saltislove

bacon in the windows

2012-01-31T07:33:00.002+08:00

We spent Chinese New Years Eve seeing who was around. Popular wisdom holds that most of China's population spends someportion of this multi-week holiday stretching the limits of the country’stransportation system, so it only made sense to see who decided to stay behind.

It turns out we weren't the only ones left in Chengdu. There were also a lot of people who really like fireworks, some chickens notlong for this world, and a lady running errands in an outfit that's bestquality can only be comfort.

Walking around the neighborhood felt very festive. Red lanterns are hanging in front of every apartment building, includingours. And if your home doesn’t have its lanterns yet you can find them at thegrocery store.

You can also find the Year of the Dragon decorations that are plasteredeverywhere.

A lot of shops also have hand-written signs telling you whenthey’ll be reopening after the holiday, some more carefully scripted than others.

There are orange tents filled to the gills with fireworks on mosthigh-traffic corners.

These are government sanctioned and manned bymulti-generational families who nap on cots behind the merchandise. You can start with small items like sparklers and go as large as four-foot tall boxes packed with industrial strength pyrotechnics.

Each tent has at least one bucket ofwater and a fire extinguisher out front, so as long as no cars go careening off theroad and into the tents, we're all safe and sound. This could be why one of us (guess which one) had to up the ante by purchasing his own batch of fireworks to set off later.

While we were out we also bought a bag of tiny mandarin oranges and a green pepper for Shi-Wen’s turkey chili. This didn’tcome from a firework tent, but rather from a fruit shop where I got nipped onthe shoe by a small dog. No one else seemed to notice, including the littlegirl eating oranges out front.

Speaking of food on the street, while walking around we alsocaught a few glimpses of "la rou" 腊肉 drying in apartment windows, like in the lower right below. "La rou" is curedmeat – like bacon – and in Chinese the word for cured meat sounds a lot likethe word for the last month of the lunar calendar (i.e. December). This play on words means that home-cured meat has long been eaten in Southern China to celebrate the new year.

Regardless of this city's magical meat-curing climate I’m still not tookeen on eating pork that's been hanging in a neighbor’swindow for the last month. Or better yet, off their balcony. (And to think, before I got to Chengdu I thought those racks were for laundry.)

drunk on fireworks

2012-01-24T21:50:00.000+08:00

Early Sunday evening – aka Chinese New Year’s Eve – Chengdu’sstreets were nearly deserted. It was eerily quiet and there was an overwhelming sense that something was coming. Then hour by hour, with the deepeningdarkness, the sky got brighter and brighter.

It happened in street intersections and in front of apartmentbuildings. Guys would ferry large boxes into the middle of thestreet, then set them down. They’d stand there for a minute or two looking forthe fuse, and once they’d found it you would see a quick flame and then they'd be hightailing it away from the box as fast as they could because in a fewseconds the box was shooting fire into the sky. And with the fire came theshrieking and the booming and the thumps of the pieces that fall from the skyafter something explodes.

For some of these bursts we were standing close. And byclose I mean not more than twenty feet away from the box. So close that insteadof hearing the explosions, you felt them compress all of the air around you andthrow it into your eardrums with a thud.

There was just one time when a firework didn’t rise as highinto the sky as it should have before it exploded. This was when Shi-wen yelled,“Watch out!” and the giant sparks were coming towards us rather than lightingup the sky. I’ve never been that close to fireworks before and it was thrillingand shocking because it felt so wild. Only when pieces of the sky fell onto myhead did it feel like I might be standing too close.

For hours the streets were on fire but the only time I wasscared was when some kids were lighting firecrackers without paying any attentionto the people around them. Funny how a kid playing with matches is scarier thana city full of adults using them to light giant fireworks. And when I say giantfireworks, I mean the kind that large American cities use for their Fourth ofJuly extravaganzas. But in China you can buy these on street corners and then set them offas police cars roll past. It’s definitely different here.

As we were watching fireworks that were a little too closewe started talking with a Chinese guy who smelled like liquor. He was thrilledthat we could understand each other and told us all sorts of things. He told ushow when Chinese people look at North Korea it reminds them of the way Chinawas several decades ago. He told us how you must support the Chinese governmentnow because good things may happen later. And he said that the AmericanPresident has a hard time doing his job because in the face of upcomingelections he has to please everyone. He noted, with zero irony, that the plansand decisions of Chinese leaders are not hampered by these kinds of concerns.

