Snake Oil

My friend who works at a butcher shop, noticed that my hands can get pretty dry. When I visit her, she will often touch my hands to test their dryness. This means that sometimes she will have just grabbed some beef and cut it up, and then, without washing her hands, will start touching my hands. I am not grossed out by this, but I do make sure I disinfect my hands when I leave her shop.

She said that my hands needed some lotion, so one days she gave me a lotion bottle: snake oil lotion. She, along with some of my other local friends, think snake oil will fix all my dry skin issues. I am allergic to many types of lotions, but surprisingly, I am not allergic to snake oil. I was very grateful for her gift, but when I told Alvin he started to laugh.

He told me that people use the phrase "snake oil" to identify fake medicines or placebos. I found a Wiki article that talked about the root of the expression; it involves Chinese immigrants to the states bringing in snake oil even though it may have been just a placebo for many joint ailments.

Hopefully the snake oil my friend bought me is effective and will make my skin less dry, not make be break out in eczema, and help me with all my joint ailments, even though I don't have any right now.

Seriously, It's Snowing

The weather has been slowly warming up, even to 70 degrees F last week. Yet this afternoon, even when the weather is in the 40s, it started snowing. I can't believe it is snowing at the end of April. I don't think it has snowed here since February.

Also, last night, there was a sandstorm warning. In AZ I have seen sandstorms, but I have never seen anything like what happened at 11pm at night last night. The wind was going crazy, but what was most noticeable was this yellow haze in the air from all the dust. I could hardly make out the building across the street from our house. Cars on the streets were having a hard time driving; some of them just pulled over, and some of them were driving 5 miles an hour with their hazards on the whole time.

Here are some pictures of the snowing. It has snowed twice already today, for a time span about 10 minutes.

Buyer Beware

As I biked out of the campus gates on Wednesday after class, I approached three friends (foreigners like me) who were huddled around a bike cart vendor. From the look of the vendor and his cart, this was a man from a different region of the country, who was selling pieces from a special fruit and nut cake that is one of their cultural foods. (The picture to the left is of a cake similar to the one we saw). I rode up to my friends to see what they were up to.

Well, apparently, they were asking about how much a piece of the cake would cost and they asked the man to cut just a small small little piece for them to buy and then take home to try. This is right when I arrived... as the vendor had just cut a huge piece (about the size of tissue box). And I arrived right in time to hear him say (in a thick accent), "108 RMB."

Now, my language skills aren't super wonderful, but I am a bit farther along in the classes than my friends there. They were looking at me to make sure that they had heard correctly. 108 RMB? Seriously? 108 RMB can buy you about... 8 pounds of beef. And this piece of cake, of which they only wanted a small piece, was going to cost them 108 RMB?

The vendor was staring at them, continuing to demand the money while putting the piece of cake in a plastic bag. I told my friends, "Uhh, guys... you seriously need to walk away. Like, walk away... now." They said, "Bu yao. Zou le." (We don't want it. We're leaving.) And we all started to make our move.

This is when it got interesting.

The vendor began to pursue us, yelling at us. He grabbed my friend by his backpack shoulder strap and shoved the cake into my friend's chest, yelling, "I already cut it. You have to buy it." He just kept saying it over and over again, louder and louder. "I cut it for you. I'm selling it to you. 108 RMB. You told me to cut it. Now you have to buy it."

My friend kept looking at me, saying, "Tell him I didn't ask him to cut that big of a piece. There's no way we're going to buy this." I translated. And there began a nice loud argument between my friend and me and this vendor who would not listen to us (nor let go of my friend's backpack).

Finally, I said to him, "My friend just wanted a small piece. You cut us a small piece, and we'll buy a small piece. But not this." The vendor grumbled and we went back to the vendor's cart. Now... a small crowd of maybe 15 people has gathered around us.

The vendor cuts the cake piece into two, takes the bigger piece and begins to bag it up for my friend. My friend and I both know that this not how we want this to end. So I tell my friend again, "Look, just walk away. Go... quickly." And so he starts walking.

Seeing that my friend is walking away, the vendor grabs my bike and won't let go, and he puts the cut piece into my bike basket, and he yells at me, "If your friend doesn't buy it, then you have to buy it. I already cut it. You have to buy it."

I argue with him, "Why should I buy it? I was just passing by, and I saw my friend. He didn't understand what you were saying, so I was just translating for him. I don't want your cake." But he will not let go of my bike.

