Archive for September, 2010

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Can a Chinese person win the Nobel Peace Prize?

September 30th, 2010 by Johanna | Leave comments | Filed in China, Current Events

Liu Xiaobo, the professor and human rights activist who authored the Charter 08 petition that called for democratic reform, has the highest odds to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Liu, who was arrested last June for inciting subversion of state power, was sentenced to 11 years in jail in December. Unless you count the Dalai Lama, no Chinese has ever received the Peace Prize. But considering that China is such a peace-loving nation of peace lovers, it’s certainly a wonder! Alas, China does not think the award will be an honor and has basically said, diplomatically, that Norway will regret it. Deputy Foreign Minister Fu Jing told the Nobel committee director that honoring the dissident will have “negative consequences” for relations between the two countries and was “unfriendly” :( .

How I feel when the CCP messes with the calendar

September 27th, 2010 by Johanna | Leave comments | Filed in China, Life

The CCP has the power to move the weekends. Last week, for millions of workers in China, the weekend fell on Thursday and Friday. This was so that they could enjoy a three-day reprieve from work, when combined with the Mid-Autumn Festival on Wednesday, which being a holiday, cannot be moved.

Thus, we had to make up our days off by working Saturday and Sunday. This means that I’ve been working for two days and it’s still only Monday! Talk about not making any progress. All this makes me feel is beaten. And :( .

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival! / 中秋快乐！

September 22nd, 2010 by Johanna | Leave comments | Filed in China, Life

Today was Mid-Autumn Festival, a national holiday in China. It was also the most gorgeous day we’ve had in a while, after a month of smoggy skies and a week of cloudy/rainy days. The boyfriend and I decided to spend our day off at the Fragrant Hills Park (香山公园), located in the surrounding hills of Beijing. It’s a great place to go for some exercise and clear(er) air, not to mention a view of Beijing proper when it’s not encased in smog. This was the view outside my living room window, to the north. You can see the faint outline of the surrounding hills on the horizon, which is kind of where Fragrant Hills is.

Clear skies on a holiday: Coincidence or government-manufactured?

Anyway, Mid-Autumn Festival, or Zhong Qiu Jie, is my second-favorite Chinese holiday (it was replaced by Spring Festival after I experience it in China earlier this year). It’s a harvest festival, and like how Spring Festival falls on the vernal equinox every year, Mid-Autumn Festival always falls on the autumnal equinox. The Chinese believe that the moon is the biggest, brightest and roundest on this day of the year, and the Chinese love the moon. That is why this holiday is also known as the Moon Festival (at least in English). This is the moon tonight:

Celebrate it.

Yes, this moon is so spectacular to the Chinese, it gets a special holiday. Personally, I did think it looked quite nice. I snapped this photo while I was coming down the mountain, at around 6:30 p.m., so maybe it wasn’t at it’s brightest and roundest yet. I kind of wish I had been at the top of the mountain to see it rise over Beijing, but we had dinner plans. So what do the Chinese do to celebrate Moon Festival? Why, they eat mooncakes!

The reason why Mid-Autumn Festival is my second-favorite holiday.

These are basically mini-pies filled with some kind of paste, which can be made from just about anything. Above are mooncakes I just gorged on with Boyfriend: green tea, white lotus, blueberry cheese, purple sweet potato, something gross with beef (didn’t even touch that one) and a mysterious flavor that was pretty good. Now I feel like a giant mooncake myself. My parents have always warned me not to eat too much mooncake at a time because, well, they’re not exactly healthy for you. Also, when we got them in the States, they were clearly labeled with how many egg yolks they had inside. None of the ones I’ve had here has had any egg yolk :( Nor have I seen mooncakes indicating they have any inside! (It would help.)

By the way, if you’re wondering why it’s “Mid-Autumn” Festival when autumn begins today: Don’t be so self-centered! Autumn begins in the States with the autumnal equinox, but here in China, autumn is like, old news. It started way back in August. And it lasts until the end of October. So, you see, it is mid-autumn.

Weekend fun: Oatmeal cookies

September 19th, 2010 by Johanna | Leave comments | Filed in China, Food I can cook in China

I was going to make cookies last weekend when I ordered an electric mixer off the Chinese Amazon. Little did I know, next-day delivery wasn’t going to be next day. Anyway, it came the day after that, on Monday, even though I had specified to deliver only on weekends. Fortunately, one of my roommates was home.

So now I have a mixer! I’m so tempted to just buy some whipping cream and make whipped cream, or beat some egg whites. Alas, I just used it to make my cookies this past weekend, which, thanks to the upcoming Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day Golden Week holidays, was shortened by the government to a mere one-day weekend. I am working on a Sunday so I can “earn” the holiday later. Is it just me, or do the Chinese not really understand the meaning of “holiday”?

Oh, right, my cookies. They were meh: good but nothing special. A tad bit too sweet, even though I skimped on the sugar (as I always do), but delicious with milk. I omitted raisins because I used granola leftover from when we made parfaits that had dried apples and blueberries, but I wish I hadn’t because it’s not like the apples and blueberries were very noticeable in the granola. Also, I got lazy and combined it with another granola mix with bits of chocolate instead of keeping them separate.

In England, these can be called neither oatmeal nor cookies.

Main ingredients: Granola, sugar, butter, flour — all of which I had on hand.

Special flavorings: The recipe called for a teaspoon of vanilla, which would have been good, but I didn’t want to shell out the cash for it.

