Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Look at the Monkeys; Laundry on the Rocks; The Search for Food

I’ve already mentioned in previous posts how much everyone flocks to Grace and Samuel, especially Grace, wanting to touch their hair, cheeks, noses, arms, legs, wanting to have the kids pose with them for pictures, staring at them when they try to play at the park or simply when we are sitting quietly by the water. All of us attract attention wherever we go, for the simple reason that we are the only foreigners around and I guess staring isn’t considered rude. We went to dinner tonight at a “fast” food noodle place, where they make the noodles from scratch right in front of you, and every restaurant worker, from the cashier to the noodle guy, to the people who clean up the tables, everyone stared at us, some giggled, made comments to each other, but mostly they just stared and stared. When we first got here it really unnerved the kids, now they mostly don’t pay attention, except for times like today at the park: the kids got some fish nets and were trying to find minnows and snails at the pond’s edge. People in paddle boats swerved from the middle of the pond right up to the edge where we were, one boat even grounded itself, all in the attempt to get a better look at us. A lady and her child came and asked us to pose for a picture with her baby. I finally got up the nerve to say no, I’m so tired of being the novelty in people’s picture albums. When I’m by myself I just get stares, but it’s the kids who get the physical attention. Poor things. We’ve talked to them a lot about being understanding, that they don’t mean any harm, they just aren’t used to foreigners, and especially they love children and really, ours are awfully cute if I do say so myself. The kids have taken it basically in stride, it’s Dave and I who sometimes get really fed up, like tonight. Oh to just have a little anonymity!


On another note, my laundry machine stopped agitating today. Yep. I shouldn’t have complained about it. I had a load of towels in it. And so after a day of waiting for someone to do something about it, I finally had to hand-agitate them and hand-rinse, and wring them out, and I hope they will dry overnight outside.


Food, glorious food, I’d like to try it…. At least, that was the song we were singing in the first few days here. Staying in the hotel, we didn’t have a lot of opportunity to make anything for ourselves, and really, we didn’t have the mental ability to do so. We ate a lot across the street at the Mongolian restaurant (of banquet fame) and I think we are filled to the brim with mutton meat pies, mutton gyoza, and garlic broccoli. Then we found the grocery store behind the hotel, where we could buy little biscuits that are very reminiscent of the ones I used to eat in France, sort of graham cracker-types, and top ramen-type noodle bowls, and yogurt and milk. Dave went out every morning trying to find some kind of breakfast food and there was a definite learning curve involved: first he found a Chinese bakery that had pastries that did not satisfy; then he found a European bakery, Inner Mongolia-based, and the danishes there helped for a couple of mornings; lastly and not least, he found a Hohhot institution, the bai tze (bay-ze). It’s a pastry, heavier than a croissant but still flaky, and sold on the streets. It’s absolutely delicious.

Hooray! By this time we had moved into our apartment so we could start cooking for ourselves, and continue to venture out for meals.

One of the last dinners eaten while in the hotel I didn’t participate in, so tired was I of foods that didn’t sit well on my tender jet-lagged stomach. Dave took the kids to a dumpling restaurant around the corner, which sounds great until you realize it’s a restaurant that serves hundreds of different kinds of gyoza, of which we were already getting tired, and the menu was entirely in Chinese and no one there spoke a lick of English. Dave put all of his education to work and managed to order beef gyoza, but he ended up ordering about 2 pounds worth.

UCLA PhD reduced to buffoonery in Inner Mongolia (Dave did a little dance and mimicked a cow in order to get beef gyoza).

As neither kid could eat much, Dave stuffed in as much as he could to be polite. It was either a low-point or a high-point, depending on how seriously we chose to take ourselves. We certainly got a good laugh out of it, so I guess all in all it was a high point. But I don’t think any of us want to eat gyoza for a good long time.

About this time, food deprived and losing weight, not quite in the grip of traveller’s diarrhea but always on the edge, Dave and I each had a major rant about being in the middle of a city where no one speaks English (a slight exaggeration but actually remarkably few people do—of course, we are the ones that are at fault, since it is China after all, we should be speaking more Chinese) and in a country where we kept repeatedly hearing about all the McDonald’s and WalMarts and Starbucks, we apparently landed in a city of 1.5 million and none of those were to be had. That was about 2 days before we had to eat our words with great embarrassment, for I have personally seen at least three Kentucky Fried Chickens,


one McDonald’s, and Pizza Hut. There is no Starbucks though, alas. In a fit of trying to get the kids to eat last week, we took them out to Pizza Hut for dinner.

