beds and bugs

Another night in Kuala Lumpur, another night of insect extermination before bed.

Budget travel can really bug me sometimes. Harhar. Was woken up at 3 am yesterday by creepy crawlers and was given a new room along with an industrial sized can of insect repellent. I did not know that bed bugs were real until this point. Didn't parents just make them up to scare toddlers? There were two kinds on my bed, one about 2mm in length that looked like a beetle, and the other so small I couldn't make out its shape. I have become paranoid, to the point that I believe I am being bitten even when my bed is parasite free, and jolt violently at the sensation of my legs being scathed by giant beetle fangs of my imagination.

We've spent the last two days in an air-conditioned mall, seeking refuge in the clean toilets of the Petronas towers as consequence to overzealous eating and drinking. I got too excited about the prospect of drinking delicious sweet milk tea served in a plastic baggie and forgot that ice cubes on the street are usually made with less than filtered tap water. It got so bad that our day trip yesterday to Melaka- the food capital of Malaysia- had to be forgone at the thought of a 2 hour bus ride towards a street food haven. Very disappointing, as the most 'authentic' culinary experience I've had since coming here was a curry laksa from Papa Rich, the Malay version of Manchu Wok. It was delicious though.

I won't bore you any longer with the invigorating details of my last few days indoors, over toilets, and in hysterics on the hostel bed.

I realize I never said goodbye to Beijing, I was in such a rush with my last exam, hosting Megan on her visit, packing and flying to KL, that I didn't have a chance to post any of my amazing photos and experiences from the last week. And oh, there were some great memories. I'll try to do so intermittently throughout the next month, while attempting to post somewhat in real time about my time in SE Asia. Enjoy the pics.

Mutianyu

The Great Wall

Mutianyu Village is located in a ravine at the base of the Yanshan Mountains, approximately 70 kilometers to the northeast of Beijing. Two facts of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) history made this location particularly auspicious. The first was Ming enthusiasm for wall building, motivated in large part by a persistent fear that the Mongolians, whom the Ming had defeated in order to become the next ruling dynasty of China, remained a formidable threat to their grip on power. The physical space buffering the divide between the Han Chinese and Mongolian civilizations thus became prime building ground for defensive walls to keep the Mongols out.

The second fact was that in 1402, the Yongle Emperor usurped the Ming throne and subsequently returned the capital city from Nanjin in the south back to Beijing, This development elevated the strategic importance of Great Wall sites closest to the capital as a last line of defense against a Mongol invasion.

The Village

Leaving the Great Wall site, the view of the village is framed on both sides by mountains and hillsides that are sprinkled on both sides by mountains and hillsides that are sprinkled with ancient pines and sliced into bits of terrace just wide enough to accommodate a pair of apricot or chestnut trees. The main road that serves as the primary vein of village life snakes its way down into the ravine, as if someone started drawing an 's' and forgot to stop.

To the east of the main road, smaller dirt roads spread like fingers with houses at the end of their tips. To the west, the much flatter terrain permits a horizontal clustering of homes arranged in maze-like fashion. Some of the homes are coated with a thin layer of whitewash with bits of bare brick showing through in spots, and their facades are adorned with small garden patches fronted by doorways lined with long red strips of glossy paper whose bulbous gold-coloured "Good Fortune" characters become distorted as the corners start to peel away.


Mutianyu: Off the Great Wall- E. Williams








The School House







Sancha



to be continued...

The Big Dong

Last Thursday when my T. Dot fellow foodie Tudor came to town for a visit, I arranged for a meal at Beijing's revered modern duck institution, Da Dong. Of course, I asked Adlyn to accompany us on this holy grail of Peking duck journeys, enlightening us to the ways of imperial duck dining and of course, showing us the keys to the VIP by way of a visit to the famous back kitchen...

