Lantern Festival

Chinese New Year celebrations end today, on the 15th day of the new year, also called the Lantern Festival . The children have gone beserk on the streets because its the last night their allowed to play with fireworks, and it's pretty much a guarantee I won't sleep tonight.
Here's a brief recap of the last few days for yall. My mom and I went to Guanghan again, because my grandfather finally came out of the hospital! Huzzah! I rushed to his side and didn't let go of his hand again for like, the next three days. It took him almost three weeks in the hospital to recover because he has diabetes, and surgery wounds take much longer to heal for diabetics. But the major obstacles are already overcome, and he's got the spirit of an 81 year old hustler foreals.
Gangsta Gramps got tired very easily each day but managed to squeeze out a few stories in the mornings, with promises to continue when I visit again in the summer. So far, I discovered some !!epic!! stories of my ancestry that I'm not sure is prudent to publish on this as the country I'm in is not exactly the posterchild for freedom of speech. So these stories will be saved for private conversations later on. But mark my words: EPIC with tongue clicks on both sides.
I also chilled with my 8 year old cousin. She tried teaching me to skateboard, but clearly wasn't a very good teacher, because I couldn't even get on the board. So we resorted to fob-posing for the camera instead.

I really need a crash course in fob poses before I head to Beijing, or I won't be able to keep up! Oh yea, a cute outfit with a Hello Kitty backpack are also essential for first day at school, in case anyone wants to send me a care package.
Later we went to the park, where the posing continued, this time with my zodiac sign The Phat-astic Bunny.

Then this morning, a couple movies and AN EARTHQUAKE later, I was walking through town looking for a righteous parting gift for the grandparents when I stumbled upon 'paint-it-yourself' plaster Boddhisatva dolls at a crafts stall. Perfect!

Notice the mouth agape in concentration retardation.
The finished product. BOOYAKASHA

I'm pretty positive I was the only participant at the arts and crafts stall over the age of 6. All the kids would watch said masterpiece take form and then look back at their own miserable attempts to colour in their Hello Kitty dolls, and hang their heads down in shame. Not my fault their amateurs!
Tonight we came back to Chengdu to have dinner with my mom's side. On the way home from the restaurant, we walked past a bridge where people were setting these paper gas fire thingies into the air, and paper lotus fire thingies floating off on the river. Because my descriptive prose is so vivid, I do not need to supplement your understanding with any photos.


Apparantly if you make a wish while setting one of these off in the stratosphere, it will come true.


This guy must not have very good luck, cus his lantern went on to land on a bicyclists head, and on his second try- yes he tried again- it got stuck on a tree.

Me with my paper lotus ball of fire thingie.

I was so scared of falling into the river that I forgot to make a wish when I dropped it in. Oops.

That's all from me this time around. Happy Year of the Ox for the last time!

how could i forget you

the kid with a future, smoke from "thousand-bang" fire crackers, Dujiangyan Irrigation Project, father's old bookshelf, new years dinner

5.12

Whaa I havn't posted in seven days, which is like, an eternity in blogger years? It's as if a piece of me is missing, lost in digital space. I am like soo unstable right now.

So I've been well taken care of lately by my extended family on both sides. Read: fed at regular intervals, pampered to no end. I'm fattening up nicely like Hansel in the Witch's cage in the Black Forest, except without the morbid German children's story subcontext. I know you love my fatty analogies.

I've also learned that family is like a time warp. I now know why Mao instigated the one-child policy. What's easier, locking one (probably male) sibling out of your room or finding refuge in a two-room farm house from 11 jabbering brats and their 15 cousins twice and thrice removed? Population control was just an afterthought. Breathing space is soo underrated people!

Not to say I didn't cherish every moment with family, just wish there were 58 hours to every day so I could get a chance to do some of the things I love to do. Like finishing one, ANY one, of the 6 or so books I've started but not followed through on as I have a problem with commitment, or speed reading through the 1000+ updates everyday on my google reader since my attention devoid disorder prescribes me to subscribe to a million blogs to quell my restless thirst for information. David Lebovitz fill me with you Judaio-Californian in Paris tales of pastries and beyond! Let White Lightning strike me with the space-aged fashion sense that is soo ahead of our times! JJJound had better stop posting because his inspirations and artistry are killing me rather violently.

The only breathing space I get is in the toilet, which is the squatting kind if you must know. Not ideal for reading a book or magazine in case you lose your balance. Also not a great breathing space at all.

