On How I Used to Be a Writer
Dear Laura,
Remember those days when you spent all day sitting in front of a computer screen, drinking coffee, having deep thoughts, and transcribing your brilliance so the rest of the world could benefit from it? When you used to notice small, significant flashes of meaning in your life and had the time and wisdom to reflect on them? When you were never, ever tempted to use an extra, unnecessary adjective or adverbial phrase?
Ha! Right, me either. But somehow you’ve gone from the occasion post and the infrequent pertinent observation to…nothing. At all. For the last 3 and 1/2 years.
What happened? I’ll give you just a few free passes: you had 2 more kids. You moved to a country with the most sucky, infuriating internet on the freaking planet. Your husband’s job became significantly more stressful. Your sweet, glowingly happy first baby boy turned into a hyper, intensely emotional, still sweet but not so happy little being who demanded most of your attention and almost all of your psychological resources (and you still failed, often). You got older but somehow not wiser.
And meanwhile, other blogs were so well-written. So unique. So witty and inspirational. So everything that you wanted to do but couldn’t.
And your initial reason for starting a blog became obsolete. Your parents want to see photos of your kids? Facebook. Your siblings need realtime reports on Shanghai? iMessage. Your friends like to hear snippets about your life in Asia? WhatsApp. You feel like sharing the odd funny observation with a few people? WeChat. Everyone you know and love needs a window into your world? Skype. (Okay, Skype was always around even before you moved.)
The world shrunk.
Or so you told yourself–when you even thought about it.
But then, one night, you found your way back to this little blog that you painstakingly put together. Does it even still operate? Do people still read posts that don’t originate from Huffington Post? Does 2015 have space for the “miscellaneous observations about living in China’s capital of culture and contradiction” that you so boldly promised?
Why the hell not, you told yourself. The world can always use another writer.
Dan Bing–i.e. Crepe on Steroids
On Value Menu Breakfasts
Shanghai is a city of 20 million people, and as far as I can tell, they ALL like to eat. A lot. This tendency works out really well for us, because there is always a new dining hot spot to try or a gorgeous produce stand around the corner. Oh, and you can get delivery from pretty much any restaurant in the metro area if you can’t be bothered to leave the house–which may or may not be the case these last couple of days, when the temperature has hit at least 101 F (38 C) while the humidity hovers around 60%.
In general, food is a big deal here, and one significant incarnation of this phenomenon is the proliferation of street vendors who cook and sell everything from dumplings to soup with noodles to kabobs to mysterious but tempting deep-fried concoctions. In the hustle and the bustle of city whose inhabitants are constantly rushing from one place to the next, often on foot, you can’t beat the convenience of this kind of ubiquitous ‘fast’ food. The morning street scene, in particular, is rife with people eating out of steaming paper bags or plastic sacks and drinking their yogurt beverages as they weave through the crowds on their way to work.
But to confess, I was wary of plunging into this manifestation of Shanghai culture. The good reason is that I’m pregnant and supposed to be more careful about what I eat and how it is prepared. However, the real reason is that, although I adore food, I’m pretty picky about trying new things and I’m definitely NOT that person who will pop something in her mouth first and ask what it is later. And I know it probably doesn’t make any logical sense, but for some reason it just feels safer to eat at a restaurant, where the food is prepared in an out-of-sight kitchen by someone you never see in circumstances you never encounter and then brought to you on a clean plate than to eat something that is prepared right in front of you and flung into a bag.
My scruples about ‘street food’ were eventually worn down, however, by the most intriguing of all roadside food performances: the creation of the ‘dan bing’ (or ‘jiao bing,’ depending on whom you ask). After gazing longingly from afar for a couple months, I finally broke down, stood in line, and told the lady that I would have the ‘same thing’ as the person in front of me–since at that time I didn’t know the name of the item I was asking for:
My local dan bing stand
And here’s what happened. Step 1: Savory batter is ladled onto a hot griddle and spread into a very thin layer.
The process begins.
Step 2: A raw egg is cracked into the middle of the batter.
Add protein.
Step 3: The yolk is broken and the egg spread out across the rapidly cooking crepe.
A new take on 'sunny side up.'
Step 4: Toppings! The options are cilantro (coriander), green onion, some kind of dried shellfish (I’m guessing shrimp?), and black sesame seeds. Don’t worry–I’ll get to sauces later.
Pick your poison.
Step 5: Toppings are sprinkled (I took everything, of course…).
The Works.
Step 6: The first fold. The masterpiece in progress is carefully scraped from the griddle and folded in half.
Fold the 1st.
Step 7: Sauces! The dark brown one is sort of an oyster sauce, I think, and then the red one is a dollop of spicy chili and garlic.
Saucy.
Step 8: The second fold. The sauces are spread and the piece de resistance is inserted–a rectangular sort of rice crisp, which gets wrapped inside the crepe as it is folded into thirds.
Fold the 2nd (and 3rd).
Step 9: The whole thing is tossed unceremoniously into a plastic sack, and I drop my money into the appropriate container as I grab my breakfast.
The finished product.
Total time elapsed: 45 seconds–like, I could barely take pictures fast enough.
Total cost: 2.5 kuai (which translates to 37 US cents).
Total epicurean experience: pure delight. The contrast of spicy and savory, soft and crunchy, warm and cool, is brilliant.
And as I bike away, another eager customer pushes forward for her turn.
Step right up.
My only regret? That I didn’t try this months ago!
