Cornbread!

Americans visiting China for the first time might be surprised to find cornbread sold in the streets of some Northern Chinese cities. For these visitors, it's easy to forget that cornbread is not endemic to the Southern United States. And yet there's no reason why it should be so limited. The ingredients are few and widely available around the world. And China is no exception. Naturally, Chinese street vendors incorporate their own local flavors into the mix. This example from Chengde in Hebei Province is a great showcase of those local twists.

It is known locally as 棒子面窝头 (Bàng Zĭ Miàn Wō Tóu). Think of it as a hybrid between cornbread and the ubiquitous Chinese baozi. Stuffed inside of the cornbread bun you will find moist cabbage, both salty and sour. If it weren't for the radish taste thrown in as well, you might mistake the filling for sauerkraut. The cornbread itself has the traditional grainy cornbread texture and flavor. It is perhaps a bit less dry than American cornbread because it has been steamed in the Chinese fashion. This is a tasty little snack, well worth a try. Especially for any U.S. folks looking for a little taste of home.

One Year Later

As of last Friday, January 11, 2013, it has been one year since I left for China on my grueling street food expedition. It is hard to believe that a year has already passed since that gray January day when I packed my bag and walked to the Metro station, the first of countless trip segments. I was both excited and apprehensive about the daunting three months ahead of me. At that moment, my most pressing concerns were a) that I forgot something important when I packed, and b) that I already missed my wife. Three months later I came home exhausted and ready to write. It is now nine full months since then, and the question I get most often is "how is the book coming along." My standard answer to that question is "very slowly, but surely." That answer remains an accurate summation of where things stand.  Nonetheless, I thought I might use this one year anniversary to expand on that a little bit and update a wider audience on the book's progress.

The slightly longer answer to that recurring question is that the book is taking much longer than I expected to finish. Here are a few reasons for that:

1. You may know that I've never written a book before. This is my first shot at it, and that means that I'm doing a lot of learning as I go and trial by error. Sometimes those errors result in delays, retracing my steps in order to rewrite things I've already written, and making things more complicated than they need to be.
2. It turns out I am no good at estimating how long it will take to finish a specific section. Something that I think should take an hour or two ends up eating a whole day or two of work. For each individual entry I must decipher the handwritten Chinese characters in my book (sometimes this is easy, sometimes it takes over half an hour); look the characters up in an online dictionary; research the food to learn about its history, check on ingredients and cooking methods, and verify that it does indeed come from the city I was told; write a paragraph or two about it without sounding like all of the other paragraphs I've written (this is getting harder as time goes on...there are only so many ways to describe oily, spicy bowls of noodles with only minor regional variations). Multiply that a bunch of times for each section, and it ends up dragging the writing process out longer than I anticipated.
3. I do have another job. It is not, thankfully, a full-time, 9-5 sort of job. The work comes in three-week blocks away from home, with a week or so at the end for wrap-up work.  I've done four of these since I returned from China, which adds up to three to four months of time during which it was difficult to get more than a trace of work done on the book.
4. Believe it or not, when you work at home by yourself with no clear deadlines, it is incredibly easy to get distracted. Sometimes by reasonably important things (e.g. "Oh, the dishes need to be done," or "The car needs to get inspected today," or "Shoot, my quarterly self-employed taxes are due tomorrow!") and sometimes by completely inconsequential things (e.g. "I should learn how to tie a fancy tie knot," or "I haven't checked the news in the last twenty minutes...I wonder what's happening in the world," or "Hey, aren't there a couple of cookies in the kitchen that I haven't eaten yet?"). (Note: all six of those examples have happened to me.) I recently read that Don DeLillo once said "A writer takes earnest measures to secure his solitude and then finds endless ways to squander it." I can't speak for others, but that certainly seems to be the case with me. It has taken a long time to get into a good and consistent writing routine. I think I've got one now, which means more productive hours in a day, but it can still get thrown off fairly easily.

So there you go. Those are the things that have conspired to keep me depressingly far from the finish line. At this point I wouldn't want to hazard a guess as to when I'll be finished. All I can say is that it is progressing steadily--just very slowly. Put enough of these slow yet steady days together, though, and the book will be done. In the meantime, I'll work on getting some good blog posts up and continue to update you all on the book's progress. As always, thanks for checking in!

Lovers' Tofu

恋爱豆腐果 (Liàn Ài Dòu Fŭ Guŏ) literally means "lovers' tofu." The provenance of the name is not immediately clear when you look at it.

Unless you have a very different notion of love than I do.

