Archive for October, 2009

Belt-busting time fillers

October 12th, 2009 by Johanna | 1 comment | Filed in USA! USA!

I’m supposed to move to China at some point in the near-ish future. Besides finding random ways to improve myself and friends/relatives to pester, I’ve taken to filling my otherwise-useless time with creating things. I’ve turned to my trusty passion, cooking and baking, basking in the white side of me. Oh, how I love producing edible treats of mouthwatering delight. (Strangely, most of the time, my food experiments don’t marbelize into such.) I wish I had been able to cook more while I was in school. Now I definitely won’t be able to cook much or bake at all in China.

A list of things I have cooked or baked since I’ve been home:

  • Spiced apple pie — as American as you can get!
  • Feta chicken with angel hair pasta
  • Bell pepper chicken with feta orzo
  • Chicken cordon bleu with prosciutto and provolone
  • Avgolemono, orzo and chicken soup
  • Smoked gouda and edam macaroni and cheese with chard and salami
  • Coconut cranberry muffins
  • Tapioca pudding with coconut milk

Things to take away from China’s birthday party

October 9th, 2009 by Johanna | Leave comments | Filed in China, Reflections

Nothing like a good op-ed piece and a national birthday to reawaken my pro-China inclinations. The Grand Parade was certainly magnificent (you can always count on China to put on an over-the-top spectacle), but still super dry and hella boring. The only highlights were:

  1. When, during the flag-raising ceremony, the soldier threw the flag into the air (at about 7:35 in the video). That is just cool.
  2. When the all-female brigade passed by, Hu Jintao cracked a smile for the first time and started applauding. Who doesn’t like hundreds of rifle-toting women in blue uniform dresses marching in a unison bloc?
  3. The nukes. On parade.

As for the op-ed, it should provide a cursory introduction to the fundamental ideas behind China’s actions, as well as a reminder that China does have veritable ideals of its own, fashioned from its millennia of history. They force my mind to bend in ways that my mind can’t (much like physics), but only time will tell if they will deliver. Cynics and critics still have a lot to say about China’s actual adherence and belief in those eight ideas (China’s selection of facts, the CCP’s performance legitimacy belies the party-state it set up), but the PRC is just 60 years old. While it has made some very rapid changes and progress in some areas, it remains — almost frustratingly — slow in reforming other areas.