His views were different – in the same way that ourfireworks laws are different – but the conversation still reminded us of howmuch we are the same. This is because the theme he kept returning to, the one thing hekept saying over and over, was that whatever problems and difficulties there mightbe between America and China, that these problems are between our two governments. Becausethe people, the Chinese people and the American people, like you and me, he said… the peopleof these two countries are friends and we understand each other and get along. Justlike us. Look how we understand each other.

We were standing in a doorway as we talked to this guy becausestanding in the doorway felt a little safer. But even a doorway wouldn’t be safeenough if the fireworks misfired towards the other side of the street. This isbecause on that side of the street, like on every street corner in Chengdu,there was an orange tent filled to the roof with fireworks. The tent was thesource of the boxes that were being lugged into the intersection. Butdon’t worry, there are safety precautions: each tent has at least one bucket of water anda fire extinguisher out front.

At first we had wandered the streets watching whatevershowed up in the sky, but as it got closer to midnight we moved to a friend’sroof and watched the start of an all-out assault. Initially there were a few fireworks here and there, but then suddenly it looked like every corner was exploding andit sounded like the whole sky was erupting. It was magical. Insane and scaryand magical.

We watched an hour of this storm. Watched how when onecorner of town slowed, the other picked up the slack. It just kept thundering asthe smoke of a million small fires smothered the city. The haze made the buildingslook eerie and it intensified the light. The sidewalks and streets glowed likea midnight fairy tale, except that it was after midnight and it was also now anew year.

And in the wake of all the magic, as the booms and shrieksgrew less and less frequent, the street cleaners came out to cart away theboxes that had carried all of this excitement. Every intersection had them, andin the places with the biggest bombardments whole lengths of street were litteredwith them.

As they broke down the boxes, the city got a little quieter. Except that the fireworks never reallystopped, they just slowed. As I write this, two days later, there are stillexplosions and pops and showers of fire falling through the sky. And I’m still running to the window to watch them.

Happy Year of the Dragon!

bright (and belated) christmas

2012-01-23T17:32:00.001+08:00

We wore winter coats at Christmas Eve dinner and would havekept our gloves on too if they were at all compatible with chopsticks. The entire restaurant looked ready for awinter outing, except that instead of heading out to build a snowman we were eating a meal.

That’s winter in Chengdu for you – the weather isn’t just anoutdoors thing. Because of the one-two punch of appreciating the healthy properties of “fresh” air while also believing that heating is detrimental to your health, people here leave their doors and windows open. Personally, I think having your extremities go numb while sittingin the living room is bad for your health, but don’t tell that to ourneighbors. In spite of temps in the low 40s they have their doors and windows open. They also have animal carcasses hanging on their laundrylines but that appears unrelated to the season.

Opening doors and windows doesn’t waste energy orinflate heating bills because people here just don’t use heat. I talked to a university student who told me that university dorms inChengdu are all without heating, including hers. In the north, where it getseven colder, people have long depended on radiators to stay warm, but in thesouth they are very limited. She told me that she is allowed to use a spaceheater in her room during the day but at night it must be turned off. Thesolution: sleeping under three quilts and lots of clothes.

This makes it easy to understand why people inChengdu wear the same clothes inside as they do out of doors. If you dress foran afternoon of sledding, but sit down to watch TV instead, then having thewindows open to the January breeze just might work.

Mufflers, earmuffs and sleeveless mittens are also living along, happy life in China and I see at least one person a day studiously clip-clappingaway on their office keyboard in fingerless gloves. Of course not everyone wears head-to-toe winter gear. Thereare women who run around in heels and short skirts. But before youattribute this to diehard elegance I offer up the following anecdote, which also serves as a reminder that my Christmas in Chengdu is just another day in China.

While we were walking to the restaurant on Christmas Eve, awell-dressed woman in a skirt and heels whizzed past on a motor scooter with a similarlywell-dressed friend sitting on the back. They were moving at a good clip when theypassed, and as they did the driver huskily worked up some phlegm and spit it off to the side. As she did, her passengerducked behind her and then returned to chatting as if nothing had happened.

