Chinese stories

I had given up long ago, but it appears there is still hope. Unlike the coasts, which I haven’t visited, but hear have some authentic stuff, we live in a culinary desert when it comes to the good ol’ zhongcan. Nine times out of ten you go into any place and you get the same generic ‘Chinese food’ menu, which offers variations on the following recipe:

1 can of ‘oriental vegetables’

8 oz of sliced meat

oil, sugar, salt, MSG, and brown sauce

stir fry and serve

charge customer $8.99 and give them a fortune cookie

Even making the trek out to Chicago’s Chinatown and visiting the ‘authentic’ Lao Szechuan was somewhat of a let-down. Especially the hot pot, which is either $15.00 per person for a set menu, or $10.00 for the soup base and $4-5 for each dish. We opted for the second and got a type of hot pot neither of us had seen in China and ended up paying more than we would have for the set menu for two.

Unfortunately there is no good way of finding a place with decent food other than going there, asking for a Chinese menu or a ‘special menu’ (code word for edible food menu) and trying something out. It just so turns out that right here in Kalamazoo there is a restaraunt called Hunan Gardens (specializes in Sichuan food, run by Taiwanese it seems, and has nothing to do with Hunan, corner of Main and Drake) that has an authentic Sichuan chef, and some great stuff off of their ‘special menu’ that even beats out Lao Szechuan in Chicago. There are also reports of a good place in Ann Arbor and elsewhere, and our map is starting to take shape. For some reason it seems that one third of the restaurants here have the word ‘Hunan’ in their title, even though none of them have anything close to resembling Hunan cuisine. How did Hunan food get to be so popular here without ever being eaten?

Another search that took us to several asian markets was for the elusive 花椒, the little round Sichuan seasoning that turns your mouth numb, and that I have seen translated as ‘Sichuan pepper’ and dried prickly ash. The local health food store sells a small bottle of it for $6, but it can be gotten in Chicago for a lot cheaper.

We had gone out to Chicago to visit family and to pick up our shipment. The furthest the moving company would send it was Chicago, and with a quote from local shippers of $750 to get it home we decided to go get it ourselves. That included stopping by the Dept. of Homeland Security by O’hare, filling out some forms and getting the Bill of Lading stamped, then renting a U-Haul and heading over to the warehouse where it was kept. After paying the unloading fee and a little extra for the guys there to help me unpack it from the pallet and into the van, I took it away to where we were staying in town. Apparently everything was shipped, but when we got home we found some things that weren’t ours, like 2 boxes full of women’s shoes and an ironing board and wooden rack apparently meant to go to Bangalore, India. I’ve emailed the shipping company, but I have the feeling that they won’t care. I still can’t believe how much useless crap we shipped… at least it all got here, though.

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The front page of the local paper that seems to be ever shrinking as newspapers seem to be cutting back more ane more nowadays featured a book by a local professor on the history of sports in China. Coming out at an opportune time, Xu Guoqi’s Olympic Dreams: China and Sports, 1895-2008 supposedly looks at the questions of “Why did Mao Zedong choose competitive ping-pong to manipulate world politics? How did the two-China issue nearly kill the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games? And why do the 2008 Olympics present Beijing with unprecedented dangers and opportunities?” The first two questions seem interesting, the last one seems like it could read like a contemporary op-ed column if not handled the right way. I’ll have to check it out and let y’all know how it is later. For the moment I’m caught up with popular western accounts of China, as my uncle gave me a copy of 1421 and told me I had to read it, along with the China issue of National Geographic. It’s always interesting to take another look at how Americans view China, even if they don’t get everything right all the time.

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