My cousin is so much smarter than me. He's nine years old, and looks like a cartoon character. His head is huge. And he's got the brains to match. His parents never went to university, so the fact that he gets straight A's is a source of pride for everyone in the family. He loves geography and history, and can locate any country on a globe, as well as recite ancient Chinese war stories for hours without stopping to breathe. I can't even read the Introduction to Chinese History in Lonely Planet without getting lost in the Mings and Tangs, and that's in English.

One day he followed me around the house for a whole morning as I went about some chores, determined to educate me on the ancient battles of the Three Kingdoms. Lol my cousin has a loose vocal cord or something, so he sounds like a 4 year old girl. Mean, maybe, but love is tough. So it was like having a prepubescent all girls choir sing to me in Chinese prose, rising to a strong forte when I started blowdrying my hair and with determined conviction while stooping outside the washroom door, waiting patiently for me to come back out. Now that's a kid with a future.

Onto the next leg of my adventures. I went with my parents to Dujiangyan yesterday, a town 60km northwest of Chengdu formerly known for its Irrigation Project undertaken in the 3rd century BC by famed engineer Li Bing. It is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The gist of it is that Sichuan was frequently subject to floods and draughts before this point and his genius ideal was to split the Min River into two and divide the force of the water mechanically to irrigate millions of hectares of land and feed millions of people as a result.

But today it is known to China as one of the places hit hardest by the fateful earthquake of 5/12/08. At least 70,000 people died in one day within a depth of 19km, and those are just the KNOWN deaths. Of those, 10,000 were in Dujianyan. There are still 20,000 missing people reported to be buried underneath the rubble that may never be found. This is my hometown, and basically my blood. I had to go there, and see and feel the force that has so shaken this nation.

I remember when I first heard. It was my first day at work this summer and I was still panting from grabbing morning sandwiches for the traders and trying to focus on all the flashing ticker symbols when a Bloomberg newsflash popped on the screen saying :"Deadly Earthquake of Magnitude 8 Hits Sichuan". I read it five times to be sure and rushed to email my parents, who had already been on the phone trying to reach our family, but to no avail since all telephone lines were down in the province. By a stroke of sheer luck, my family was spared. But the details of the aftermath haunted my worst nightmares, and I wished I wasn't so far removed from the carnage and that I could have been less useless.

What is most tragic about this earthquake is that it hit hard an area that has been completely neglected by China's economic boom. The landscape was a classic illustration of the widening disparity between the urban bourgeousie and rural poor, a problem enhanced by poor and expensive healthcare. It has also left 5 million people homeless and 7000 schoolrooms collapsed, burying lives extra precious because of the one-child policy.

I have seen a dvd of the earthquake aftermath and relieft efforts. The footage was completely disturbing and graphic, but desensitizing myself to a degree to the images was necessary for me to remove myself from this North American pedestal, one that we allow ourselves to get propped up on far too often. How often I had put down the newspaper in the summer, left a link my mother had sent me unopened, to be able to finally push the thoughts of carnage to the back of my conscience. But what struck me the most about the relief efforts was the selflessness of the surviving villagers as they rescued strangers buried under the rubble. It would often take the cooperation of fifteen people to lift a single person out of the rocks. They moved swiftly and without hesitation despite risk of strong aftershocks that resulted in further casualties. The nation I previously described where people are ruthless about cutting lines and waging road wars had disappeared with the collapse of their collective infrastructure and realization of the frailty of their individual backbones. Of this I was particularly proud.

I know this post took a somber turn towards the end, but I had to.

the ox

The Motherland is overwhelming enough with its what, 1.3 billion inhabitants, but in the weeks leading up to Chinese New Year it's just claustrophobic. This is my first time spending the season with family in my hometown and I've been like a fat kid in a candy store, or like myself in a candystore, observing all the preparations around me.


The roads are packed with men and women making the pilgrimage home to share a meal with the parents and pay respects to the elderly. You cannot get a cab period. I've learned to cower behind my warrior mother as she ferociously battles other weary travellers for that rare empty cab. Honest I'm not cut out for this country, its dog eat dog, man eat man, man eat dog, etc. I'm slowly learning that you can't be nice, at least not all the time, because you WILL get shat on. So sometimes you need to be a little more nimble, shove a few elbows out of your way, hold onto your purse like its your newborn, and be ready to wage war when someone surprise tackles the rickshaw you are about to embark. I've learned that these people arn't being rude, they're just living the everyday hustle like you and I. Cept they've gotta make it work with a few hundred million peeps all up in their grill.

