The oddly familiar: adventures at a Hong Kong grocery store

The results of a successful grocery store shop

Before I left for Hong Kong, I wrote about the many uncertainties surrounding my tenure here, and in the first few weeks I've answered several of those questions. English is everywhere; 98% of toilets are Western style; and although I drink a double-shot espresso every morning in the office, any local restaurant invariably goes the traditional tea route. But until recently the grocery store question remained unsolved. 

I've been staying this month in an apartment in Jordan, a neighborhood in Kowloon (the peninsula part of the city) famous for Korean food, and there's a grocery store belonging to the "International" chain just downstairs. Here's what I found when I went for my first proper shop, based on what I'd normally try to get at home:

Yogurt/butter/milk — Long-time readers of this blog will remember the remarkably terrible time I had with dairy products on the mainland in 2006, specifically a delicious Oreo milkshake in Lijiang that left me with the most horrifying food poisoning that I hope I'll ever encounter. Since then, I've always been suspicious of Chinese dairy, but so far in Hong Kong I've had no problems. Dairy is easy to find but exceptionally expensive here. Still, I've been able to have yogurt for breakfast, milk in my coffee, and cheese in my eggs with no problem.

Peanut butter — I was surprised at how easy it was to find the stuff here. I expected it to be rare and expensive, but it's neither. I've taken to making elementary-school style PB&Js to bring to work on my intern salary...

Deli meats — ... mostly because my standbys, salad and sandwiches, are impossible, given health concerns for westerners consuming raw veggies and the utter absence of deli meat anywhere. See you in the fall, turkey-on-wheat.

Bread — But bread hasn't been as much of a problem as I anticipated. In 2006 Kunming I remember buying "French bread," strangely spongy and sweet hunks of shrink wrapped sort-of-kind-of-baguette, to go with my hard-won peanut butter. Here, there's a whole bread section. It may not be Berkeley Bowl, but it's something.

Veggies — I'm determined to keep them in my diet, something I struggled with in Spain. That means lots of stir fries. So far, I've found no carrots or cucumbers. Red peppers are priced sky-high. So I've been leaning heavily on pea pods and broccoli, plus local celebrities bok choy and baby corn. Let me tell you, non-canned baby corn is a game changer: it's tender, sweet, and flavorful. And bok choy in a breakfast scramble isn't half bad!

Dumplings — As you might imagine, the frozen dumpling section of the grocery store is considerably expanded. I haven't tried frying up the selection I bought, but it's awfully promising. If it were up to me, I'd eat dumplings all day every day, so expect to hear more about this soon.

Breakfast — As I said, I've been favoring yogurt or been seduced by the red bean or barbecued pork bins sold on every corner along my commute. But the breakfast selection at International is still quite good. All sorts of cereals, muesli, oatmeal. The cream of wheat section is a bit of a departure, though. Cream of wheat is quite similar to traditional Cantonese congee, and the flavors, which start from shrimp and get more odd-sounding to my western ear, are proof of cross-cultural marketing success.

Dessert — I'm a long way from home, but at the same time... the dessert aisle of International is filled with Dreyer's products, straight from good-ol' Oakland. Having spent so much of my year this year reporting a story about Dreyer's (news of that forthcoming!), it feels like a little homecoming to see my hometown boys in the freezer and be reminded of how far we have both come.

A Day in the Life

The past several entries have been devoted to my (considerable) adventures in Xishuangbanna but I've now been back in Kunming for about a week and a half and am settled in nicely to a modest homestay about 3 minutes' walk from campus. Very convenient. I thought I would talk a little bit more about my day to day life here instead of the Extraordinary Adventures (although I have my share of adventures just here.)

I'm living with a little old lady (well, she's actually not really old, only 59, but she very much exudes an aura of little-old-ladyness) and her 24 year old daughter in a little apartment with a nice park in the middle of the complex. The daughter, whose name is Su, recently graduated from the University where I take classes and is looking without success for a job. That's a fairly common issue among educated young people here.

