---小吃---

If you see a busy restaurant in Beijing with crowded tables, 串(Chinese meat on a stick called "chuan") grilling outside and bamboo steamers filled with 饺子 (thinly wrapped steamed pork dumplings) being quickly rushed in from the coal-filled steel drum outside, chances are the place is a good choice. These are 小吃店，or "little eat" restaurants that make simple, homey dishes and are common in both traditional neighborhoods and apartment blocks. They are usually open late and serve predicatable Chinese comfort food. Like anything, some are great and some suck horribly. Below are some examples of what you can order:

• 宫保鸡丁 (or "Kung Pao" chicken as we call it) This is a dish I outlined in the last entry, a sweet and spicy mixture of cucumbers, chicken, peanuts and chili.
• 回锅肉 （or "Twice cooked pork") A wonderful dish using the pork belly drenched in chili oil and fried with fermented black beans and lots of green onion.
  
• 麻婆都府 (or "Grandma's tofu") A mix of soft tofu and beef served casserole style. Has a strong 麻辣, or "spicy numbing" taste due to the Sichuan peppercorns.
• 鱼香肉丝 (or "fish fragrant shredded pork") A sour/sweet pork mixture cooked with dried shrimp to give a slightly fishy taste.
• 東坡肉 (or "Dong Po pork") If done well, this is the best pork you'll ever eat in your life. It's mostly the fat right below the skin with a small piece of meat hanging off. It's cooked in anise and cinnamon until it's extremely soft.
  
• 山西刀前面 (or "Shanxi style knife-cut noodles") This is like Chinese chicken n' dumplings with large cut dough pieces, dried soybeans, bok choy, bits of pork and vinegar in a salty broth. The noodle place near where I work makes this excellently.
• 包子（or "bao zi") These are big, puffy dumplings that are a little yeasty. The local ones are huge, like a sandwich, and usually contain diced Chinese spinach. Dip the doughy goodness in vinegar and chili flakes. Yum!
• 粥 （or "rice porridge") A typical breakfast dish, or late night snack, zhou is a healthy soup make with leftover rice or beans and many, many kinds of additions. There are lots of restaurants that only serve zhou and have literally 100 variaties.
  
• 串（or "meat on a stick") Ubiquitous snack that shows the ancient influence of the middle east over north China. Usually lamb, but sometimes chicken, pork of veggies are available.
• 红烤牛肉面 (or "red cooked beef noodles") These are awesome when made well. Homemade noodles with bits of beef bone and meat cooked in a number of Chinese spices.
• 炒饭（or "fried rice") Wonderful and usually made with a number of additions. Common choices include pickled vegetables, beef, sausage or egg n' tomato. Very different from our Western Chinese restaurant counterpart.

The word around here is that it might snow within the next couple of days, maybe even tonight. It's getting very cold very quickly, leaves are falling and I'm seeing my very first non-Florida autumn.

Right now I'm at work doing Chinese flashcards and checking out blogs waiting for my 7:00 class tonight. I'm teaching a business English course (funny) but lately my students have been horrendously busy with giant staff meetings, an audit, lots of foreign visitors, a server hack and general Chinese economic-bubble style expansion, so there have been a lot of no-shows. In three years this place has tripled in size.

I made 宫保鸡丁, otherwise known as "Kung Pao chicken," last night for Silvy and Ariel. The dish is from Sichuan, where all good Chinese food comes from, and is a combination of chicken, peanuts, green onion and cucumber in a sweet and spicy rice wine sauce. I've made this dish and posted a recipe for it ages ago, but this is a lighter and much better version of the previous dish. A recipe will be posted soon.


好的。等一会儿。<-- This is the title of my blog, but I probably never actually explained it's meaning. Translation: "Okay. Wait a second."

--空--
Empty places.

the front, and utilized, part of the dormitory.


dog walking


vegetables and 'mums


things.


The "letters" on this building are comprised of Chinese and English, but the symbols are nonsensical.


ghosts.


Cats own this place, like all haunted places.


Ping pong.


Someone other than a fluorescent bar used to hang here.


porch.


ginkos and maples.


this used to be a couch.

Beijing is full of anomalies. On Sunday, the gang and I went to the ghostly old dormitories of 人民大学 (People's University) This is a beautiful and strange place, quiet except for the first and largest building which still holds meetings and classes even though the new university is far from this spot. The dorms were (I believe) built in the early 20th century in a European style with Chinese elements. The grounds are beautiful with abandoned fountains, rock gardens and vegetables growing in weedy lawns. A few people, mostly older and, I'm told, retired faculty, live here. The buildings are in great disrepair with piles of furniture and interesting looking junk on porches and besides steps. We saw mostly elderly looking people walking their dogs or gossiping and the "neighborhood" had that same homey feel of the traditional hutong. Beautiful.