Da Dong has an impressive facade, a grand hall used as a waiting area with a bar and stools looking into the glass-encased kitchen. As most patrons have to wait for a table- yes, even us- the bar is a great idea because they can work on getting their guests slightly tipsy which makes ordering from the elaborate menus that much more interesting later... Another great idea is the free flow of house wine and juice to speed up the process of inebriation. Alriiiight.

The General Manager came out to greet us after a short wait and brought us to meet the Master Chef and the army of sous chefs standing in military rows in the kitchen. There were three large ovens in which ducks are hung exactly 1 meter away from the flame to ensure optimal succulence and crispiness. In the middle of the wall hung a large blackboard displaying in handwritten chalk the number of ducks on order that night. The kitchen was about 300 hundred degrees and my face melted in the heat of the flames.

We talked to the Chef and found out all his secrets, which I will now package up into a little ball of espionage and bring back to Toronto, where duck lovers are seriously missing out.

Here are some sous chefs at work, the Master chef giving us a lesson in Da Donging, and a happy family portrait.






The food was a feat of artistic gastronomy that I'm sure is the first to hit the Peking duck scene. The traditional components of duck are all there; the sesame rolls, the paper-thin pancakes, scallions, cucumbers, sweet sauce and minced garlic, but everything was just that much more haute because of the delicate presentation and showy setting. Duck is the focus, but the offerings do not end there, with page after shiny page of accompanying dishes from braised sea cucumber to mango-wrapped scallops. Some dishes are decidedly sexier with the markings of a well-traveled chef who understands the appeal of molecular gastronomy on the senses and palate. We ordered dishes like mushroom with beer foam, hoisin-glazed cod in a pumpkin, minced duck meat served in a "bird nest", and lotus root, although my less than inspiring descriptions do the menu no justice. Seriously, the mushroom with beer foam had a much more appealing name, which I forget... My favorite was the cod. What miso? Hoisin is the new it-glaze! I could sit there and eat 5 of those everyday for the rest of my life.

The highlight of my dinner though, was naturally the duck. That was when I realized the reason for the army of sous chefs in the kitchen. They are on call to roll each duck by trolley out to the hundreds of tables and perform the art of slicing the finest meat off the bones. Apparently, the marking of a top-tiered duck chef is the ability to cut the duck into 100 slices. No easy feat believe me, despite cheers and encouragement from our table, I think our chef was only able to slice it into 60. Booooo. A+ for effort though!

A tasty trick from the imperial kitchen, which Da Dong practices but I have not seen in other duck kitchens, is to dip a crispy-thin layer of melt-in-your-mouth duck skin into sugar and placing it on your tongue. Holy mother of duck it was divine. I didn't even need to have the meat after that it was so good. I won't entertain you with the other details of the meal, you are either familiar with the components of a Peking duck dinner or you should read Fuchsia Dunlop's comprehensive foray into Da Dong for a better understanding. Without further ado, here are le fotos.














A sweet ending.

i spoke too soon

1. I love how a rainy day just puts everything on hold. Hutong tour, what tour? No more filming either. I guess my new Nikon lens can wait too. The mega camera mall will still be there tomorrow. Rainy days should just as well be called 'Shirk from your responsibility' days.

2. So I'm shirking from my responsibility to study, and will blog instead.

3. My diet in the last two days, in that particular order: pizza, fries, heavenly mozza sticks, mcnuggets, ice cream, pizza, powder soup, pizza, instant coffee, cookies, salted almonds, instant coffee, vitamin pills, calcium pills.

4. My obesity has reached a next level. Stop judging me with your eyes!!

5. Heavy D, you're gonna kill me. Or at least make me eat a tub of Greens+ in Thailand.

6. Does anyone else think the lyrics to Beyonce's Diva are a bit ridiculous?

7. The Momofuku sommelier, Christina Turley, is beyond sick. In fact the entire staff in the Momofukuverse is next levz, from David Chang himself (who has yet to find out he's my future husband) to Peter Serpico, the genius chef at Ko. But 24 year old Turley is a true diva, you know, the female version of a Hust-laaa. I'm immensely jealous of her job, but it was kind of written in the cards for her as well, having grown up playing in the grape vines of Frog's Leap Vineyard in Napa- incidentally owned by her dad. Full Stop. It's really true what Gladwell discusses in Outliers. 50% of one's success is based on circumstance, birth right, serendipity, whatever you call it. The 10,000 hours of practice, well you can't exactly practice sniffing new world wines growing up in the suburbs of Toronto can you? So I'm jealous. But just have to find my own way to be featured on the NYT Moment Blog.