You get that a lot here. Both the spitting and theseeing things that make you rack your brain for any thought you’d everpreviously given to something like that happening. Usually, there are none. For example: eating clavicles. Never thought of that before, but after seeing this sign on the way home from dinner I thought about it for at least five minutes.

And an earlier Christmas Eve example: while we were eating dinner a man walked into the restaurant holding a pair of very worn slippers.He wasn’t there to eat. Instead, he was looking for anyone who might want tohave their shoes shined while they ate. Surprisingly, he found a woman who wasmore than happy to let him take her high-heeled ski boots outside and shinethem. As he worked, she wore his frazzled slippers and continued on with hermeal.

This December I didn’t meet any locals who celebrated areligious Christmas, but there were a lot of businesses that celebrated their own versions of Christmas. Department stores hung Christmas lights at their entrances, karaoke places put up Christmas trees with Budweiser ornaments, and some of the smaller Mom and Pop shops earnestly tried to capture the spirit of the season but instead ended up writing things like “menny chismas” on their windows instead. No complaints here… in southwestern China anything remotely resembling Christmas décor is good enough for me.

Apparently, young people have also started celebrating theholiday. We’ve heard that they go out for meals with friends, hit the barsafterwards, and then close out the night by running around public squares hittingeach other with inflatable sticks. This practice had become so popular that thesame university student whose dorm room goes unheated told me that her school nowforbids students from participating in these sorts of celebrations as injurieshave increased over the years.

Aside from hitting strangers with inflatable sticks, Christmas in Chengdu looks a lot like Christmas in Chicago. This is mainly because we don’t go anywhere on Christmas Day.Instead we sit by our tree opening presents, eating heaps of teeth-rottingcandy before breakfast, and listening to so much Christmas music that Shi-wen’shead nearly explodes.

This year China also gave us a gift. It made my eyes well upbecause the gift was a bright blue sky that burned my eyes to look at it. Chengdu’snever-ending parade of grey rainy days has turned us both into cave people who can see in thedark, but on Christmas day we had blue in the sky and shadows on the ground. Therewas also a woman in two-piece patterned fleece pajamas walking around theneighborhood. But I digress.

Even though our pajama-clad neighbors have almost certainlynever sent a letter to the North Pole, I'm pretty sure Santa came to Chengdu anyway. Mostnights the click-clacking of mahjiang tiles, the quick-fire bursts of unintelligibleChinese chatter, and the sounds of several people an hour hacking up a lungfight their way into our living room. But on Christmas Eve the mahjiang club’swindows were unexpectedly dark and the clatter was gone.

For once it was quiet inChengdu. And for me, this moment was as much proof that Santa existsas anything.

that last thursday in november

2011-12-13T22:25:00.000+08:00

Thanksgiving is a smell. It’sa turkey warmth that creeps out from the kitchen, wanders through thedining room and then drifts up the stairs. It transforms a Thursday afternoon into something more and in our experience it works everywhere. Evenin China. Although in China the “American Turkey” that's key to the wholetransformation is going to cost you. Something in the neighborhood of $50 for a14 pounder.

We may have been the onlyones on our block watching a turkey transform into a celebration, and ourStovetop stuffing may have come with us in our suitcases back in July, but the day still felt special. It’s also hard to value your family more than when you are so far away that wishing them a Happy Thanksgiving means calling the next day. WhenI called Chicago the festivities were just beginning, whereas our toasts made in Chengdu to happiness and health, to our adventures and our comforts, and to ourfamilies and our friends, were long gone.

So much focus on luck andgood fortune ran head-long into my Chinese teacher’s descriptions of growing upin 1960’s China. The country had nothing to eat. Food became anything a bodycould tolerate so she’d bulked out a haphazard diet with the grasses and leaves hermother had taught her were safe. Today’s most basic foodstuffs were so scarcethat kids had raced each other for a single wild strawberry – tiny as afingernail and cheery red – that popped to life in the schoolyard.

She says today’s young peopledon’t understand what it was like here before. And we both know that I don’teither. It’s been a while since gaunt figures walking along the side of the roadcoming to a stop, collapsing, and never getting up was considered run-of-the-mill. Thankfully.

I'm accustomed to focusingon the goodnesses I have collected along my way… the small lucks and big lovesthat define good fortune. But a glimpse into the list of unfairnesses that havethrashed other people’s lives makes me doubly appreciate my own normal.

I know that’s what everyonesays. But we say it because it’s true.