One story behind the name says that it was invented in Guiyang during World War II. Air raid sirens were common; citizens frequently found themselves waiting for the all-clear. These long hours in close quarters were fertile ground for two things: love and hunger. Love has a way of taking care of itself. The hunger was staved off by the creation of this dish. As new romances flourished, the lovers ate this tofu, giving it its distinctive name.

Whether or not this story is true, lovers’ tofu remains a popular dish to this day in Guiyang. Other than the name, the distinguishing characteristic of this variation of tofu is that it is stuffed chock full of other ingredients. The tofu itself is somewhat unremarkable: crispy, yellow exterior; very soft, white interior. This relative blandness is probably wise, as the stuffing packs a powerful punch. Each vendor’s recipe for the stuffing is different, but most will include chili powder (typically of the málà variety), ginger, scallions, soy sauce, garlic, and a generous handful of zhé ĕr gēn. (Zhé ĕr gēn is both common and distinctive in Guiyang's cuisine. It is the root of this plant and it has a powerful medicinal taste.) Notice that each of those ingredients has a strong taste on its own. Put them all together in one concentrated mélange and it is very strong indeed. Honestly, it was almost too powerful to eat. Remember that this is not a sauce or a seasoning—it is a pile of these ingredients inside the tofu. Like I said above, you become thankful for the basic non-flavor of the tofu. 

Thanks, tofu.

To be sure, 恋爱豆腐果 is a powerfully flavored street food. And that's good--it's nice to have a strong flavor sometimes. For roughly 3 - 5 RMB it makes a nice snack, the memory of which will stay with your taste buds for a good long while.  Eaten alone or shared with a lover, you can't go wrong with lovers' tofu.

You Xuan

Sometimes the simplest foods are the best foods. Simple foods don't pretend to be anything they are not. They offer great tastes for limited effort or cost. One super example of a simple food is the You Xuan (油旋) in Jinan.

This unassuming pancake is much tastier than you might guess based on its appearance. The dough is made of flour and lard, with a couple of spring onions thrown in for flavor. The vendor rolls it out into a tube, then coils it up into a spiral and flattens it out on a griddle over an open flame. It gets fried on both sides and then toasted a bit next to a fire inside like this:

The final product is a slightly salty coiled pancake, crispy and golden on the outside, warm and doughy on the inside. Because the dough was coiled rather than balled, the crisp edges are not limited to the shell, but follow the outline of the spiral right to the center—a perfect ratio. It's such a simple product, but it really hits the spot, especially if you're the type of person who gets cravings for oily, salty snacks such as potato chips. You shouldn't pay more than about 2 or 3 RMB for one pancake. Definitely worth it for this tasty snack.

Visa Runs to Mongolia

Recently a friend shared this article from the Wall Street Journal with me. This is actually something I wanted to write about anyway, so the article provides a nice cue. Although my situation was a little different than the ones described in the article, the basic facts remain the same: I was running out of days on my multiple-entry 60-day tourist visa, so I needed to leave the country and then come back in to reset the count to zero. (Note that this is only possible with a multiple-entry visa. If you try this with a single-entry visa, you will get stuck in Mongolia.) China shares land borders with 14 different sovereign nations, plus Hong Kong and Macau (which, although part of China, have different visa requirements), so if you need to leave and come back in, you have some choices. Most people go down to Hong Kong or Macau, as that tends to be the easiest border crossing, but I was in the north of the country and didn't want to head all the way back down south. As an American, I didn't need a visa to enter Mongolia (thanks, Mongolia!), and it was much closer to where I was than Hong Kong, so it was an easy choice.

I did a bit of internet research before heading up there and found a number of sites with varying degrees of helpfulness. It may be futile to add another voice to the crowd, but I thought I might be able to offer some additional insight on how to make the border crossing. I figured I could provide some information that I wish I had known before I went. So here goes.

Most people who go from China to Mongolia cross the border through Erlian (also called Erlianhaote or Erenhot). Erlian is a tiny border town of no more than 20,000 inhabitants. Even though the city is not very large, the biggest thing that would have helped me in my research would have been a map. I took the liberty of creating one here.


View Mongolian Border Crossing in a larger map

This map should show everything you need to find in Erlian. Chances are you will arrive in the city by either bus or train. The stations are only a few blocks from one another, and are shown on the map with a bus icon and a train icon. If you are in the center of town, the most obvious landmark is the huge sculpture in the middle of a roundabout marked with a yellow pinpoint on the map. The road running roughly east-west of the sculpture leads directly to the train station, and the road running more north and south heads straight up to the border crossing. It's probably the easiest way to get your bearings in the city. If you are looking for the border crossing and you can see that sculpture, just go north on that road.  If you see signs that say "国门" (literally "country gate"), you're going in the right direction. You should also be able to see a giant rainbow sculpture directly in front of the border (marked with a red pinpoint on the map).