It's interesting to me how many things go through your mind when you're in a heated situation. Because the vendor was, by this time, super aggressive, I was thinking to myself, "Would this guy seriously take a swing at me? With all of these people gathered around us to see? He wouldn't... he would look really bad if he did. But what would I do if he did?"

My friend, seeing that the vendor would not let me leave, came back. By now, a few of the people around us tried to be of some help. A few of them asked me, "Why did you ask for such a big piece if you weren't going to buy it?" I answered, "You all know we didn't want a big piece. My friend wanted a small small piece, and this man cut it that size on purpose so that he could make money." As soon as I said that, they all understood immediately what was going on, that this guy in fact was trying to 宰 (zai3 = "slaughter") a few foreigners. This is not uncommon.

Finally, we pointed to the smaller of the two pieces and said, "We won't buy this bigger piece. How much is the smaller piece?" He replies, "42 RMB. You can give me 40 RMB."

At this point, a surprising thing happened. A few of the local people gathered around us said to me and my friend, "How about this... we'll all buy it together for 40 RMB. I'll buy a little, and my friend here will buy a little, and then you guys buy a little..." Besides the occasional vendor who wants to 宰 foreigners, I'm continually struck by how kind the people of this city are to its foreigners.

Realizing that we were not both going to be able to walk away without buying at least something from this guy, my friend agreed to pay him 40 RMB for a slice of fruit cake that I'm sure he didn't even want anymore. He handed over the money, and we walked away, probably both feeling a mixture of relief and anger.

I was, however, thankful for the out-of-the-ordinary language opportunity. It's funny to me how, for the next few hours following the encounter, I was fashioning and rehearsing in my mind different sentences that I wish I had tried out. Things like:

喂哥们儿,别抓住我的车。放手。 (Hey buddy, let go of my bike.)

废话! 你怎么这么对待我们啊?! (Nonsense! How can you treat us like this?)

滑稽不滑稽？你找打吗？ (Funny guy, eh? Are you looking to get a beating?)

Thanks, ChinesePod, for the last one, even though I probably won't ever have the guts to bust it out.

Last night, I found out that two other friends of ours, also foreigners, had passed by the fruit cake cart about an hour before we did. They didn't get the language and culture experience that we did. Instead, they quietly (and regretfully) paid 126 RMB for their piece of fruit cake.

Thank You for Korean People

Last semester, there was a Korean couple in our class that we got to know. They are no longer in our class, but we still get the opportunity to talk with them. Two weeks ago, they stopped Alvin at school and gave us a gift. Kimchee! They heard about our kimchee disaster, and so they wanted to get us good kimchee.

They actually ended up giving us kimchee jjigae (kimchee soup) and just regular kimchee. We also made plans to go try out a Korean restaurant that is located near our downtown.

I have a friend who, when he blesses the food, he will sometimes bless the ethnicity of where the food is from (ie. if the the food is from Mexico, he will say, "Thank you for Mexican people.) When I ate the kimchee soup and kimchee, my first response was, "Wow, thank you for Korean people. Literally!"

Kimchee Jjigae


Kimchee (put in another container)

Making Homemade Baozi (Buns)

I have been learning how to cook better local Chinese foods from my friends. I have learned how to make two cool dishes, lamb dishes, dumplings, and a couple of stir fry dishes. The other day, I learned how to make baozi (buns). I made them with my friend, and they were huge looking. Two days later, I made them at my house, and although they looked good and tasted decent, they are half the size of what my friend made.

Inside the baozi is ground beef, napa, green onions, ginger, garlic, hot peppers, and some spices.

Here is my baozi before getting steamed:


Here is one after it was steamed:

Chinese Volleyball Team

I recently joined a volleyball team. Well, it's more like a volleyball club - maybe about 10-15 people who get together every Sunday afternoon to play volleyball. But a handful of us (including me) are slowly making preparations to form a team to play in a league (at least, from my limited Chinese, that's how I understand it... I think).

We began practices last week. It's not just... get together and play some volleyball. Our first 90 minutes are spent running lines and doing blocking drills and digging drills and getting penalized with pushups or kangaroos if you make a bad pass.

I am now on the other side of 30, and almost all of the other guys playing are college students. From their physical education classes or from teams they've been on recently, they are used to practices being like this. It has been a long time since I was on a competitive league team; I have forgotten what it was like to be in drills and do cross training. It's good, but I'm worn out.

