Thanksgiving with Chinese characteristics

Last week I was walking home and stopped short when I saw some turkeys running around in the street! The only other time I had heard of turkeys existing in China was when a Peace Corps Volunteer had ordered a turkey to be sent to his home in Sichuan from a Beijing business catering to foreign ex-pats. The turkey arrived the morning of Thanksgiving still alive (unexpectedly!) on his doorstep. So imagine my surprise when I saw these turkeys running around just 2 blocks from my apartment.
There were five turkeys. The owners said they raised them for fun, not to eat. But when I went back this week, only three were left, the other two sold to Americans living in town for just over $50. I am not that committed to turkeys on Thanksgiving to purchase one.

Instead, my friends and I decided to celebrate Thanksgiving in China with a frozen chicken. I like to cook, but I don't really cook much meat, especially not roasts, and especially not roasts in a toaster oven. I saw the workings of a disaster in the making. But my friend Jonathan came all the way from Beijing to help. His help came in handy when it came to defrosting the chicken to find that the head and claw feet were still on the bird.
(Sorry for the graphic details). Aside from be-heading the chicken, we had a few minor incidents involving opening a can of pumpkin pie mix without a can opener and blowing fuses by using the toaster oven too much.

We also found a little mini-keg of black German beer for the special occasion. The problem was the directions for getting the beer out were all in German and the process was not as simple as it looked (so we thought). We thought we had to pump the bottom spout. We each took turns scraping our fingers to pump the keg. But only a small amount would trickle out. At one point, we joked that we would be thankful if we made it through the evening with no trips to the emergency room.

I don't know if anyone has ever used one of these things, but.....
The next day Jonathan, determined to get the rest of the beer out of the keg, figured out there was an air hole on top. No pumping necessary. The beer poured out smoothly.

In any case, we had a great dinner. [Sorry, we could not fit the cooked chicken on the table, but it turned out surprisingly well].
It was a fun holiday in China. But I have to say how nice it will be to be back in the US for the rest of the holiday season. [I will be in CO Dec 16 and 17, then Pittsburgh until New Years-you should know how to find me].

Supermarket Surveying

The last few weeks I've been busy preparing, writing, and re-writing survey questions to ask Chinese consumers about their rice-buying preferences. This weekend the surveying started. I got a group of undergraduate students together to help me and we entered Carrefour, clipboards in hand. Five of us hovered around the rice section and stopped people to ask for two minutes of their time.

I was scared, primarily because I generally hate being on the receiving end of such actions. We got turned down, but we also had people who were generally interested and wanted to talk to us. I was generally amused with how people reacted to me. Some people thought I wanted to import rice to my country so I was asking about the best rice. Others thought we worked for certain sellers, in the store to promote brands (this does happen quite frequently and 2 of the rice sellers for different brands there offered to help us out-we declined). And of course, I had a mother who took the opportunity to ask me to teach her child English.

I think some people stopped to find out about me. One gentleman I approached answered all of my questions; in between answers he asked my assistant about me. The conversation went something like this:

• Me: When you are buying rice, how important is the appearance of rice?
• Him: Very important. (To my assistant): Is she here to study or to travel?
• Me: And taste?
• Him: Very important. (To my assistant): Is she Russian? (never mind that he was already told I was an American PhD student doing research on Chinese rice).
• Me: Nutrition?
• Him: Somewhat important. (To my assistant): Her Chinese is good, where did she study?
• Me: Does the price matter?
• Him: The price is important as long as it reflects the quality of the rice. (To my assistant): Is she used to the weather here?
• Me: Do you think whether or not the rice is 'green' rice is an important factor in buying rice?
• Him: Green rice is very important. (To my assistant): Does she eat rice?

And so on.

I'm not completely satisfied with the surveys because there is only so much information you can get in a quick supermarket survey. I know the responses are quite limited and I hope to do follow-up, in-depth focus groups based on the survey results. But I do feel good that I actually collected data. I've been here for a while, talking to people about rice, reading about rice, and just thinking about rice. They have all been very important parts of the research process, but it feels good to have the beginnings of concrete data in my hands.

In other news, China announced greater food safety regulations on Thursday. It was in the news and in newspapers all over the place here. Is it a step in the right direction for China? Yes. Does it get to the root problem of China's food safety regulation and enforcement? No. Am I skeptical that things will get better as a result? Yes. Maybe cautiously optimistic is a good term to describe my reaction. Very cautiously.