Oh, the irony – Nanjing

2011-11-21T22:01:00.001+08:00

Nanjing’s airport knows how to make a lady feel special. Whenyou land there, rather than being dumped unceremoniously from your plane ontothe tarmac – where you’d then have to catch a bus to your gate – you actuallystep directly into an airport. After making it through a domestic flight in China (where fellow passengers begin rummaging around in the overhead bins at about thesame time the wheels touch ground) this is no small luxury.

Going straight from the plane into the airport also gave usa few extra minutes of clean air, which is nice because Nanjing seems to livein a glowing fog. And the higher you go, the brighter and more numbing thefog gets. From our 58^th floor hotel room, the ground below lookedout of focus and diffused. If you didn’t look out the window you might be able topretend that you were at some anonymous coast, enveloped by a rolling, misty fog.But a single glance outside and you knew there was no sea and there was noshore. There were just the invisible factories pumping out their industrialclouds.

But Nanjing (南京) is an important place and well worthvisiting regardless of air quality issues. Nanjing literally means “SouthernCapital” and it was first named the capital for all of China in 1368 by theMing Dynasty. And after the Qing Dynasty was overthrown in 1911, Nanjing wasthe provisional capital for the new Republic of China with Sun Yatsen as itsfirst President. Chiang Kai-shek also governed from Nanjing before the city's 1949 “liberation” by the Communists, who then moved the capital to Bejing, whileChiang’s Guomindang fled to Taiwan. It was fascinating to visit the sites wherethese men led China towards a modern history they couldn’t haveenvisioned. And it was equally fascinating to see Chinese tourists walkingthrough these spaces.

We appreciated the irony of flying north to reach the “SouthernCapital” but we were a little less enthusiastic about the irony in eatingJapanese ramen our first night there. We were tired and bleary eyed and onlymidway through our late evening meal did we make the connection between thecuisine and the memorial hall we would visit the next day. Nanjing was the siteof the 1937 Nanjing Massacre (also known as The Rape of Nanjing) when Japanese troops killed over 300,000 residentsand raped more than 20,000 women after invading the city. Thememorial hall is extremely moving and its English language signage is measured inits presentation of a horrific series of events. The only unsuccessful aspectof the visit was our being culled from the crowd based on our looks and made tolog our citizenship in a small notebook off to the side of the main entrance. Therewas no introduction and no invitation – a guard pointed at us and then pointed towardsa notebook. Some might find irony in this as well.

We crammed a lot of sightseeing into one day and afterwalking through the Presidential Palace and grounds, exploring the14^th century Ming Palace ruins, cresting 600 year old city walls,eating a lunch of random pastries from the Commune Café, and experiencing the emotionallyheavy memorial hall, we were exhausted and ready to sit down to a goodmeal. Our only other break in the day had come via a brief and surreal visit toStarbucks. They had the red holiday cups and the Christmas music, but they alsohad a sign in the bathroom saying: “For your safety please do not squat on thetoilet seat.”

Nanjing is near Shanghai and like that city is known for itssoup dumplings. These, in turn, are notorious for being all about the moltenbroth inside – making them both terribly difficult to eat and yet something thatmust be eaten immediately to be properly enjoyed. So for our dinner we bumbledour way through two kinds of lava-filled dumplings, one bursting with a saltyand savory crab stew and another that was little more than a quivering soupholder. Both varieties suffered moderate tosevere losses as we used our chopsticks to prod, position, and pivot thefragile orbs in the general direction of our mouths. Delivering all of thebroth to its intended destination may not have happened (dumpling skin is moredelicate than it looks) but the fact that we emerged from the meal burn-freemade it an unqualified success.

Another success was finding a street that the concierge’sdirections had clearly meant for us to avoid. It was slender and vivid and filledwith the narratives of real life. Friends played pool in the street andchildren slept in the cramped spaces behind storefronts. Curtains fluttered throughopen doors revealing skimpily-clad women waiting behind, and the noise of mah zhong clattered from tables set out in smoky rooms.

Visiting Nanjing was also a reminder that this country isone big time zone. We’re so used to waking up in the dark of southwesternChengdu, that opening the curtains to a bright (yet still early) Nanjing morningwas an unexpected pleasure.