As others before me have written, it's unfortunately not possible to walk across the border. You either have to be part of a bus that's crossing over or you have to get in one of the many jeeps patrolling the city. These jeep owners are all independent entrepreneurs, so there is no real set price for their services. This is the time to use your haggling skills. Most of the sites I have read say that you should count on about 50 - 60 RMB for each trip (if you are crossing the border and then coming right back for visa-renewal reasons, then you are paying for two trips). I've heard that there are places in the city center where the jeeps congregate and collect passengers. Alternatively, you can just walk right up to the Chinese gate of the border crossing (marked with a blue pin with a black dot on the map) and try to find a ride there. The gate is about 2 miles (3 km) from the center of town. This plan can be a bit of a risk because the drivers know that they make the most profit when the jeeps are full, so if they can fill up in the center of town before going to the border, they won't be able to pick you up next to the border itself. On the other hand, if they are already at the border crossing and they need to fill a couple more seats, they might be willing to offer you a better rate since a small amount of money for your seat is better than an empty seat. When I went, I took my chances and walked up to the gate. There were a few nearly full cars there, and I managed to negotiate the driver down to 60 RMB for a round-trip--30 up front and 30 when we finished. With the haggling complete, I piled into a five-passenger jeep holding nine people and all of our luggage. This seems to be pretty standard--be prepared to have no personal space in the jeep. Once you're in the jeep, the next steps are pretty straightforward, if unnecessarily numerous:

1. Drive from the Chinese border gate to the Chinese customs building (the blue pin on the map).
2. Get out, go through customs, go out the back door of the building, get back in the jeep. At this point you are technically but not geographically out of China.
3. Drive from the Chinese customs building to the Mongolian customs building (green pin on the map).
4. Get out, go through customs (welcome to Mongolia!).
5. If you are staying in Mongolia, exit the building through the back door, get back in the jeep, and drive to Zamyn-Üüd, Mongolia (and skip all future steps).
6. If you are returning immediately to China, make a U-turn to the left just before the exit doors. This will place you right by the departure customs desks for Mongolia.
7. Go through customs, wait outside for your jeep.
8. Get back in the jeep and drive to the Chinese customs building (again).
9. Get out, go through Chinese customs (welcome to China!), go outside to wait for jeep.
10. Get back in jeep, drive through Chinese border gate, and get out wherever the driver drops you off.

That's all there is to it. One thing to keep in mind is that at some of these stops the jeep will need to be searched by customs officials. A lengthy queue of cars is not uncommon. You may have to wait longer than you expect for your jeep to catch up to you. Also, a word of advice from my own experience: if you are doing a round-trip and plan to use the same driver, make it as clear as possible with the driver where you are going to meet him. I thought my guy and I had a good understanding, but I ended up waiting outside in the cold (≈ 0° F / -17° C) for about half an hour before another driver took pity on my shivering form and let me into his jeep. I got pretty lucky there, I think (even luckier in that he didn't charge me anything, so I managed to do the whole there-and-back trip for only 30 RMB), but I wouldn't count on that happening every time. Some drivers may want you to go with them all the way to Zamyn-Üüd before they take you back through China. It all depends on the driver. Just make sure it's clear ahead of time.

I hope this map and description helps out some. If you have any questions about how this all works, feel free to leave a comment below and I'll try to answer. All in all, the process is easy enough and takes only about an hour and a half. Tickets in and out of the town aren't plentiful, but they exist. Erlian is a pleasant enough place to spend a night. There are dinosaur statues to see in town and south of town on the main road (some are marked on my map) and I have been told the dinosaur museum is worth a visit. If you are in the north of China and need to refresh your multiple-entry visa, this may be the option that makes the most sense. Good luck out there, folks.

Starfish

Given its location, it's no surprise that seafood dominates the culinary scene in Qingdao. The seafood there is fresh and delicious, just as one would expect from a coastal city. One local highlight is a creature found all over the world's oceans, but not typically considered "food": the humble starfish (海星) (hai xing).

These little guys are dried out, leaving the top rigid and sharp, like armor. The bottom is all covered in unappetizing protrusions known as "tube feet."