I wake up every morning at 7 AM to get to class by 8. There isn't really a sink in the bathroom (which has, glory be, a Western toilet) so I brush my teeth in the sink overlooking the little park. I get dressed and my Ayi (that's the word for "Auntie") insists on making me breakfast. On the first day she made me rice noodles, but although I was polite about it I think she could tell I wasn't a big fan. Since then she's made me oatmeal and, on alternating days, this odd bread stuff and cakes stuffed with red bean paste. I like the paste, but the bread is laced through with this weird fuzzy brown stuff that tastes terrible. I tend to spread lots of honey on it and then eat lots of oatmeal. Lately she's also made me these strange gnocci-type dumplings stuffed with coarsed brown sugar and soaked in something sweet, with what she says are flowers floating around. Every day is a culinary adventure in that house, and I've (of course) never eaten so much homemade Chinese food. They've finally come out and admitted that they're trying to make me as many different foods as possible so that I get to experience all China has to offer. We also eat a lot of homemade fried rice, which is delicious. On the first night, they teased me because I hold my chopsticks wrong, but I've been getting better.

My relationship with my Ayi is very cute. She always has a smile on her face when she sees me (I wonder if I amuse her somehow) and we've gotten a nice little routine down. When I come out of my room (which is modest but comfortable with a biggish bed, a desk, and a closet) in the morning she says "So you got up?" to which of course I say yes. Then she asks me how I slept and what time I got home last night-- when I want to go out with my friends at night to do fun things or homework at a cafe, I take the keys with me because Ayi goes to sleep before 10 and Su, although part of the family really, has her own apartment in the building next to ours. During breakfast I usually (for lack of better topics) ask Ayi what she's doing today-- she's retired and so usually the answer is "not much." She cleans the house, watches TV (Su and Ayi LOVE to watch TV, especially this one American Idol type show where Westerners sing Chinese songs), goes to the vegetable market next door to buy produce, and has lately been travelling to the other side of Kunming to help her younger sister move. When I'm full she'll tell me to eat more until I have assured her that I'm really done, and then she'll usually tell me that I should be wearing more clothes because it's cold out (regardless of the fact that usually it's 65 degrees outside. Actually, the past several days it's been pretty cold and rainy, but that's beside the point.)

I walk to morning classes through our apartment complex, passing people doing morning exercises outside and sometimes an en masse English class (Teacher: "Repeat after me: do you have any cigarettes?" What sounds like 80 People: "Du yu have an-ee cig-rets.") I come back and have lunch with Ayi and Su, which is always homecooked and a great majority of the time is delicious. I've been lucky, because other people's host families have made them very spicy food (it's the local palate here) but they've been very understanding and only chided me gently when I say something is too spicy-- most of the time it's delicious. With every new food they ask me "Can you eat this?" and I finally figured out that that really means "Do you like this?" but that it's not polite to say you don't like something someone else has made for you. Mostly I've been able to remain flexible. They haven't cooked me cow stomach or whole frogs like Tania's family has.

I've been really interested in the cultural differences and similarities I've found while living in my homestay. Some things are very much the same-- Ayi says "Su! Dinner!" and Su responds "Coming!"... only to be repeated thirty seconds later. And Ayi follows me around turning off the lights I forget and leave on, just as my mother does at home. I've explained that it's a bad habit and that I'm not forgetting on purpose, but I still feel bad about it. And then again, the differences are also pretty very significant. For one thing, there's the issue of slippers. One doesn't wear shoes in the house, something I knew before I came. However, one also doesn't wear slippers in one's room but leaves them outside the door. So I've gotten very good at taking my shoes on and off quickly. I've also gotten really good at stairs-- we live on the third floor and that's actually pretty easy in comparison to John's enormous 4-floors and Tania's 5-floors. Glutes get quite a workout here. When I come home at night all the lights are sound and motion sensitive so I have to clap my way up the stairs.

Dinners are interesting in my homestay, too, because we often get into cultural exchange discussions. One night I ended up explaining the racial relations situation (in simple terms, of course, my Chinese isn't that great) in the US. Another night I spent the meal assuring Su and Ayi that Americans don't eat chicken feet, pig ears, tails, or stomachs. "But that's the best part! What a waste!" they kept saying. Su speaks some English, which I thought was going to be a problem because I want to practice my Chinese as much as possible but as it turns out it's just been a boon because she can translate when I don't understand something. I teach her new vocabulary, too, as our conversation transitions from English to Chinese and back, and Ayi often repeats the words too. Her accent, as condescending as it is to say, is adorable. Having the first thing I say when I get up in the morning be Chinese has been an interesting experience, and I've started dreaming in Chinese sometimes, which feels pretty cool.