There's so much new years product being sold in the markets it's staggering. China is a country where food and drink is of the utmost importance, with events, meetings, and family functions revolving around multi-course meals. Chinese New Year is a food coma on steroids with 400 food babies that run like Kenyans. In other words I'm in heaven. In the weeks leading up to this weekend, there are thousands of stalls around Chengdu selling New Year goodies like sesame brittle, dried fish, smoked meats, and other unidentifiable delicacies. Kids also love this time of year because they get new clothes and most importantely "red pockets" which are basically red envelopes of cash monay. You are supposed to sleep with it untouched under your pillow for a year and the story is that it will double. After a few years of rich slumber I told my mother it was a sham and spent it all behind her back. I may be too old for red pockets now but I won't say no if you insist.

my 8 year old cousin

some cute sticky rice thingie, i just want to eat them all

my cousin took me to eat this. it's called cold pot, as opposed to hot pot, where all the skewers are dunked in cold Sichuan chilli oil. yes. yes. yes.

Stinky tofu. The name says it all. This has got to be the most delightful culinary treat that smells like a thousand port-a-potties floating in a bog.

Chinese sassauge and smoked meats are huge during the new year, this age-old method of preserving meat has been improved upon by the Chinese to an art

the five characters below say "Sichuan Famous Snacks" or "small eats" to be literal. They are simply the best, cheap and filling, the tastiest dumplings, wontons, thick noodles, among other delightful things swimming in hot chilli oil oh my god.

some cute kid who I want to eat.

this corn is chewy gummy goodness

this brother is mixing up an intoxicating batch of toasted peanuts, sesame and syrup ...

to form this, which is currently being hammered by these two brothers into a many layered brittle. COME TO MAMA

sugar cane. I remember eating this as a kid and simply loving it. My moms would buy me a stick and I'd sit on our steps blissfully chewing the juice out of it and spitting out the shredded cane. Now in Singapore they take all the work out and run the cane through a machine and fill up a cup in less than a minute. But the work was the whole fun of it.

sticky rice ball goodness on a stick

mmm ungodly pork buns...

lady mixing our "xiao chi" (small snack) of noodles in sweet and spicy sauce

the best noodles of LIHFFFFF

massive block of peanut brittle being shaved and put into little savory spring rolls

need I say more?

This year our family's celebrations are muted and somewhat sobered, as my eighty year old Yeye (paternal grandfather) is in hospital recovering from a gall surgery last week. I had not seen him in over seven years, and the sight of his frailty knocked the wind out of me. I could barely see when I dabbed his lip with a wet cotton swab as he still could not drink despite great thirst. To provide some much needed entertainment I stood by his bedside and told tales of my adventures in Nepal. But then I had to stop because his heartrate monitor went crazy when I got to the part where I jumped off a 200m bridge. Oops. Thankfully he is recovering nicely and we may be able to have a makeup version of the family dinner next week.

When I left Nepal, I thought I left the incessant queeries about my marital status behind. No, apparantly my family members have even greater interest in matchmaking than Nepali villagers. My closest cousin, three years older than me, just recently got married, and evidently all eyes are now on me. I've got instructions raining down on me from all sides, "Its about time you know", "Why don't you find a Chinese one", "I'm not picky, he can be whatever background you like", and a harsh "This is a serious matter!" when I double over in a giggle fit. My no-nonsensical grandfather who always spurts confucian proverbs, took a break while lying horizontal with feeding tubes going into his stomach to inquire if I've settled down. I said to the poor man he can set me up on a blind date.

Tommorrow is an important date on the lunar calendar. My mother's side is celebrating with a massive meal at lunch, the pictures of which I'm sure will give you an authentic taste of the Chinese New Year family celebrations. I can't wait to light all kinds of cheap fire crackers. Until then, Gong Xi Fa Cai (congrats and be prosperous), and Xin Nian Kuai Le (happy new year)!

shadow puppets! these things provided entertainment for generations of Chinese before there were things like Tivo and Facebook

a "lao wei" (foreigner) hustlin in Chengdu


These are commonly called plum blossoms, they're abundant in Chinese watercolour paintings and are so famous because of their intoxicating fragrance. I've never smelled anything quite like it, it only grows in the coldest of weather in China and during the winter every family keeps a bunch in the living room. I don't know why there isn't a perfume with this scent yet. Note to self: get on that.

wall in a Chengdu monastery

lighting incense for Buddha to ask for health and prosperity

beautiful wall

beautiful garbage

ok, all stop. this is the best souvenier PERIOD. I had to have one of those fatty pork slices, its a famous Sichuan dish called "Hui Guo Rou". effing genius.


keeping the monastery clean

not sure what that says, but it must be pearls of wisdom, so read up kids!


xo