Cooking

Two weeks ago, if you would have asked me if I cooked in China, I would have said not much. Its not that I didn't like to cook-its one of my favorite things to do at the end of a day. In fact, I learned to love cooking by living in China the first time. But I haven't cooked much this time because food here is so easy and simple and fast and cheap and good. I can walk outside my building and go in any direction and 20 minutes later I will be full and probably paid about a dollar, if even that. Plus, I have not had a lot of cooking supplies in my kitchen.

Moreover, I am here to study food, so I should eat the local food, right? A few times, I have gone into some kitchens of nicer restaurants to watch the cooks. I tell them who I am and what I am doing here and why I want to watch and take pictures. They don't necessarily have much to offer about quality rice, but I still think its fun to see how Chinese kitchens operate, as I have worked in my fair share of US restaurant kitchens.

Over the past week and a half, however, cooking has kept me busy every night. I've been slowly accumulating more cooking supplies and shopping for new ingredients, and constantly coming up with new ideas of things to cook. I just got a little toaster oven that can bake and roast things. It pretty exciting. Ovens are rare here. Having a double burner gas stove is about as high class as it gets. Now I have to look for baking supplies to do some real baking....

I think I attribute my new excitement for cooking to a number of reasons.

1. Its getting dark really early these day and venturing outside after 4 pm when its dark is kind of depressing. Along with the dark, it is cold and windy and snowy and icy (they do not use salt here and the sidewalks are already covered in ice).
2. I've had my share of oily, salty Chinese food. I feel bad saying this because its what I miss most about China when I am in the US, but its been 5 months straight of Chinese food and I am ready for a break.
3. My friend in Harbin, Melissa, helps me. She does not have a kitchen herself so she comes over and we cook and listen to music and drink wine and watch episodes of Sex and the City. Then we drink coffee and do work on our respective MacBooks and talk about things that geography grad students talk about.
   
4. I just read a memoir by Julia Child about time she spent in France learning to cook (thanks, Abby H!). Reading it reminded me how fun cooking can be. Last week I asked the group of agriculture graduate students I give small lectures to once a week what they want me to talk about next week and they told me they want to hear more about American food. I thought of Julia Child's cooking demonstrations. How fun it would be to do a demonstration! But it would be a lot of work, too so I may have to hold off on that idea.
   

Cooking here is creative because ingredients are not always easy to find. So sometimes I have to substitute things. Its fun and the results are always good. Maybe this is a phase but I think that creative cooking will get me through the winter here. I'm ready for hibernation. Today the official sunset time was 4 pm, which means by 3 the sky is starting to get dark. And it keeps getting earlier. Today the high was 21, low was 0. And its supposed to get colder this week.

But its OK because I have fun research which keeps me going. Seriously, I've had a few people tell me recently that my mood changes when I start talking about my research. Its true! I get excited when I talk about my research. But that might be a problem because it means I am not excited when I'm not talking about my research? I might have to work on that...

Scientific Expertise

I am a social scientist. I study people and social processes. A geographer can be either a social or a natural scientist. Its pretty silly, actually, that the divide exists in the first place (but that is another topic that I am not getting into). But the people I work with at Northeast Agricultural University in Harbin are natural scientists. They study rice quality from a much different perspective. But I work with them in their lab because I am interested in learning about the scientific reasons that make rice quality. Of course, the scientific research is only one perspective of many that contribute to the story I am trying to uncover and tell. It is definitely the most complicated. They tell me all about starch content using fancy words I don't even understand in English, let alone Chinese.

I am interested in the scientific perspective of agricultural production for a number of reasons. Right now I am reading a biography of a man referred to as China's 'father of modern rice' for 'inventing' hybrid rice in the 1960s. His discoveries and scientific experiments came at a time when having scientific expertise was not necessarily the trait of a good Communist. Since the late 1970s when China embraced science and modernization, this man has been a hero (hence having a biography published). There are a lot of interesting connections between the broader political environment and the emphasis of scientific research. I think the emphasis on quality rice these days reflects a change in China, as it tries to produce higher quality goods rather than the cheap goods its known for.

I enjoy working with the agricultural scientists. But I am in this awkward position where I learn from them, but I am also analyzing what we talk about (granted I do this with everyone I talk to on the street who tells me something interesting about rice). I have to take what they tell me as both scientific expertise, but also as a perspective on why rice is considered quality. In other words, I am learning about rice expertise at the same time I am trying to analyze it within this social context.

A few nights ago, I randomly ended up at a dinner where I sat next to an American nutritional scientist from California who studies rice quality. I took every opportunity to ask him about what I was learning from my lab-mates (I don't know if 'mate' is the right word because I don't work in the lab, I just visit). He confirmed a lot of what I had learned and offered his own perspective on different things. I told him how glad I was to have him confirm things for me. But, even as I said it, I felt slightly uncomfortable, like I was reaching to an American to confirm what I had already learned from Chinese. I don't want to dis-qualify what the Chinese scientists are teaching me by asking Americans. But I also want to make sure that their perspective is in line with general ideas about rice quality from those who study similar topics.