House of Cardboard

And here is my birthday house. You can see the photos of my friends in the yard. One of them is sitting at a table waiting for me to have tea with her, one of them is petting the pet goat outside, one of them is dancing, etc.

Right now, the house is still at my local friends' house. I am letting them babysit it for a while.

Nitrogenous Fertilizer Factory

That is the name... of a bus stop. I found myself standing under this sign the other day, where I was waiting to transfer from one bus to another. At first, I was happy to have my new Palm so that I could just snap a quick picture of this interesting bus stop name. But then, it got me thinking about how bus stops here are named differently than they are named in the States.

In the States (at least in my experience), bus stops are usually named according to the intersection of streets. So, for example... if you're on a DART bus riding the #452 in Plano, you might get off at Parker and Alma (there's a Starbucks there, by the way). If you were in Santa Monica, riding the Big Blue Bus Line #2, you have a stop at Wilshire and 26th (yes - there is a Starbucks here as well).

Even in Vancouver, Canada, route #5 will stop at Robson and Thurlow (special bonus... there are 2 Starbucks at this intersection, diagonal from each other).

But... here in our fair city, only a few bus stops are named after the intersection where they're situated. The better part of bus stops are named after the building or buildings that are nearest to it. And so, we get cool names like the one I encountered on Sunday.

Passengers, please be willing to give up your seat to the elderly, the disabled, pregnant women, and those holding small children. Please do not smoke or spit on the bus. Next stop, the Nitrogenous Fertilizer Factory.

Birthday Gifts

I had a fun birthday with friends and family, and I felt very grateful for the gifts that my friends gave me. Yes, some of them very very thoughtful, yet some of them were, well... different.

Here is a list:
Tiger balloon (it is still alive after a week and a day)



Monstrosity of Roses




Cheese cake



Decorated bike (with balloons, fake flowers, and a stuffed bear)
A paper house
A huge handmade stuffed dog
A stuffed animal tiger
A Chinese hand fan
Notebook



Packages from the states (Thanks so much spline and stefstuf for sending them out):
Girl Scout cookies
Salt and vinegar chips
Magazines/Books
Ribbon
Candy/Snacks
Clothes

Fun Birthday

Thank you for all the birthday wishes and for those who were able to celebrate with me.

Here is a brief breakdown of what went down on the day of my birthday.

Some friends surprised me by decorating my bike with a garland of fake flowers, four balloons, and a stuffed bear. It was hard to ride home with the balloons blowing and the flowers falling off; I got a lot of stares.



In the afternoon, some local friends surprised me by arranging some friends to bring me into an "empty" classroom. In this empty classroom I saw a paper house (about 11x5x8) with a cutout pictures of some local friends pasted in the front yard. Under the house is a tablecloth with Christmas lights around it and cut out flowers on top of the tablecloth. I didn't think anything of the arrangement at first, I thought it was just something that was part of the classroom. I remember thinking to myself, "hmmm, that is weird. Oh well, I guess Chinese classrooms are just different." At that time, a group of my local friends, who were hiding in a back room, surprised me. We ended up having cake and snacks.

Later that afternoon, I went to visit a teacher, and she found out it was my birthday. So immediately she grabbed a huge handmade stuffed dog out of her closet (see bike picture for a glimpse of the dog). The button eyes were a little crooked and honestly it looks like a piñata. She told me it was a birthday present. I tried to refuse, well not out of politeness, but more out of fear of what I am going to do with a scary huge dog, but she persisted. The teacher in the next office also gave me a wooden fan.

When I got home, Alvin already chopped and separated all the ingredients for our Thai inspired dinner. All I needed to do was cook it.


Unfortunately, we couldn't find some of the ingredients for the Thai food including lemongrass, Thai basil (or even basil), galangal, fish sauce, kaffir lime leaves. We were able to find coconut milk and Thai chillis, although Alvin kept saying that the coconut milk was too watery and tasted like pool water. We made Tom Kha Ghai, Pad Thai (which tasted like Chinese noodles stir-fried), and mango sticky rice. I thought it was pretty good tasting, but as for it being authentically Thai, it was far from it.

Tom Kha Ghai


Pad Thai


Mango Sticky Rice


All in all it was a wonderful day.