These simple differences have a way of showcasing how much your worldhas changed more than any national landmark or presidential palace ever could. It’s becausethese are the markers you grow used to over time…the way the world looks from your bedroom window, the sense you gain fortelling time based on where the sun hits the wall… these are the rhythms of days and weeks andmonths, and with enough time they accrue into a life. Or at least a few years inChina.

吃辣的吗？(Do you eat spicy food?) – Hangzhou

2011-11-06T09:07:00.001+08:00

It took traveling across China for me to realize that without anyeffort on my part I have acquired a Chinese geographic pedigree. My life heremay be temporary, and my Chinese spotty, but when I tell people that Ilive in Chengdu their eyes light up. I have given them something that needs noexplanation. It’s a recognizable background they can wrap around me and allof my foreignness. Being “from” Sichuan (the province of which Chengdu is the capitol) gives us all something to talk about.

So during my week-long stay in Hangzhou, a city far, far away from Chengdu on China’seastern coast, when I would tell peoplethat I live in Chengdu they would immediately focus on the quality thatdistinguishes the Sichuanese apart from their compatriots: the food. Each would ask: 吃辣的吗? Do you eat spicy food?

And it wasn’t just idle chitchat. They really wanted to knowhow my western palette was weathering Sichuan’s famous chili storm. I told themI love it and that I’m used to it now. And then I stopped myself from askingthem where Hangzhou’s flavor went.

Not to say that Hangzhou isn’t a great city. It is. Being lessthan an hour from Shanghai it shares that city’s modernity and flair.Hangzhou’s streets are teeming with fashionable folks and there are options forkilling time in fashionable ways – shopping, snacking, drinking. Chengdu hasthese things too. It’s just that Hangzhou has way more of them. (And they’rebetter dressed.)

And I hope I’m not betraying my Chengdu home when I also add that Hangzhouhas fewer people spitting, fewer folks out on the town in fleece pajamas and/orfuzzy slippers, and fewer children using the sidewalk as a commode. That beingsaid, I also had a hard time finding anyone playing mah jong. Spend a minute in Chengdu andyou’ll discover that the clicking of mah jong tiles is the background music for daily life -- a life that unrolls in a more traditional, and relaxed, atmosphere.

However, even with its western stylemodernity, Hangzhou still teems with one of modern China’s most intriguingcalling cards – the art of juxtaposition. Alleys still have those “hot peppers hanging next to a bra and socks” kind of moments thatI love about this country.

Hangzhou’s most famous site is Xi Hu, or West Lake, and it’sthe kind of place that punches China’s reputation for rampant pollution andugly sprawl smack in the face. Its beauty is on par with Lake Como – with layers ofhills cracking the background behind sprawling and gentle waters. Along thelake’s edges are small pagodas, and bridges, and a bustling park full ofattention hounds demonstrating their singing, dancing and strumming. I’ve alsoheard that there are more than a few Starbucks in walking distance – as sure asign as any of a hopping metropolis.

I stopped to talk with a few people in the park and mostwere visitors from other parts of China. Their main observation was that theair in Hangzhou was cleaner and clearer than where they live. I don’t know ifthis is a credit to Hangzhou’s excellent air quality, or a nod to the fact thatmost of China lives under unrelenting smog.

Regardless, everyone seemed to be enjoying a beautiful dayat the lake except, perhaps, for a man who seemed to be the only local whocouldn’t carry a tune. He was singing along with a group of musicians under aweeping willow and he was forcing the group to repeat a part of the song wherethe rhythm was escaping him. I hadn’t realized anything was wrong until one ofthe musicians took it upon himself to sing the part. The musician’s voice, and hisrhythm, and the beauty of the song… that was the way it was meant to be sung.You could feel it.

The only problem is that after the musician was done perfectlysinging the part, the other guy gave it another try. And another. And thenanother. After each unsuccessful go, the musician would patiently re-sing therefrain with the correct rhythm and the correct notes. And each time the manwould charge ahead and blunder it up all over again. At first it was a charmingand quirky interchange, but after five minutes I think we were all ready toswitch to an instrumental.

I’m not sure that I’ve identified what makes Hangzhou’s cuisine special but we certainly ate well while we were there. There was a chicken that had been cooked in mud and tasted of anise. Hunks of meat with fatty robes. Seafoods in soups and sauces and shells. And a dessert coated in syrup that tasted of caramel and molasses.

