串店，鼓楼大街

(Chuar restaurant, Gu Lou street)

Chuar, Chuan'er, or 串, is Chinese style skewered meat, like kebab. Chuar is from Xinjiang, a northwest mostly Muslim province. Squid, pork, chicken, (meat, heart feet, embryo, wings, cartilage) mantou, (a kind of rice bread) tofu, bell peppers, mushroom, etc. can be chuar-ed, but most ubiquitous is lamb coated in cumin seed and red pepper. Pictured is a particularly popular Chuar dian in a old hutong home by the Gu Lou area. (The Gu Lou are the old drum and bell towers of Beijing.)

*_*


~Other pictures~
also from this weekend

The grandiose Wangfujing Oriental Plaza mall near Tian'anmen. This is a sprawling complex of brand new buildings with Gucci, Tiffany's, Burberry, etc. all for the pleasure of gawking farmers and well heeled Chinese/foreigners.

The newly opened and impressive Line 5 subway. Fancy glass doors and a tremendous number of stops.

Silvy at 奶粉， an adorable cafe with really good dessert at 鼓楼 (gulou).

Guapo Ariel on top of 碧云寺 , a temple in the mountains outside of Beijing. This tree was planted in honor of Sun Yat San and his clothing is buried in a marble box at the temple top.

mountain air.

一天。星期五。

One day. Friday.

The view from the hallway of my apartment complex, around 8am. It's a shockingly bright and blue day. I'm going to work.

The entrance to my complex.

Construction work outside of my complex. Workers live in this prefab construction.

Breakfast seller. This is my street, Dongzhimen nei jie, a major street that has a number of office buildings, malls and restaurants nearby.

Bicycle ramp.

Construction in the distance crossing over to Dongzhimen da jie.

A new office complex that isn't quite done. It's massive.

Drink seller.

Morning fan dancers in a small park outside the subway.

Down to the subway.

View of Yunnan province. The main entrance of Line 13 is covered with tourist ads to promote the province.

Leaving Dongzhimen station. This is the first stop of the train, so it's always empty.

This quickly changes.

睡觉了。

Fried eggs and something like a pancake.

饼。 This is a traditional kind of crepe that is both sweet and spicy. They are made on oil drums heated with coals.

The strangeness of Xi'erqi, the district where I work. I work a few buildings behind the metal wheel/circle.

*-*

下班了。
After work.

What happens when you lower the price of the subway from 3 & 5 yuan to 2 yuan for all lines. This is just to enter the platform.

Heading to Dongzhimen. If I was heading in the opposite direction, I'd be in for a long wait.

回来

Over his shoulder.
*-*

我朋友们的blogs

From Silvia's blog. Just a completely wonderful Microsoft paint gem. The Chinese on the side (他的肚子) translates as "His stomach" and the lines point to (太少饭） "too little food" and （太多醋） "too much acidity/vinegar"

From Ariel's blog. A rather pretty picture of the two of us in a park in Lang Fang.

说中文说英文发音问题

Some problems with Chinese speaking English and visa versa...

Chinese speakers who speak Mandarin do not have the "r" to "l" confusion, so popularly stereotyped with phrases like "flied lice." (This confusion is common to Cantonese.) True Mandarin, that is Hebei provence, Beijing dialect Mandarin, is very rich in "r" sounds and have strong vowel and "sh," "th" pronounciation. Still, in English they still have issues in these and other areas including a difficultly with "ch," distinguishing minor differences in sounds, "mush mouthness" and with sounds like the "s" in "pleasure"

Students from the Southern province of Sichuan are most difficult to teach. Sichuan people speak Mandarin with a heavy accent, and are totally unable to make the "shi" sound in Mandarian, which is an all too common sound, and instead make the "si" sound, which has multiple different meanings. Also, their tones are not as precise as Northern speakers. In English, the problems they make include making the "l" sound like "n," an inability to lisp to make the "th" sound or "sh" sound, weak "r" sounds and sloppy, broken-jawed pronounciation.

Sloppy pronounciation is actually common to all Chinese learners of English as well as almost total inmobility of their tongues. They also have an issue with distingushing gender, pronouncing the sounds "e" and "a" too similar to one another, distinguishing questions and understanding how to pronounce plural words (they all sound singular because they have a difficulty with certain "s" sounds)

In Chinese, native English speakers have a hard time with speaking with an soft tongue and from a lower part of the throat, resulting in Chinese that sounds unclear and too soft. We also cannot pronouce the "r" sounds, (which sound sort of like an r mixed with a j) cannot say, or say with difficulty, the stressed "u" sound. (which is like an umlad over a u) We have trouble distingushing between "ci"(like "tse") and "si" (like "sssuh" with more of an "s" sound) and, most of all, we can't say tones correctly. (Tones, there are four altogther, are an essential part of the language and must be said correctly for the word to make sense, but are very hard to say correctly.) Overall, we probably have the same level of problems learning Chinese.

