Our Chinese Home

Summer 2000

Tim did a great job picking out our apartment in China. It is too small by most Chinese standards it seems, but as we don't have much here, it is fine and an easy space to clean. I like the parquet and granite floors, the windows are large and off the living room we have sliding glass doors that lead out to a little balcony. The view from the balcony always makes me smile. There is quite a large courtyard and down at our end is a large formal pool that has a two tiered fountain in the center. The two tiers are being gracefully held up by a group of full figured, mostly naked, classic Greek-ish, female statues. All the gardens are very formal around in this courtyard, but there are so many styles it can make you dizzy. Throughout the development there must be at least a dozen different themes, from our fountain to some graceful classical Chinese goddess sort of figures, to a western looking man in military gear on a rearing horse, to several large fish that spurt water in a fountain. One of the things I really like about the Chinese and their style is their exuberance! It is a totally charming and entertaining combination of restraint and total free-for-all!

Back in the apartment, our kitchen itself is a bit like a closet at only 5' deep and 6' wide. What saves it is a large window. Out that window is a very different view. We look out onto a canal and can see the fishing boats float down, and there is a bridge for the four lane highway that goes over the canal. I keep the door to the kitchen closed most of the time as the noise level is high with the constant honking. About half way down the length of the gray granite counter, the level drops down to accommodate a propane cook top which is the way most people cook here. I have a two burner cooker that ends up being at the same level as the countertop which, by the way, is only 31" high. The US standard is 36" high. At first I felt a bit like I was in a child's play kitchen, but now I am quite used to it. The sink is a sort of 'token' sink like one you might find behind a bar and I can't even get our frying pan into it! A standard feature I see in kitchens here is one faucet and that one is cold water. I never thought of working in a kitchen without hot water. It is funny the things we assume we must have and then find we can almost forget about quite quickly. What seems to be the popular thing here is to wash the dishes in cold water and then put them in sterilizers. I have noticed that sometimes dishes are a bit greasy though. Sterile, greasy dishes I have not gotten use to. So, I got a plastic dish pan. I fill it with hot water from the bathtub, wash dishes with hot water and rinse with cold.

And then where does the rinse water go? Down the drain, which is another Chinese enigma. They are plumbed in a unique way. They actually look like afterthoughts to me. Basically they run a rubber hose from a sink to a rough cut hole in the floor. Sometimes the rubber tube comes out though and then the kitchen floor turns into a soupy mess. This was the state in which we found our kitchen. And talk about mildew. Here in the tropics, it is alive, well and calls out to you at any chance it gets. After Tim got some cement and sealed it off around the rubber hose it has been a lot less of a problem. We still do not open the lower cabinet doors unless we have the exhaust fan running though. The mildew monster lives there.

Almost all southern Chinese cuisine is done with a wok or clay pots that you can put over a flame. Anything we would bake they would steam. To find an oven was an interesting adventure. The only one we could find was about the size of two toaster ovens put together and covered with a liberal amount of southern Chinese dust. Several salespeople stood in a semi circle around the appliance and myself looking stunned. Anyone with half a brain could read their thoughts. I was thrilled and quite animated at finally finding an oven and then I saw the faces of these salespeople. What in the heck was I going to do with this stupid thing they wondered. They looked at the appliance and then looked at me. Who is this woman and how the heck I was going to make those doughy steamed dumplings or those soggy mooncakes that have an egg baked into the middle of them in this contraption. I started to explain to Cindy, our Chinese friend what I was going to make in the oven and she was not moved. Tim had been here longer than me and realized there was no sense in trying to explain what I was going to do with the oven. He was very gentle but firm in his suggestion that I just bake something in it for her. Cindy brightened at this suggestion and we moved on to the next phase - making the purchase. No one in the shop spoke English so she asked the price of this oven and told us it was $50. USD. I was thrilled and said fine, great price, let's get it and move on, but there is no such thing here in China. After much intense conversation she told us now it cost $25 USD. I guess she just couldn't resist the chance to try to talk the guy down. It is such a different style of functioning here in China. Their bargaining style, from my point of view, seems to include different ways of insulting the product they are trying to bargain for. They point at the thing they are bargaining for and make the most awful faces when talking about it, or find some little scratch to point out. Conversations seem to get quite intense. But then if someone cracks a joke in the middle of the process, everyone laughs easily as if they were old friends. But then they dive back into the discussion. By the end they were just fine but I was so tense and confused, I just stood there not knowing what to do. I finally remembered the word, or rather my version of the word for thank you, which inspired a few grins, and my friend grabbed my hand and dragged me out.