Bon appetit.
On Relaxation and Revelation
Oh dear, I’ve done it again…let way too much time slip by between posts. But this time, the lapse was facilitated by a worthy cause: more than a month back in the States with the Kid, while Husband Extraordinaire joined us for about 12 days. BLISS. And trust me, ‘bliss’ is not always the first word that comes to mind when reflecting on a trip home, no matter how happy we are to see family and friends (EXTREMELY), no matter how many BBQ’d hamburgers I get to eat (too embarrassing to admit), no matter how much clean, sweet, Pacific Northwest air I can inhale.
If you haven’t been an expat before, then you might not be entirely familiar with the phenomenon I’m about to describe. For lack of a better (more concise) term, I’m going to call it ‘Love and Laughter and Happiness–in Hyperdrive.’ To be fair, I suppose ‘LLHH’ applies in some degree to most people who have moved away, even if not so very far, and then return for a visit to a hometown. And it definitely applies to just about any holiday season. But when, as in our case, the distance traveled home exceeds 5 and 1/2 thousand miles (9,000 km) as the crow flies and 15 time zones, and when the door-to-door duration of the trip is measured in days as opposed to hours, and when at least 4 days must be factored in on each end to compensate for jetlag, the impact of ‘LLHH’ becomes magnified to an extreme extent.
And alright, all you Pollyannas: let’s take a step back for a moment to acknowledge that I am basically complaining about a surfeit of love, laughter, and happiness. I know, I know–life is tough.
But the fact of the matter is, it’s a strain to be a guest over a long period of time. Even in the homes of the people you most dearly love in the ENTIRE world. Living out of a suitcase never ranks up there as a Top 10 quality-of-life booster. And if you’re blessed with more doting relatives and friends than you can count, you inevitably feel like your distribution of ‘quality time’ is bound to be found inadequate by some, if not all, parties. Finally, the pursuit of this elusive ‘quality time’, while fulfilling, is also downright exhausting.
So every six months or so, when Husband Extraordinaire and I return from a trip home, we look at each other and say, ‘We need a vacation.’
On this trip, however, we managed to strike a perfect, grace-filled balance and were able to fully enjoy and appreciate the ‘LLHH’ while not becoming overwhelmed. The trick? Well, I’d known all along that it had to do with doing LESS–particularly less driving from one city to another, less staying for 3-5 nights in one place only to race off for another 3-5 nights somewhere else, repeat, repeat. But this time around, I actually DID it. Arrived in Seattle and stayed put, at my parents’ house, for MORE THAN 2 weeks. (Well, that doesn’t count a quick weekend trip to Utah for my sister’s bachelorette party, but since I got to do that by myself, leaving a jetlagged Kid to recuperate with Grammie and Papa while I got a solid 10 hours of sleep for 2 nights in a row, I think it hardly factors in as stressful travel.)
As if that wasn’t enough, we also got a long stretch of 7 nights together as a family (joined by now by Husband Extraordinaire) at Spirit Lake, in northern Idaho. Yep, Idaho. The state directly east of Washington. Home of good potatoes. And spectacular lakes. Husband Extraordinaire’s family has had a cabin at Spirit Lake since his dad was a kid. So Dave has been going there every summer since he was a little boy, along with his siblings and his cousins (the kids of his dad’s sister).
I’ve probably been a guest at Spirit Lake half a dozen times since meeting Dave, and up until this summer, I thought I fully appreciated it. ‘The Lake’ has a powerful, almost mythical presence in Dave’s family’s consciousness, but since I had my own ‘The Lake’ growing up, I could totally understand the reverence with which Spirit Lake was treated. It’s an experience, a religion unto itself, a tradition so steeped in family lore and history that it truly defies explanation–at least on the level at which I tend to discuss things on this blog.
Nevertheless, I figured that I ‘got’ the Spirit Lake thing, that I understood its impact on Dave’s childhood and life in general, that I fully sympathized with and partook in Dave’s agony when we couldn’t make the trip for the last 2 summers in a row.
And then we got the Kid out there.
It’s actually not his first trip to The Lake–but last time, his main experience of the family’s hallowed ground consisted of entertaining us all with his newly-acquired ability to roll from his tummy to his back. I think it’s safe to say that he doesn’t really hold that memory among his most vivid.
However, turn a 3 year-old loose in a paradise comprised entirely of water, sand, grass, speedboats, kayaks, fish (and a Buzz Lightyear fishing rod), soccer balls, flotation devices, ‘pirate treasure,’ copious amounts of food, and endlessly energetic, adoring family members–all within a 10 yard radius, and you have a formula for the most memorable vacation of all time. (I think the Kid liked it, too.)
Watching the Kid sprint tirelessly from one activity to another, sunrise until sundown, his face a beacon of wonder, absorption, and absolute joy, I had a whole new awareness of what this place means to Husband Extraordinaire. The Lake means the most perfect memories of childhood rapture. It epitomizes the dynamics of fierce familial affection and allegiance. It both encompasses and perpetuates the best of love, laughter and happiness. Period. No hyperdrive in sight.
So was I as shocked as I should have been when Dave actually turned off the email function on his Blackberry? Did I gasp at the miraculous return of color and vitality to his previously work-paled face? No. I sat next to him, reclined in a lounge chair, cold drink in hand, facing a lake as smooth as glass, and watched our son just exist in his own personal Utopia. Our own personal Utopia.
Think Shanghai 