I've had some adventures in Kunming without the aid of exciting travel. One weekend Tania's host family drove us to a hot springs in the countryside of Kunming, a beautiful and relaxing getaway. Another day they took us to the bird and flower market which actually is mostly animals and plants. That was kind of depressing because they had so many really beautiful dogs that we were not allowed to cuddle. John's family, however, has obtained an adorable seeing eye puppy, so we met our animal cuddling needs there. John's family also has an automated majiang table, and one night his mom schooled us in the art of majiang (I needed a refresher.) I think I can actually play, although I'm fuzzy on a few of the rules.

Last weekend I also had adventures-- on Sunday morning I did aerobics/dance with my two Chinese teachers who are 27 and 28 respectively but with whom I've made friends. I thought it was going to be terrible and conspicuous but it was actually a lot of fun and the gym was way nicer than the one I use at home. It had a juice bar and internet cafe inside! Later that day John, Kailey, and I went and taught English for two hours to 12-15 year olds. We taught them simple games like Telephone and Simon Says and got paid Y150 for it. Great fun.

We're leaving tomorrow for a huge adventure around the province. I feel sad (I'm leaving my teachers and Diana behind) and anxious and excited. The next time I write will be from the road.

The disappearing elephant

Today an elephant lifted me up with its trunk. No, really. I have the fairly unflattering but still excellent pictures to prove it. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Some important things to note about that past few days:

Firstly, I forgot to talk about the Mongolian lunch we got in the village near Tonghai. We were given a traditional Mongolian welcome, which involves an enormous amount of a food, special tables, and a performance by Mongolian girls. They sang us songs in Mongolian, and although there were only 4 or 5 of them, their voices were incredibly piercing and quite loud. The sound of their plain but powerful melodies made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. At the end, we gave three ceremonial drinks of bai jiu-- one was flicked into the air as a sacrifice to the sky, one was touched on the forehead as an honor to the ancestors, and one was kicked back a la traditional shots, for the here and now. It was a very cool ceremony to take part in, and the sound of those voices will be hard to shake.

Yesterday marked the beginnings of our independence. We were rationed out food money; a lunchbox, spoon, and fork for the cafeteria; a student ID card; and a bicycle (which is the most exciting.) Then we were set free. Several of us opted to go with Charles, a Chinese English student who is a program assistant, to the English Corner (where Chinese people go to practice English) near Green Lake Park. First we went out to dinner, where we ate Crossing Bridge Noodles, a traditional Kunming soup with a story behind it. The story says that there was a scholar and his wife living hear a large lake with an island in the middle. The scholar liked to study there, and every day his wife would bring him a lunch of soup across the bridge, but it was always cold. Then one day the wife was too busy to make lunch and when she remembered she just grabbed a pot of broth and some vegetables and raw meat and hurried across the bridge. When she put the fixings in the broth, she found that it was still hot enough to cook them-- the layer of fat on top had insulated the heat from escaping. That's how the dish works too: they bring you a big bowl of broth, vegetables, spices, meat, and noodles and you make them yourself. Delicious.

The English corner turned out to be just a given spot where lots of people gather, and those of us on the program who went were immediately the object of much attention. As one person told me "We can practice whenever we want, but we don't often have a chance to speak with foreign friends." During my time at the English Corner we talked about American college life, finances, many cultural differences between China and America. They asked me a lot of questions I didn't know the answer to, but in general it was nice to dispel some assumptions about Americans. One man, who is of Bai minority descent, told me he had watched over 400 American movies and proceeded to pull out a notebook full of idioms. "I got cold feet," he recited stiffly. "She is so hot;" "You made my day." At one point, when I had about 12 inquisitive Chinese faces looking eagerly at me, I started to feel ominous stomach rumblings. Luckily, I was pointed across the street to a gorgeous hotel with immaculate Western toilets and toilet paper (a luxury here, you generally need to bring your own.) It was basically the best place possible I could have gotten sick.

Sorry to be a tease, but I'm with Diana at the internet cafe and it's very smoky, so she's feeling nauseous. The story of the elephant will have to wait until next time (thus the title of this entry.)