ALSO: If you'd like to send something use the 100007 zip code.

I've been painting.

梅花儿
Oil on canvas, 12"x12"

Year of the Pig
Oil & stickers on canvas, 12"x12"

Fabric
colored pencil on canvas, 12"x12"

麻婆豆腐

or

(mapo doufu, say "Mah Pu-oh doh foo")

You'll need the ingredients above.

This is a classic Sichuan dish with a colorful story, like most Chinese dishes. In a small town hundreds of years ago, there was an old woman with leprosy who lived on the outskirts. She was shunned by everyone but, in spite of this, decided to open an inn. One day, some travelers got caught in the rain and decided to stay with the old woman. They were horrified by her appearance, but loved her cooking, especially her tofu dish. It soon became so popular that locals and travelers visited the inn just for her tofu. The Chinese name is literally "Grandmother's spicy tofu," but is also translated as "Pock-marked Grandmother Chen's tofu."

You need
---
1 tub soft tofu about one lb finely minced beef
4 cloves garlic
couple teaspoons finely minced ginger
4 stalks green onion
2 tbs (or so) fermented black bean, or broad bean, paste
1 tbs chili oil
4-5 dried chillis
a couple jiggers light soy sauce
a couple jiggers dark (preferably mushroom) soy sauce
a jigger rice wine, light (unsalted and drinking quality)
a teaspoon or so sesame oil
sugar
salt
1/2 ground black pepper
1 1/2 tbs sichuan peppercorns, crushed
cornstarch
5 or so fresh water chestnuts, peeled and finely sliced (optional)
1/2 cup finely minced oyster mushrooms (optional)
peanut oil
---

First, fined mince beef. Add about 1 teaspoon salt, sugar, peanut oil, chili oil and cornstarch, mix and place in fridge for 15 minutes.

Heat enough peanut oil to coat a pan on medium. Add garlic , dried chili, ginger, bean paste and fry until fragrant (under 1 m) Add beef. Cook for a minute, then add rice wine, 4 tbs water, mushrooms and water chestnuts. Add beancurd then a bit of soy sauce, pinch of sugar, Sichuan peppercorns, black pepper and cook for two minutes, turning the tofu carefully. Mix 1 tbs cornstarch with 2 tbs water and add. Cook for two more minutes then remove from heat. Serve with a vegetable side dish and rice.

(Veggie option: Use TVP instead of beef, but when marinating this add another tablespoon of peanut oil to make up for the oil that the beef would have released.)

廊坊

So yesterday Ariel, Silvia and I got back from 廊坊 (Lang2 Fang2) a medium sized city about an hour south of Beijing. This is our friend Anna's hometown, so she showed us around this rather friendly, although very chaotic, extremely Chinese city. It was a particularly bright and happy couple of days as we walked around The People's Park, ate great food, got stared at, shopped in small markets and taxied around.

Chinese cities, apart from the giants like Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Beijing or Shanghai, feel like an extention of Communist village life, both in outlook and design. There is a central square, or "People's Park" which is, in turn, surrounded by block housing and various designated shopping streets. There are a lot of government owned restaurants and department stores jumbled together in these areas and something like a "women's street," "worker's hall" or "children's monument" with villagers selling vegetables, old women fan dancing, old men playing Chinese chess and kids running around through water fountains or designated green areas. It's extremely controlled design with key uniformity, but if offers a very well utilized public space for families. There is a lot to say about the overwhelming sense of community you get from smaller, more Chinese cities here.

Oh, and it's OCTOBER HOLIDAY, so I have the whole week off. October 1st is when the People's Republic was founded, so most people get at least a few days off, and white collars get the whole week.

Lots of marriages in Lang Fang. Anna explained that since it's October Holiday, a lot of couples will get married since they have the time available.

Toy Seller.

A topiary of one of the "Friendlies," the Olympic mascot for China.

These bubble things looked both dangerous and fun, as most fun things are.

One of the many couples in 廊坊人民公园 (The People's Park of Lang Fang)


This pained look was actually encouraged by the photographer.

Courtesy of Silvia. Wonderful and fairly common ad for a kind of North Chinese liquor.

Besides the obvious strangeness of the Roman columns, the Chinese above calls this area "Beijing Women's Street," which is an actual place, although it's located in Beijing, naturally. Don't get it.

Anna's home. See lives in a very, very traditional village outside of town.

Ariel and I tired and returning home.

Silvy and I.
A tourist bus. This style of travel is common, especially for lower middle class since costs can be kept very low. Many of this buses come to Beijing and unload dozens of bewildered, mostly village types.