I've come out of hiding

I have not left my apartment since 4 am Sunday.

I've been feeling under the weather last couple of days, which explains my going into hibernation and drowning myself in Joni Mitchell, emancipator and Justin Nozuka?? FTW? Now that I'm finally exposing my lifeless face to daylight, the gods decide to welcome me with thunder and rain. Oh and I have to do a 3 hour walking tour, and get filmed doing a night market tour for the Hias website tonight. If you go online and coil back in horror at a ragged face with bloodshot eyes jabbing a deep-fried scorpion in your face, trust me I've had better days.

The farthest I've gone since Sunday was to the front door this morning to pay the delivery guy for my opera ticket. Yea! I'm seeing Rigoletto on Saturday with my lovely Megzican, who is actually on a transatlantic flight right now over from Toronto! She comes bearing gifts of 1 unit of Diva Cup (if u don't know, now u know), 1 package Twix ( I need my fix!), and 1 jar Dulce de Leche (which I need to finish before I leave Beijing next Thursday).

O yea, I leave Beijing next Thursday??? This is way too effing weird. I still don't feel like I got my fix of this city. Now I still have a final exam looming in the near distance and I hate that it's distracting me from enjoying my last days in the city.

This is what I feel like today. A bit of sugar and some spice.

mad men

"Then I dressed and off we flew to New York to meet some girls. As we rode in the bus in the weird phosphorescent void of the Lincoln Tunnel we leaned on each other with fingers waving and yelled and talked excitedly, and I was beginning to get the bug like Dean. He was simply a youth tremendously excited with life, and though he was a con-man, he was only conning because he wanted so much to live and to get involved with people who would otherwise pay no attention to him. He was conning me and I knew it (for room and board and 'how-to-write', etc), and he knew I knew (this has been the basis of our relationship), but I didn't care and we got along fine- no pestering, no catering, we tiptoed around each other like heartbreaking new friends...And his criminality was not something that sulked and sneered; it was a wild yea-saying overburst of American joy; it was Western, the west wind, an ode from the Plains, something new, long prophesied, long a-coming (he only stole cars for joy rides). Besides, all my New York friends were in the negative, nightmare position of putting down society and giving their tired bookish or political or psychoanalytical reasons, but Dean just raced in society, eager for bread and love; he didn't care one way or the other, 'so long's I can get that lil ole gal with that lil sumpin down there tween her legs, boy', and 'so long's we can eat, son, y'ear me? I'm hungry, I'm starving, let's eat right now!' - and off we'd rush to eat, whereof, as saith Ecclesiastes, 'It is your portion under the sun.' A western kinsman of the sun, Dean...Somewhere along the line I knew there'd be girls, visions, everything; somewhere along the line the pearl would be handed to me. " - Jack Kerouac, On the Road

How many people have tasted this 'ragged and ecstatic joy of pure being'? We glorify this paean to bohemian hedonism or the beat generation, and yet few would stray from mainstream values to embrace something else. A spontaneity without conventions. I close my eyes and swing to the rhythm of Sal Paradise's underground America; the fast jazz, the heightened sensation amongst inebriated revelry, and cannot tell if my burning desire is for a life on the road or merely observing others at it. There's safety in watching the first snow through the glass.