And the funny thing is, a Sichuan dish was included atalmost every meal I had in Hangzhou. Each dish was an honest approximation ofSichuan food but lacked the real heat and thrum that I have come to expect frommy food. Seeing Sichuan food from the outside – seeing it from a dinner table faraway from the actual place – really hammered home the realization that this foodis special. And that it is even more special in Sichuan.

So thank you Hangzhou. Thank you for being a city I wouldlove to live in, and thank you for being a city that has deepened myappreciation for where I live now.

grey summer

2011-10-12T20:15:00.001+08:00

dim sum and then some

2011-09-30T22:32:00.003+08:00

From left to right: Marinated black fungus with chili and black vinegar sauce, Steamed shrimp dumpling with leek and mushroom, Barbecued pork with honey sauce. (Click on image for larger view.)

The things people say about China aren't entirely untrue. The madness of it... the rushing, the running, the yelling and the spitting... It's all there and it clutches you in a crushing bear-hug from day one. In the beginning it's exhilarating. Everything you've never seen before keeps rushing past, and your senses prickle and come alive in response.

But when the crush doesn't stop, when the stranglehold of excitement and stimulation just doesn't let go, you start to understand the value of it all falling away. You look for those few moments when the spitting stops, when pausing to catch your breath doesn't set you in the sights of the next distracted driver.

From left to right: Steamed glutinous rice roll with shrimp and yellow chives, Marinated mini cucumber with garlic and sweetened black vinegar, Baked shredded white radish puff pastry, Deep-fried shrimp and peach roll wrapped with rice paper. (Click on image for larger view.)

These gentle spaces are rare but they can be found. And when they involve food, they are the best kind of moments. Because serenity makes food taste different. It makes meals lighter, brighter, almost delicate. It is a different kind of eating -- not at all reminiscent of the messy passion that comes with street food, or the fire and joy that burns in small kitchens tucked into great neighborhoods. But it is still it's own kind of wonderful.

Chengdu's Shangri-la Hotel (which in Chinese sounds a lot like Shang Guh Li La) has a bright, open space, the Shang Palace Restaurant, where I have yet to see -- or hear -- anyone start to hack up a lung, let alone spit it out. And in addition to the smooth quiet it also promises fantastic dim sum.

From left to right: Braised diced chicken and bean curd with salted fish in clay pot, Glutinous rice with chicken, BBQ pork and mushroom wrapped in lotus leaf, Poached chicken with scallion and fresh green Sichuan pepper in shallot oil and soya sauce. (Click on image for larger view.)

Order whatever you want. And do it over and over because this is what brunch is about. Mixing the savory and the sweet. Looking for that mix that says "it's almost too late for breakfast but still too early for an afternoon nap." Three bites of custard tart for every two bites of shrimp dumpling.

From left to right: Baked egg tartlet with milk, Chilled sago cream with pomelo and mango, Steamed egg custard bun, Fresh fruit. (Click on image for larger view.)

Last weekend we sat at a table by the window and ate our way to a perfect start of a Saturday. And the best dish? The steamed egg custard buns. Each white puff at its center hid a bright yellow magic that tasted like cake batter. Sweet and sticky and a little bit salty.

These are the foods that can make a weekend even better... and the feeling lingers even after you return to the cacophony of the real world. (At least for a few minutes.)

wayward dog, returned

2011-09-28T20:44:00.000+08:00

chengdu morning

2011-09-21T07:08:00.000+08:00

At a certain point in Chengdu's early hours,the street sweepers and sidewalk cleaners put on their slippers and come out to clean. They use brooms fashioned from rigid sticks or driedstraw, and in the pre-dawn darkness theirrhythmic swish-scratch corrals the leaves and trash into piles, and dragsmidnight puddles to faraway drains.

The sweeping, like so much city static, fails to raise the city's night watchmen from their slumbers. They slump at building entrances inrumpled uniforms, often in two’s, their heads cushioned in crooked elbows, orchins resting on chests. Each of them sleeps the sound sleep of those whocannot be fired.

And under long stretches of overpass, men and women crouch beforeshort towers of newspapers, using the yellow haze of street lamps to guide theirfolding and prepping. Soon they will stand up, stretch their legs, and pile thenewspapers at the foot of their electric scooters, quietly sliding away towherever it is that awaits their delivery.