Happy Campers Going to Pizza Hut

This, by the way, is no kidding the most expensive restaurant in Hohhot. Our dinner of two supreme pizzas, two fruit smoothies, and three beers came to a grand total of 250 yuan, or about $32.

It tasted just like home. Of course, the menu also boasts pizza with octopus on it, but then, some of the best Pizza Hut pizza Dave and I ever had was in Paris, the quatre fromage, which had four different kinds of French cheese on it. To each country its own. Not only did the pizza taste like home, helping ease a bit the homesickness plaguing both kids; being an upscale restaurant the clientele was a little more wealthy, therefore more educated, therefore not quite so inclined to stare at us. Bliss.

So what have we been eating since moving in to our apartment? Lots of bai tze at first, then we found the market on our street, open from about 6 to 7 every morning and where we can get vegetables straight from the farm, garlic, ginger, fresh tofu (can’t get it in the store, tastes great), fruit, tea (but not black, alas), socks, bai tze, legumes, hats. It’s always a little unnerving going to the market, since there are no prices printed anywhere. I just get what I want and then when they say something to me in Chinese I hand them some money. If it’s not enough they let me know, if it’s too much they hand back change. I really am trying to learn some numbers, I’ve learned how to count to ten on one hand and that helps a little bit. Eggs are fresh everyday and kept out of fridges. They taste great, being very organic and free range. J Meat has been a bit problematic, first because I am not a big meat eater and not inclined to look at it much, second because all the cuts are different from home and so it’s hard to know what to get.

Dave found these guys fixing their motorcycle on the street.

To be honest, Dave has done most of the cooking up until now. He’s always been the stir fry guy. And I am much more a baker (we miss cookies already!) and a recipe-follower. We were provided with an awesome rice cooker so that has been great fun, the kids are in heaven with white rice. Lunches have been hard since there isn’t sandwich bread and up until recently we couldn’t find anything to put on bread anyway.

Each day we’ve improved our eating situation: first night here, Dave made fried potatoes and eggs, then spaghetti with fresh tomatoes, then we’ve had a series of great stir fries, with really fresh vegetables and either tofu, eggs, or most recently, beef. We found baking powder and flour so Dave has been making pancakes, which we eat with jam we found at the store behind the apartment. I made a fruit salad today with the yogurt we get, already sweetened. We’ve ventured into eating fresh fruit, we just peel it if possible or wash it thoroughly as with the grapes today. We even have bananas! We have oatmeal for breakfast and sometimes for lunch. If I could just find some black beans I’d like to try out tortillas…

The biggest break-through came yesterday when Helen (a teacher in the International Exchange College) took us to this absolutely gigantic mall near the Pizza Hut. It is 4 stories high and full of everything. And all at American prices, so I honestly can’t even imagine how rich some people must be to be able to keep those stores going. Anyway, in the basement is a supermarket of vast proportions, at Chinese prices (read: cheap for us), where Helen took us through aisle by aisle, helping us find: black pepper, cumin, peanut butter (Skippy, but hey, it’s heavenly), tuna, mayonnaise, cornmeal, Lipton black tea (yes, I have unfortunately sunk this low, and am putting Assam tea on my wish list from home) and lest you think all we want is American food, bao tze (known as hum bao in the US), green onion pancakes and a deli counter that stretches for miles. I also found butter, big score. The kids were a little freaked out by the fresh meat still on body parts at the meat counter, another learning experience. And so we are feeling pretty comfortable, trying out restaurants in the neighborhood like the noodle place tonight. Dave is out right now with Mr. Song, who is showing him some good restaurants within walking distance (including a Korean place, fingers crossed for bibimbop).

So now you can see, that although things started out very rough, we are doing much better now, which of course means that all that weight I lost is probably going to come back soon. Oh well. We are adapting and feeling better. It’s a good mixture of home/comfort food and trying to venture out into our surroundings for local food.

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