In any case, scientific characteristics of 'quality rice' are complex (scientifically and politically) and it never hurts to get more, rather than less, confirmation.

The Next Day

I was taking a regular public bus home from my university today. Its a cheap bus, but its an hour into the city, so they put a TV on it. I enjoyed watching the Olympics on this TV in August, but have not enjoyed it since. Usually its some loud program that just gets in the way of my ipod music. Well, today, I looked up and saw Obama on the screen. I pulled my headphones out and listened. Just then the woman next to me nudged me and asked if that was my country. A huge smile came to my face, "Yes, yes it is!" She asked me if I liked Obama and I said yes, I am happy he got elected. She said we Chinese people all like him. I told her I like all Chinese people.

On a regular day, I get asked on average three times what country I come from from random people on the street, people sitting next to my on buses, food vendors, etc. Today was the first day I said I was American with a big proud smile on my face. They knew why; they told me Obama was 'hard-core' because he's the first black president (most common response) and because he represents the world, not just America (my personal favorite).

I guess a lot of Chinese people rode TV-equipped buses and saw his speech. Or they watched from home. But as I was on a bus in the middle of Harbin and saw his face, I knew that he represents so much more to many more people than just Americans. And here we have the first President who really understands and articulates the position of global inter-connectedness we are in. In my idealistic view of the world, I hope that everyone-American or not, Democratic or Republican or Other-can understand how we need a new kind of leader for a new kind of leader for a new kind of world. Obama may or may not be able to undertake that task, but I think he is at least a starting point.

Ok, after today, I promise not to continue talking about this. I just need a few days to calm down-and to find out what kind of dog the new First family-elect gets.

American Election in China

I knew the Steelers' Monday Night Football victory was a good sign. Just a few days ago a friend and a self-proclaimed 'die-hard Skins fan' told me he would be rooting for the Steelers Monday night. He called my attention to the fact that in each of the past 17 presidential elections, the outcome of the Redskins' last home game before the election would predict whether the incumbent party would win (if the Skins won) or lose. So, in short, if the Steelers won on Monday night in Washington, Obama would also win. A pretty good scenario in my world. The two things I've missed the most about not being in the US this fall have been Steelers football and presidential campaigning. Its in my Pittsburgh roots.

For as long as I can remember, I accompanied my parents to the polls and got to pull the levers they told me to pull. The last election I worked in a polling station in rural Maine and saw children accompany their parents. I hope those kids get as excited about elections and getting to vote as I do. I've been distracted by this election for the past few months. I anticipated this would happen and I had originally dreaded being in China for an election season. What I have found instead has been the opportunity to talk to many different Americans in China about the election. Its been an interesting fall and a good experience to hear different perspectives.

More importantly, however, I have see how China has reacted to this election. When I first got here, people already thought that Obama had won, that he had beaten Hillary Clinton. Then they learned about McCain and the real race. Recently, people have been obsessed with the idea that America could have a black president. They think America is a very racist society and are amazed that we can have a black president. We owe it to them to prove that we can take on this task.

Race aside, I have been coming to China for the past 8 years and have talked to a wide range of Chinese people about American politics, particularly foreign policy. I have seen many people here become increasingly angry, disappointed, and even disillusioned with the US because of of foreign actions. The Chinese are pleased with the prospects of 'Change' in foreign policy with the election of Obama. I know the US has a lot of domestic problems, of which foreign policy may not seem urgent for voters. But what the US does affects the world. And I know that (just about) 1.3 million Chinese are pleased with the election results in the US.

Oh and I should add that just about no one knows anything about the NFL or American football here. But its OK because some things are just more important.

Its Snowing!

This is short and sweet. I made it back to Harbin on Friday and was surprised at how warm it was. My friends all told me the earlier part of the week had been much colder and it had snowed. So when I exited the airport, I was pleasantly surprised. Progressively, its gotten colder since then. Tonight I walked outside to come home after being in most of the day working and found snow. Its wet snow that melts on impact, but snow nonetheless.

Also, I am thrilled to report that China does not participate in silly changing-the-clock rituals. Its still the same time here (despite what American electronics my try to tell you). So I am now 13 hours ahead of East coast time, instead of the easy 12 hours. Its already getting dark here really early so if it got darker any earlier, I would not be happy.

But I am happy to be back, snow or no snow.