Sometimes I would think I was born in the wrong generation. I saw Ai Weiwei's introspective at his Three Shadows Photography Centre a couple of months ago. It was titled New York Photographs 1983-1993, a deluge of prints chosen from over 10,000 that he took in that decade. "At that time, I didn't really have anything to do. I was just hanging out, whiling away my time everyday by taking pictures of the people I met, places I went, my neighborhood, the street and city." I liked him instantly. He was broke, he was aimless, he was revolutionary, he was a fucking genius. And no one saw it except the friends who rolled through his East Village apartment. People like Chen Kaige, an icon in his own right, just another face in the day, immortalized in frozen frame.

It's like the air was electric then. You could disappear to the big city, be faceless and nameless, sit in a studio apartment discussing Joyce and Eliot for hours, sleep at dawn and spend all your time chasing the intensity of an unforgettable exuberance. I found myself wishing I weren't bound by my circumstance of birth that restrains me from hitchhiking across America, picking up beatniks along the way. Even the words of Allen Ginsberg, friend to both Ai Weiwei and Kerouac, and inspiration behind Carlo Marx in On the Road, romanticizes the Beat generation to a certain degree.
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at
dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient
heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the
machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high
sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz

It was not until I read parts of Kerouac's biography, that my fascination with the madness started wearing off, when I realized Kerouac's grand aspirations of one-upping Ulysses consistently produced work after work of drunken revelries at some next party, and the pubescent desire to destruct the safety of the known. Another member, George Corso, did a great job of summing up the glory and absurdity of the Beat generation. In his poem 'Marriage', he explores in his mind all the rebellions he would perform against a life of routine and suburbia, summing up all my fears as I sit here now, but playfully mocking the Beatniks for never growing up. I realize there are realities in which I live, but indulging in the poetics of Kerouac's life on the road may just be the next best thing.

How long has this been going on- Carmen McRae

	Carmen McRae - How Long Has This Been Going On
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

A wednesday afternoon

I woke up this morning with grand dreams of studying, exercising and other chore completion. It is now 5 in the afternoon, my grand dreams now scant, and I haven't done much of anything.

Lamenting the fact that my peers in Canada are done school and I'm still hanging on with one final exam, one that I cannot focus on because the text book is written by a chimpanzee. What do Chimpanzees know about macroeconomics? They can't even trade effectively.

I've done a few food tours this week, including a cool Shanlitun urbaneats one that explores the more upmarket offerings of Yunan and Sichuan cuisine. This weekend I'm heading up to the Wall at Mutianyu to do a gourmet picnic tour with a couple of clients in town. One of whom is an Ivey grad I hear and a managing director in a Canadian bank...small world indeed.

So I was taking a family of four around the hutongs of Houhai yesterday when the mother told me she found out about Hias Gourmet through tripadvisor, which had the Hutong Eats tour ranked on the 3rd of 179 activities to do in Beijing! Jiggawhaat? I couldn't believe it so I googled it myself, and lo and behold it really is.
Now all the reviews have me worried, because I don't think I'm nearly as charming and fun as Adlyn, and am probably giving the hard-earned fruits of her labour a bad name!

I found some incredible pictures of Nanluoguxiang, a gentrified hutong that I walk through during my food tour and wanted to share them with you.





Photos courtesy of ym32 on flickr

The neighbourhood is the perfect place to observe the juxtaposition of new and ancient that is Beijing, with some of the courtyards more than 800 years old. With the eradication of hutongs over the past fifty years, the government has forced multiple families to move in together in what used to be single-family compounds. Today, walking through any alley, you can count the number of electric meters outside to discover how many families live in the cramped space. I've gotten to as many as fifty. This is a must-see when you visit Beijing, and no wonder the culinary/cultural tour is No. 3 on Tripadvisor. No thanks to me. No, seriously.

In other news, I need a new camera. My Nikon has failed me for reasons undisclosable, yes that's a word. I wantnoneed the Canon 50D with wide-angle lens. I would also like a Leica. Lika-leica, get it?? The Holga with which I shot the SH/HZ pics is a dream, but sadly, remains borrowed. I want a vintage twin lens reflex from the antique market also. But alas, my problem remains a rather stubby cashflow, and it doesn't seem to be growing anytime soon. fml.