This Is My Life

Beetles.  Scorpions. Locusts.  Centipedes.  Frogs.  Sheep testicles.

This may sound like a line-up of Fear-Factor challenges, but it was actually the MENU of dinner last weekend!  The university hosted a faculty trip to Kaifeng, which is known locally for a great night market and good food.  Apparently "good food" actually means mind-blowing I-can't-believe-people-eat-this type food.  I wandered around gajillion food stalls and watched hundreds of snacks get boiled, fried, pounded, seasoned and served.

I limited myself to new encounters only, looking for new stories to

tell....and wow, did I find a few!  Insects definitely have a crunchy factor, but the taste was actually pretty good - fried, crunchy, spicy - really not so bad as long as you could get over the fact that you were eating wings.  My favorite were the beetles.  The centipede proved challenging when one of my friend's got a leg stuck in his teeth.  It took him almost a full minute to disentangle it.  You know that terrible mental image you just got of the dangling bug?  I got to witness that firsthand.

The biggest challenge for most was the sheep testicles.  Frankly, we

aren't sure if it was sheep or goat, but we ARE sure which organ it was.  Carefully sliced, scored, chopped, boiled, then stir-fried in delicious ways, but even the food vendor was surprised to see a blue-eyed white chick order it.  We passed it around the table, challenging each other to try a bite.  As it turns out, the real challenge was chewing it...and chewing, and chewing, and chewing....

I've been terrible about updating my blog lately - my sincerest apologies - but I just HAD to tell the world about this little adventure!

Wretched Edibles

If you know me, you know that I love food.  All kinds of food.  Coming from a long line of inventive cooks makes you believe that any food can be redeemed.  Until moving to China there was only one food I couldn’t manage to swallow: raw zucchini.

(Notice the qualifier?  RAW zucchini.  Yes, I’m aware that zucchini bread rocks, zucchini relish is creative, and broiled zucchini is fall staple, but I cannot manage to swallow that crud raw.)

26 years, and there’s only one thing on the never-never list.

THEN I MOVED TO CHINA.

Preface:  I love the food here!  So creative and different, the best comfort food, ridiculous variety-- I’ve been blown away by how great the food is.  But some things….should just never be.

#1.  Sea Cucumber

I was aware that people eat sea cucumber in China, so when I saw a translucent tentacle-ish thing at an elegant banquet, I was eager to try it.  Imagine a dense jello that tastes like water and slides down with all the elegance of a rubber glove.  It was like eating a tense jelly-fish.  You’re not sure whether to chew, slurp, mush, or just swallow the thing whole and pretend like it never happened.

#2.  Things shaped like eyeballs

During my second week here I went out to hotpot with a group of experienced teachers.  Hotpot is a fantastic eating experience, delicious, social, interactive – all the fun of fondue without the peril of boiling oil.  In my individual bowl of broth there was a random assortment of veggies and spices to which I added meat, mushrooms, and more vegetables.  About halfway through the meal I found a mystery item – something round, slightly translucent, with a thin skin about the size of a quail’s egg.  It struck me as looking vaguely like an eyeball, but I chose to think of it as a marinated quail egg and just eat it.  Then it popped in my mouth.  Grittiness.  End of story.  Add to the never-never list: check.

#3.  Stinky Tofu

People have compared stinky tofu to a cheese before, a fermented food product that smells, but still tastes delicious.  The first time you smell stinky tofu, you expect to stumble over a corpse somewhere, and that’s saying something once you realize it smells worse than the garbage lying mounded in the summer sun.  As I child, I hated dog-duty.  (Yup, the doody-duty.)  Summer was the worst because of the combination of dirt, dried grass, and doody.  Imagine that smell combined with fetid diapers and corpse-ish-ness.  And then imagine putting it in your mouth.  WHY WOULD ANY SANE PERSON DO THAT????  I got some by accident on my last day in Xi’an.  It was disguised by soup and some benign-looking chicken.  The taste?  A whole lot like the smell.  I tried a few bites for politeness’s sake, but I have to say again, WHY WOULD A PERSON EVER PUT THAT IN THEIR MOUTH?? And on PURPOSE?!

If you feel like I’m being judgmental, then you are absolutely correct.  I have adventured, experienced, tasted, and judged that these vile things will never pass my lips again.

(Jesus, you hold the one trump card, but PLEASE, let this plate pass.)

Losing My Words

Words have always meant a great deal to me.  I was a voracious reader as a child. I read Gone With the Wind, Roots, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and Mere Christianity before I even entered high school.  An insightful phrase or witticism is delightful to my ears and mind.

Words have meaning and power – when coming from the right person.  A million words from one person may mean little, but a few from the right person can mean so many things.

At the moment I don’t feel like I’m doing justice to a topic I care so much about.  Then again, that IS the point of this post.  In China, I have no words.  Yes, I can say ‘hello’ and ‘thank you.’   (Chinese feels funny in my mouth, even more strange than German.  What I wouldn’t give for a diction coach!)  I’m learning my numbers and how to point at something in a store and say ‘this one.’  But these are not words of eloquence; these are words of function.  It’s a crippling feeling to have so many words, but none of the right ones.  Sometimes people will work with you to communicate, and sometimes they don’t.  It made me feel dumb at first, and then I learned a minimum amount of words necessary to go shopping or buy food.

I got a few surprises as a result of my loss of words.  First of all, I get to be an introvert and an extrovert at the same time. (Would that be a bi-trovert?)  I can walk out in a crowd of people by myself (sorry mom, it happens) and still be completely alone.  I pantomime if I want or need to, but few people actually try to talk to me unless they know a little English.  I will say that about the Chinese people – they are so hospitable that even if they only know 4-5 words of English, they will use them to try to connect with a stranger.  But in general, people leave me alone.

In America I enjoy people-watching, especially during the holidays. (We’re an intriguing bunch during that carefree season.)  When I’m out and about in China, I’ve noticed that I sometimes avoid eye-contact, or looking at people’s faces.  Somehow, the fact that I can’t talk to people leads me to avoid connecting with them too directly.  I realized this just a few days ago, and it’s not my favorite self-development so far.  My goal is to remind myself to truly see people, even if I fear that I can’t connect with them well.  And of course to collect more and more of the right words.