So how does one eat a starfish? With sharp armor on one side and tube feet on the other, you don't want to eat the outsides. All the good stuff is safely tucked away inside this fella's legs. The easiest way to eat the starfish is first to break off one leg (with apologies to the starfish). Then, use your fingers to pry open the leg via the fissure in the middle of the tube feet. It should look roughly like this:

See that olive green mush inside the leg? There's your food. It's not particularly classy, but the thing to do now is hold that leg open and use your tongue to dig out that succulent starfish meat. If you've ever eaten river crabs in China, you'll find that the starfish tastes just like the brain area of the crab. It also tastes very similar to the sea urchins that you can find all over Qingdao.

Note that the sea urchin meat is hidden under a layer of egg custard for some reason.

If you've never had the pleasure of eating river crab or sea urchin, I guess the closest way I can approximate the taste is that starfish tastes the way a beach smells at low tide. The texture is soft, moist, and mushy. I'm probably not making it sound very appetizing. But that's how it is. It's no coincidence that sea urchin (which, again, tastes very similar) is considered an acquired taste. I'm going to guess that this is not going to be a favorite for everybody. For the seafood lovers out there, though, it's worth a try. It's a bit more expensive than a lot of street food (you will probably pay between 10 and 20 RMB for a single starfish, depending on how touristy of an area you're in). One other note: it's not clear how much the locals eat starfish on a day-to-day basis. Though it is traditionally eaten in the Qingdao area, these days it seems to be mostly for tourists. For travelers looking to have the "local experience," this might be off-putting. Which is too bad, because the starfish is a unique local treat. This might be one of those times where it's okay to jump on the touristy bandwagon and give it a go.

Couch Surfing

"Please come, my friend." So began the response to the first couch request I ever sent through www.couchsurfing.org. Couch surfing, for the uninitiated, is a new term for a very old concept—hospitality. Through the Couch Surfing website, travelers to an unfamiliar city can find locals who are willing to meet up for coffee, show them around the city, or even offer a place to sleep. It is citizen diplomacy in its purest form.

When I was planning my trip through China, I decided to give couch surfing a try. I had heard about it before but had never been in the position to host, so I never got around to signing up.  On a whim I thought, "well, let's see if they have any couch surfers in China." It didn't take long to find out that China has an active and vibrant couch surfing community. Just to see what would happen, I sent out a request to a couch surfer in Shanghai, the first stop on my journey. Within five hours I had received a reply. The minute I received that reply, I was hooked. In the three months that I crisscrossed China, I spent 53 nights in the homes of 30 people I had never met before. I stayed with Chinese nationals, foreign expats, college students, families with children, retired people, gay, straight, men, and women. I slept on couches, floors, and beds in lavish homes and modest, spartan apartments. Every host was gloriously different and added something new to my Chinese experience.

A few highlights (leaving many out):

• One host was the assistant artistic director at a Cirque du Soleil type show at a big casino in Macau. He was able to get me good seats for the amazing show for a much better price than I could have afforded otherwise, and then I got a backstage tour afterwards. 
• One host's father was generous enough to gift me with an old sweater from his closet when it seemed like I was cold. I wore that sweater every day for about a month (I received it just before the coldest parts of my sojourn).
• One host drove me to and from a different city two hours away just so we could sample some of that city's street food.
• Several hosts (or their families) included me in big traditional Chinese dinners and made me feel very welcome.

There are many more highlights and lots of great stories; these are merely a sample.

Becoming a couch surfer is easy. Registration at the Couch Surfing website is free. Once you've signed up, you can search for other registered surfers anywhere in the world. Likewise, they will be able to find you if they search for your city. New couch surfers often express a concern for safety, which the Couch Surfing website addresses with several safety measures. First, all participants have the opportunity to become a "verified" member. Essentially, a couch surfer can use a credit card to make a small donation to the Couch Surfing organization. This allows the website to verify that a surfer is using his or her real identity on the website. The second key safety measure is a community vouching system. Only couch surfers who have been vouched for three times by other couch surfers have the ability to vouch for the people they have met and trust (the vouching began with the site's founders and the people they trusted, and spread from there). The best safety measure, of course, is that you are never under any obligation to host a person who wants to stay in your home. You can judge from the person's request and profile page (including reviews from other members) whether or not you feel comfortable hosting him or her. For more about couch surfing safely, visit www.couchsurfing.org/safety.

Speaking from personal experience, couch surfing is an exciting way to interact with people of different cultures. As a solo traveler, the free accommodation was nice, but the opportunity to learn about a new city from a local was priceless. My book (and this website) are 100 times richer because of the local knowledge shared with me by my hosts and their families. I joined the community on a whim. That was, perhaps, the best whim-based decision I ever made.

Note: This article previously appeared, slightly modified, in the July 2012 issue of the NCIV Network News.