We've been looking for info on these buildings, but not much exists. (At least not in English.) I'll post updates as I find them. I'm worried about the future of these buildings, which are in really poor shape and look almost gutted inside. It doesn't help that they're on rather expensive land being developed near Dongshi subway.

Modern advertising in China still feels like it's in a primordial stage. It's ubiquitous, uncreative, homogeneous, and features a kind of language that promotes quality and price in exactly the same way as a competitor. (Literally: 最便宜的北京烤鸭－68元一只, or "The cheapest Beijing roast duck, 68RMB a bird" on a giant neon sign.) This sense of sameness continues with traditional ad methods which use characters with strong meanings like 红 (red), 龙 (dragon),鑫 ("three bars of gold"), 宫 (palace, temple), 王 (king), 老 (old, honorable), 家 (home, family) or 新 (new) for everything. It doesn't create a product image in any way. Also, if anything is successful there will be four copies of it nearby, whether it's a restaurant, brand of clothing, soft drink or anything else. This, in turn, makes everything appear exactly the same.

America, which I'm guessing is the reigning king of advertising, abandoned this "our knives are slightly sharper than these other guys and are of a slightly fairer price" kind of product endorsement in the 19th century in favor of selling the "idea." In China, this means rainbows, sunsets, cute animals, stolen images of celebrities, pretty girls, Western businessmen and labels from other brands are used without a shred of sarcasm to advertise a dentist's office. That or maybe a heavy flash picture of an unsmiling nurse and another heavy flash picture of bloody gums. This kind of advertising is understandable when you are selling to a very conservative population.

Jet Li "supporting" the Seven Brand line of suits, which is exactly the same the the 12 suit stores on the same block.

Actually, a rather great ad.

• An excellent blog post about the unfair expectations placed on Chinese manufacturing. This is especially topical as this date rape "Aqua Dots" toy is just another example of scary products in China. (The toy was made in Hong Kong, I've heard, so it's a shoddy product from a place known for better quality than the mainland.

• Here's a story of role reversal: my company produces an online game ("Perfect World") that is slated for US release soon. This game is already popular in Brazil, but this week an illegal American group called GameHaze hacked the Brazilian server and stole the code, created a new server and is hosting "Perfect World" on an unofficial server. (Or something like this.) They are making money off of this game illegally and want to make their own English translations and additions. This should be sorted out, but still... Americans ignored a Chinese copyright. Irony.

• Also, a great blog that hasn't, strangely, been updated in a while. The writer also wrote this tremendous account of what it feels like to be the product of a culture that conceals.
  

HEY STRANGERS OUT THERE! POST MORE! 汉字可以用！

Pudong Special Economic Zone
12"x12", oil on canvas

Another quick painting of a woman enjoying a glorified cityscape. This time it's Pudong, the SEZ district in Shanghai. This was done mostly as a finger painting, especially the background, so it's got a lot of blobby, gooey paint.

Also, be on the lookout for my soon-to-be published painting only blog.

国都公园

(or a mysterious amusement park in north Beijing.)

I have the same commute everyday from work. I walk from my apartment to the line 13 subway, which is around 2 blocks away. It's a quiet commute most of the way and I get to see the rolling hills, autumn colors, smoky factories, towering Soviet-style apartment blocks and traditional villages of the far, uncharted north through the subway car window. Right outside of 北苑 (Beiyuan) station is a delapidated children's amusement park that I've been wanting to snoop around in. This weekend, Silvia, Ariel and I finally checked it out.

The park, like much of north Beijing, is tremedously spread out and filled with open space, which is rare in the city center. It's abandoned and completely dead. There are goats and sheep feeding on the grass inbetween the shooting games and matted hair on a broken monkey king ferris wheel car. The feeling is one of delicate, eerie, sadly funny isolation, which is probably what you'd expect from an abandoned amusement park.

There is more to the park than just what you see. In the back is a "pet park" that aparently closed down but is still used. Check out Silvia's investigative report. Also, Ariel posted about the same park with a much funnier tone.

---~*~---

Ariel and I beiing nerdy photographers

The greatest ride.


"PIRAT"

wire.

cornhusk. There are local farmers and migrant workers who squat in the park. They grow corn on the outskirts.

The name of the park, 国都公园, is etched in all the tiles.

19th century Danish painting

Wasteland.

Goats and sheep near the tracks.