and arguing about soccer and the twentysomethings smoking in the cold out back and complaining about having to do this every year...

It made me a bit...uncomfortable...to think that what we might be doing is the equivalent of a Chinese family raising an American adoptive kid who would travel to the ancestral homeland in a gingham dress and ask the local kids at the mall "Where's the barn raising?"

Among the celebrants was fellow ALT-er Kelli (who is even more gracious, witty and totally together in person than she is in print, BTW). I asked her as a Mandarin speaker and generally more-in-tune-with-21st-Century-China source; so, what would a bunch of Shanghai twenty- or thirtysomethings be doing for CNY? What is "fun" for a modern Chinese kid? I suddenly realized that I know absolutely NOTHING about that. What do Chinese find funny? Is there a Mandarin equivalent of "There was a young man from Nantucket"? Is there a Cantonese version of "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall"?

Modern China is a vital, complex, difficult, rapidly-changing and exciting place, like any industrial or post-industrial society. Tradition is great. I love tradition. You're reading something written by a guy who owns both a kilt and a pair of hakama and a samurai sword - I'm not just traditional, I'm multiculturally traditional! I love me some tradition. BUT...our daugher isn't going to be raised with the China of 1820, but the China of 2010 and 2020.

I suddenly realized; this is way tougher than I ever thought, going into this adoption thing. It's not just that we want our daughter to be "in touch" with her Chinese heritage, but there's a whole modern China we know nothing about that she might want or NEED to know about and function in as a bi-cultural citizen of an increasingly cosmopolitan Portland/Pacific Rim community.

I'd like to give our daughter the ability to connect with the China of today (and tomorrow), not just the China of traditional medicine, the lion dances and the Yellow Emperor. I'm feeling suddenly overwhelmed. My concern is that it's hard enough for me to stay current in my native American culture - how can I help Mei-mei or Lily (or whatever we're calling her this week) become - if she wants - truly functional in the modern Chinese part of her Chinese-American world?

And what IS the Mandarin version of "There was a young man from Nantucket..."

So CNY was fun...but it raised a lot of questions for me. Hopefully the satori will be a little more concious of the occasion next time and not pop into my head during a social function. Riiiight...
Oh, and FCC? Next time, let's make sure we lay on some more potstickers...