China: Scratching the surface reveals a new world it’s hard to leave behind
Within minutes of arriving in China I accepted that exploring a land of 1.4 billion people, 100s of cultures, 300 languages and dubious land borders with 14 countries and maritime borders with a further seven was going to take more than a week. But how much time should I devote? China’s population is 18,000 times larger than Andorra, so I could justify spending 18,000 weeks or 349 years. This seemed a little too long, so I plumped for a fortnight instead.
So what the hell IS China? It has land disputes with Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Japan, South Korea, North Korea, Singapore, Brunei, Nepal, Bhutan, Laos, Mongolia and Myanmar and has annexed whole countries such as Tibet (which is at least six times the size of Germany). And that’s before we consider Hong Kong. So for the purposes of this blog I am keeping things simple… I will visit East Turkistan, Taiwan and Tibet on other trips but include Hong Kong and all things Cantonese this time round…
And that decision makes a lot of difference, for much of what we can buy in blighty is actually Cantonese, presumably as it has always been easier to come here from Hong Kong. Our first meal, for example, was from Ruga Bistro which specialises in vegan Cantonese food and hot Hunan cuisine. We ordered as much as we could justify and revelled in the cuisine of this relatively small region. We even threw in one Sichuan dish for good measure — Gold and Silver Mantou (Chinese buns). I think Sichuan food may be a winner as later in the week we made ourselves a delicious Sichuan garlic and chilli dish, but I am getting ahead of myself. Although this take-away left us more than sated, it was nothing like the food I has savoured when in the Middle Kingdom itself.
That night while our food digested we watched Raise the red lantern a classic film about the little known warlord era, when concubines were still de rigueur and they would find out if they were getting “time with their husband” by waiting for the red lantern to be raised in their room. It’s a wonderful film seemingly highly critical of the pre-communist past and yet for a while the Communist Party of China banned it for implying that China still has some problems… Something that the Confucius Institute has asked me to tell you is blatantly untrue. And as an interesting side note, in 2013, the Chinese government employed two million internet censors — nearly double the number of people in Estonia…
But back to food. I bought myself a jar of red fermented bean curd, a mysterious substance a bit like miso paste mixed with marmite. You need less than a teaspoon to flavour a whole pan of rice. Sadly I did not explain this to my wife and so our second meal became a bit of a disaster when she added the whole jar to our spring greens (whilst I was tending to our children who had finally succumbed to Coronavirus). We tried washing the bean curd off but the spring greens could not be revived. The rest of the meal was delicious though… as were this week’s cocktails, Lychee liquor martini, China blue and lychee nut cocktail! Heavy on the lychees, heavy on the alcohol, a delightful way to spend the evening. I cannot, however, attest to how Chinese it was, as we couldn’t find a bottle of Lychee Liquor in China Town and we ended up buying it from the incredible Stirchley Beer and Wine.
Chinese or not, the booze went fantastically with the playlist I built with the aid of one of my Chinese Correspondents, who may or may not be on the radar of Chinese internet censor number 1,546,235. I would HIGHLY recommend listening to the playlist, especially if you have a Lychee Martini to hand. It is my favourite so far. But if you are too lazy to listen at least check out, Hiperson, the best Chengdu band I have ever heard. No doubt their skill is partly thanks to the deliciousness of Sichuan cuisine.
That’s right, we are back to food! Breakfast the next day was incredible, vegetarian dumplings, deep fried dough sticks and torn pancakes from Pepper Chef. I can’t imagine there is a better way to start the day….
…or a more depressing way to continue the day than by watching City of Life and Death the story of the Nanking Massacre, when the Japanese Imperial Army took over Nanking, the old capital of China. To give you some idea of the brutality, the main hero is a Nazi, and you know you are in trouble when you are looking to the Nazis for your moral compass. The film portrays the massacre from the perspective of both the perpetrators and the victims and though some accuse it of being Chinese propaganda and others of being too soft, many say it deals with the traumatic subject well and it certainly helped me to understand the many levels of suffering the Chinese has experienced at the hands of imperial adventurers.
A moment’s silence to remember the victims.
For lunch we headed to a new region, just below Beijing — Dezhou. It was there that I ate the most amazing noodles, or to be more exact, the most amazing noodle, for it is was one giant noodle curled up in the bowl. If you can get your hands on this food you must try it. And you must drink Pu er tea, from Yunnan, and Jasmine tea from everywhere, and green tea, and chrysanthemum tea… For there seems to be no end to teas in China, I may have to start a blog about just that one aspect of this constantly surprising land.
That night our film was Hero, as you can’t visit China without a little Wuxia or Kung Fu. I chose the film as it is set just before the Qin dynasty during the warring states period and because I had loved Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I had hoped to watch more films, covering each generation, but time got the better of me. So I had to give up on watching any early communist films, or the films of the cultural revolution and focus on the fifth and sixth generation filmmakers (those who first made internationally recognised films and those who came out after the censorship that followed the Tiananmen Square massacre). But that aside, if you can only watch one Chinese martial arts film, make it crouching tiger, it cannot be bettered!
And so to our final meal, Jiaozi or steamed dumplings, with chilli and ginger vegan fish and rice. I am going to say this is Beijing food as it tasted a little like something I ate in Grandma’s dumpling shop, but in reality I think you get such food in most states.
Which just leaves me to waffle on about books, I was recommended China Dream by Ma Jian and Kinder then Solitude by Yiyun Li, though I would have liked to have also read a non-dissident writer. I was pleased to have previously read Li’s The Vagrants (which humanises the suffering caused by the Cultural Revolution by showing the effect on just a handful of people) as China Dream treads a similar path. The main protagonist has worked his way up the Communist Party of China ranks, but can’t wipe the memories of the Cultural Revolution from his head. Ma Jian explains that whilst the book is a parody, some of the more unbelievable aspects are actually based on real events, which just shows the paranoid, peculiarity of present-day Peking. I enjoyed the book so much that I have also bought Red Dust, his memoire of travelling round China, but when I will get to read it I cannot say.
Kinder than Solitude focuses on another of the Communist Party’s unforgiveable mistakes, the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, or the June Fourth Incident as it is euphemistically known. The parallels to the Cultural Revolution are striking as one of those who had been peacefully protesting ends up losing her university places and families and friends are torn apart.
It has been an eye-opening two weeks and I am sad to be heading off, even if it is to beautiful Colombia, there is obviously so much more to learn, but this project will already take more than five years and so I must bid a ruthless farewell to China for now.