After a lot of hunting around I finally have a bare bones set of ingredients like basil, marjoram, cardamom, olive oil, baking powder, sea salt, butter, bleached white flour, English tea and herb teas. Finding these was hard work. I tried to find them on the mainland and maybe they are here somewhere, but my thought is that it would be easier and faster to learn all six Chinese dialects. When I talked to Tony, one of the translators about some of these ingredients, he told me flat out that they did not exist, case closed. He would not discuss it any further. It is not real convenient, but there are grocery stores in Hong Kong that carry some western foods. All these stores seem to be the Neiman Marcus and Bloomingdales of the grocery world. They are beautiful stores with attractive displays and they have good sound systems that play jazz and other cool music, but the prices are about twice what we would pay at home. When I first saw the prices I kept asking around for what would be the Econofoods of Hong Kong, but after not finding anything else, I have come to look forward to a new shopping experience. At home in the US, I could set Olympic records for my dashes through supermarkets, but in Hong Kong it is a different. I rarely buy packaged foods in the states but here I find myself wandering throughout the entire store checking out everything as if it was fine jewelry. I find a certain homey comfort in roaming the isles looking at the western labels I used to refuse to acknowledge at home. Pringles, Frosted Flakes, Prego spaghetti sauce, and even the jars of marmite look wholesome and appealing. They have milk, butter, cream, double cream and yogurt which are not easily found, if at all, on the mainland. Any jar not in Chinese characters, I read. Any language that uses the same alphabet as the English language seems familiar and of great interest after looking at Chinese characters. The cheese selection is vast and quite impressive, and Tim approves of their stock of chocolate. I did finally find two stores here on the mainland that carry several western items. These include powdered milk, butter, peanut butter, walnuts with no msg, canned pineapple, Kraft grated parmesan cheese in the familiar shiny green shaker, instant coffee, Campbell's soup, and Ovaltine. I wonder how they got this combination. My approach now is find and collect what I can and then make something out of that.

After I assembled my little oven and costly little jars I began experimenting. Apple pie, pizza, cinnamon rolls, biscuits, roasted vegetables, baked chicken, oven fries and eggplant parmesan have given my little oven a thorough workout. It has almost no insulation, so I turn it and the exhaust fan on, open the window and close the door. And then I enjoy the best part of all -- the smells. I have come to appreciate the value of familiar smells in a foreign place. The people are wonderful, the food, well, some of the food is great. But when it comes right down to it, I agree with Dorothy. "There is no place like home", and the smells of home. We are very lucky in that fresh produce is abundant and all freshly picked daily. In this area they grow bananas, sugar cane, every kind of greens you can imagine, tangerines, snap peas, snake beans, lima beans, eggplant, green peppers, tomatoes, potatoes, several fruits and vegetables that I can't identify and rice. There are three crops of rice a year in this climate. Food is very inexpensive. I got about three pounds of spinach and 4 beautiful tomatoes for about 50 cents (American). There are many little produce stands along the roads, but I like the large markets the best. I find the fruit and vegetable section very interesting and beautiful. There are also stands of brightly wrapped Chinese candies. The meat section I cannot walk through. I have adjusted to seeing many things, but this may be the last. I cook all of our meals. Often when Tim and I eat at the factory people will come over and peer with curiosity and caution into our lunches and ask what the strange smells are. I'm sure the apartment is full of these smells of olive oil, basil and everything else. After we move out I can just imagine the scenario. Some Chinese folks will move in and notice these strange smells and all these little adaptations and then hear that some big Americans used to live here. And they will all stand around and talk about those strange Americans and wonder what their homes are like!