While sipping a Thai ice tea this afternoon, I was reminded of another tea using condensed milk that hasn't quite made it to the US. On my last visit to Hong Kong, my uncle, a self-professed connossieur of Hong Kong-style cuisine, brought me to a tiny restaurant in Central to see how "silk stocking milk tea" is made.

To call this restaurant a "hole-in-the-wall" would be enhancing it. It was pretty much a corrugated metal shack in the middle of a busy market. To enter the restaurant we walked through plastic flaps. There were about 5 or 6 fold-out tables in the entire place, with backless stools as seats. The food, simple macaroni soups in light Chinese broths, were typical of the fusion that naturally developed because of Western influence. (My uncle explained that over the past hundred years or so, Hong Kongers incorporated the nonperishable staples of Western settlers, like condensed milk and canned ham, into Cantonese cuisine. I've found upscale restaurants specializing in steak smothered in a sauce reminiscent of Cantonese beef with tomato.)

Ma Jian's "Red Dust", one of the few pieces of travel lit by Chinese writers to find a Western audience. The 50th anniversary of On the Road this week has inspired a flurry of Kerouac- and road-trip-related articles. Apparently Kerouac has quite a few fans in China as well. Eric Abrahamsen writes in the Chinese lit blog Paper Republic that "there are readers who wouldn’t know Hemingway’s beard if it turned up in their soup, but by god they could point out Vesuvio Café on a SF street map."

In an article last week in the WSJ on driving along the Silk Road, Gordon Fairclough writes about China's growing hunger for road trip literature. He mentions Liu Yilin's '"Go the Distance Now," a book chronicling five years spent traveling around China by car." Abrahamsen in Paper Republic adds:

John Pasden from Sinosplice is a designer as well as a blogger. Every once in a while he comes out with a new t-shirt design related to China or the Chinese language. Wear 'em around town and you'll have even more Chinese striking up conversations with you. Visit the Sinosplice Store for more designs. 

Goodfella in ShanghaiJohn Chen and Jian Jiang are two 20-something Scorsese fans who want to spread underground arts through their gallery and retail store Goodfella. According to Chen, the owners "saw a need to provide a positive platform that will educate like-minded audiences with our knowledge and products, to introduce established and upcoming overseas artists, and to push local artists.”

The artwork, apparel, and home furnishings come from both international designers and Chinese artists such as fashion designer Zhang Da and iconoclast Ai Weiwei. Chen and Jiang also organize shows to promote up-and-coming artists and designers.

Goodfella Running Gallery
1618 Nanjing Road (West)
4th floor Jiuguang, Jing An District
Shanghai
+(86) 21-62887189

地址: 上海市 南京西路 Y436-437, 久光YES!馆, 4F, Y436-437

How to order mapo tofuBen Ross, a blogger in Fujian who is best known for his 1-month stint working in barbershop for local wages, has a new site called How to Order Chinese Food. According to Ben, the site is "a comprehensive (as possible) guide to Chinese food geared towards Western taste buds.."

The food is categorized by type of dish and region, with Sichuan and Hunan being the most comprehensive sections. There are short descriptions of each dish, the Chinese characters and Pinyin, and handy bits of advice such as how to order for more or less spiciness. Photos aren't professional, but pretty clear. For readers who want to dig deeper than just knowing what exactly they ate (or could eat) for lunch, there's a culinary glossary with topics like "Cuts of Meat", "Spices & Seasonings", and "Condiments."

"Cosmos Gaudí, Architecture, Geometry and Design" is at Shanghai's Museum of Contemporary Art until October 15th. According to MOCA's website, this "is the largest and most comprehensive exhibition of Gaudi's work to come to China and the first to fully capture the artistic vitality of both his architecture and interior design."

Features include archititectural studies of Gaudí's sinuous Modernist designs, building models, and a Spanish-language documentary of his work.

China's fascination with contemporary art, design, and architecture is just beginning, and will only grow in the coming years. (Hint to universities: now's the time to step up your design programs!)

MOCA Shanghai
People's Park, 231 Nanjing West Road, Shanghai
Tel: +86 21 63279900
mocashanghai.org

London's Guardian has a story on the erosion of China's Great Wall due to sandstorms, or 沙尘暴 (shā chén bào).

After centuries of withstanding attacks by Mongol warriors, the Great Wall is now being threatened by climate change and desertification. In the remote northwest province of Gansu, 25 miles of the wall have already disappeared, because of mud erosion and walls collapsing. Some of the destruction is also directly caused by man:

Ravers and migrant workers using the wall as a toilet, souvenir hunters, tourists scratching graffiti into the stonework, and the constant theft of masonry by itinerant farmers, have all contributed to the destruction of China's most famous landmark.

Conservationists are undertaking efforts to "plant vegetation to prevent further erosion."

This recent CNN report on Chinese-learning in the US is 真可笑 (zhēn kĕ xiào), or very ridiculous and laughable. Yes, it's good that CNN is realizing Mandarin education is a growing trend, but the network could have gotten a better informed news team.

Apparently the Bush administration wants kids to learn "little-known languages such as Arabic and Chinese", so they grow up to forge better foreign relations. ("Little known" only to people that don't know Chinese is spoken by a fifth of the world's population.) The reporter also thinks you need to learn 500 characters to read a newspaper; the reality is closer to 3,000 or 4,000 characters. And being a sensationalistic network, they had to relate kids studying Chinese to "securing a nation in a post-9/11 world".

In late September or early October, Jacob and I are heading to
Zhongshan to spend a few weeks with my parents and my grandparents.
Zhongshan is my mother's 老家, or home town. Since many people in China live in a place for generations, 老家 can also be an ancestral home.

Zhongshan, in Guangdong province about an hour from Guangzhou, used to be a small undeveloped town where everyone rode bicycles. Now it's a large town with new condos, a gleaming 5-storey shopping center, and streets where everyone scoots around on motorcycles. (At least until they can save up money for a car.) Even though Zhongshan has experienced much development in the last 10 years, it is still very relaxing to stroll up and down the tree-lined streets and not be stuck in a throng of people. The streets and air aren't polluted. There is a 500-year-old tree that juts out into a major road, but nobody will cut it down because it's 500 years old.