Total cost: 30 to 35 RMB ($5) for two dozen. Granola and butter are expensive. Plain oatmeal is much cheaper and probably better for oatmeal cookies anyway. Also, every time I make cookies, I’m always amazed by how easy and quick they are to make. I’ll totally be making some with regular oatmeal and raisins soon.

In Communist China, man eats shark

September 15th, 2010 by Johanna | Leave comments | Filed in China, Food

Wal-mart sells shark!

Rawrrrrrrrrrr.

OK, not my Wal-mart. That would be too cool to see.

When good equals bad

September 15th, 2010 by Johanna | Leave comments | Filed in Media, USA! USA!

This is apropos of nothing.

Coming from a background of both journalism and political science, I am still completely bewildered by how there is so much misinformation out there concerning our political (i.e., social) affairs. I rant a lot about how the Chinese government and media are so adept at muddling facts that it’s almost second nature not to know anything concrete here in the land of cha bu duo and where everything can be right at the same time.

But this, from the New Yorker, reminds me of the U.S.’s own muddy information battleground:

Paradoxically, the very things that made the stimulus more effective economically may have made it less popular politically. For instance, because research has shown that lump-sum tax refunds get hoarded rather than spent, the government decided not to give individuals their tax cuts all at once, instead refunding a little on each paycheck. The tactic was successful at increasing consumer demand, but it had a big political cost: many voters never noticed that they were getting a tax cut.

My problem isn’t with the stimulus, which I know little about (though from what I’ve read about it, it’s been neutral at worst.) My problem is this: In a country that prides itself as being one of the most educated and most inclined toward rationality in the world, how the hell can something proven effective and to be working NOT be politically popular? Or, why are most people so hostile toward something that, at the very least, was more good than bad?

I know, I know: It’s spin. Politicians (on both sides, but especially sinister GOPers) love to jump on half-truths and misconceptions, twisting facts around until nothing constructive can come of them — all to gain cheap political points from a public that believes it has never been more informed, which actually has never been more misled. People are spinning spin and spin that’s already been spun. Meanwhile, everyone’s complaining about the media, how it’s so biased and uninformative. If people would just read articles written by real journalists and experts and not just listen to pundits, maybe they would get a picture of a more nuanced reality.

Journalism schools are (rightly) focusing on training students to find new, better ways to package information in today’s faster, more technologically driven, cluttered world. What they should also teach (and, more importantly, figure out) is how to compete with all the punditry and misinformation being spewed.

Weekend fun: French toast

September 13th, 2010 by Johanna | Leave comments | Filed in China, Food I can cook in China

Better made with challah.

Main ingredients: Bread, milk, cinnamon.

Special flavorings: Honey, which usually sells for 25 RMB ($3.71) for a jar. While it’s comparable to U.S. prices and doesn’t seem very expensive, I do live in a country where things are usually a small fraction of American prices. Still, it’s better than using maple syrup, which goes for 60 RMB ($8.92) here. But, I’m still working on my Jew honey.

Total cost: 7 RMB ($1.04) for eight pieces.

Handicap fun

September 10th, 2010 by Johanna | Leave comments | Filed in China

China, which is not exactly known for its high safety standards, has this to offer those in wheelchairs:

Handicap accessible?

What angle is that? 30 degrees? (Not good with eying angles.) And yes, it has apparently been closed off with caution signs. It does look kind of dangerous.

Last night’s dinner: Ratatouille

September 8th, 2010 by Johanna | Leave comments | Filed in China, Food I can cook in China

Ever since I saw the preview for the Pixar movie, I’ve always wanted to eat ratatouille. Not that the movie really explained what it is, but I came away with the impression it was some sort of lame, poor-man’s vegetable stew/soup that is undergoing a rediscovery. Vegetables — good! Then I started to look at recipes and realized ratatouille involves eggplant.

Ew.

I decided that I would just … omit … the eggplant, but when I was at the store, I got this feeling that I can’t just omit it. After all, as I’ve grown up and moved out of my parents’ house, I’ve realized that sometimes, you just gotta cook with things you always pick out of your food (I’m looking at you, garlic and green onions). But then, after all the vegetables were roasted and mixed together, I couldn’t even tell which ones were the eggplant! Inwardly panicking, I decided I would just … not chew … anything. Which was hard to do.

Alas, whether the end product is ratatouille or not, it tasted great, so I managed to calm down enough to enjoy it. We ate it with pasta and on its own, and I’m going to try the leftovers with some bread later.

Not the movie.

Main ingredients: eggplant :( , tomatoes, bell peppers.

Chinese twist: Instead of yellow squash, which doesn’t exist in China, I used some kind of Chinese squash that kind of is like a fat light green zucchini? Also, instead of normal American herbs, like thyme, basil and parsley, which also don’t exist in China, I used fennel (or something like a cross between fennel and dill) and cilantro.

Total cost: 13 RMB ($1.92) for about six servings. It IS a poor-man’s dish.

Last night’s dinner: Hachis Parmentier

September 7th, 2010 by Johanna | Leave comments | Filed in China, Food I can cook in China

Hachis Parmentier is, apparently, the French version of shepherd’s pie, that I baked in my mini-loaf pans:

Or: Meatloaf topped with mashed potatoes

Pretty delicious, though nothing memorable. Nothing especially French about it, either. So, meh.

Main ingredients: ground beef, onions, tomatoes, potatoes, parmesan.

Special flavorings: nothing special.

Total cost: 40 RMB ($5.91) for six servings. Yeah, pricey. For shepherd’s pie.

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