In this spartan traffic, early commuters will hold conversationsacross moving scooters, keeping an even pace and staying close enough that theirvoices can be heard across the space. Street vendors will set up their weighty dumplings and their warm soymilk andthe woks of fry oil they’ve suspended on bicycle frames, waiting for the schoolkids and the taxi drivers to roll past for breakfast.

And as the city wakes I will be running through, wonderingif the dark humid skies will again open up with rain.

rabbit scooter, plastic-wrapped

2011-09-20T21:40:00.001+08:00

dust and mala (麻辣)

2011-09-18T12:12:00.000+08:00

Some of the best places are the ones you will never find on your own. They evade happenstance and luckyturns. They are places that need an introduction, that requiresomeone who knows the way.

In Chengdu, these places can be warehouses clogged withold Chinese furniture. And getting there requires a friend who already knows whereto turn off the highway and when to start driving the wrong way down a side road.

We arrived to sprawling landscapes of old woodenstuff. Row upon row of furniture, with the clunky pieces pooled at the bottom and thewispy stuff all piled on top. We passed armoires and chairs and intricatewooden screens; shuffled through dirt and dodged raindrops sneaking through the ceiling.

Wedid our best to see past the dust, and when it was so thick that it smotheredall imagination we licked a finger and dredged it through the powder to seewhat was hiding beneath. And the thing to know before you fall in love with anyof it is that the dust moves aside but the prices don’t budge.

After you pay too much for that thing you found, you shouldeat because all of that exploring can leave one famished. So our friend took us to a small place that serves spicy wonton soup. It’s the mala (麻辣) kind of spice which means that it makes your lips thrum, drenching yourmouth in a numbing buzz that all the orange soda in the world can’t take away.And damn, it’s good, but if you’re being honest you might say it could usejust a touch of salt.

At one point in our meal, a man set up a hill of ground pork and wonton skins on the table next to ours and started crafting fresh wonton. Ignoring the half-moons of dirt under his nails it felt like the right way to eat. Real food puttogether with real hands. Wonton folded with just the right crook.

There’s a rhythm to it and the man was two times as fast asthe woman who occasionally joined in. For every two he made, she'd make one. Butat one point he answered his cellphone and his pace slowed. It could have been her chance to catch up, but she didn't. She had to serve the customers and someone had ordered two more bowls of numb.

good girl

2011-09-17T22:52:00.000+08:00

real dog, confirmed

2011-09-15T17:03:00.000+08:00

mooncakes: by any other name...

2011-09-12T18:23:00.000+08:00

If you focused on the name alone, mooncakes would befairytale sweets. They sound ephemeral and delicate and something like happily ever after.They sound petite or perhaps enormous. Maybe lighter than air. It’s the kind ofname that makes you wonder what pastry miracle this cake might be. But for allof the wondering, and extravagant imaginings, mooncakes are something else.

This year China celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival（中秋节）onSeptember 12. This holiday is related to the autumn equinox and the rhythmsof agrarian life, and it occurs when the moon is at its fullest and brightest. Becauseof the intricacies of the Lunar Calendar the date of the holiday changes annually,but what never changes is that this is the day of the mooncake. They are meantto be eaten with family as you appreciate the beauty of the moon, and they are anintegral part of the celebration.

The first thing to know about mooncakes is that they are notcakes in the western sense. They are something small and singular and special,and for newcomers like myself they elude a clear and concise description. This is because they can be many things. They can be sweet and they can be savory.They can be soft and they can be firm. And most confusing, they can be all ofthese things at once.

We had a small collection of mooncakes in our house so wethought it only fitting to celebrate our first Mid-Autumn Festival with adecidedly amateur, and hopefully educational, mooncake tasting.

(Mooncakes reviewed left to right)

Our favorite

It’s a rabbit! In honor of the Year of the Rabbit, Starbucksproduced this cuter than average variety. The Starbucks folks told me it’shazelnut flavor but we think it’s more like chocolate, coffee and caramel. The texture is like biting into a hunk of marzipan or really solid mashed potatoes.

Split personality

There’s an egg yolk at the center of this mooncake. It tastes salty and meaty but is coated with a sweet gel. It’s sort of like eating toast and jelly, and a hard-boiled egg all at the same time. I just wish it would choose a side.

Easiest to eat

The daintiness of this mooncake means that it’s not as intense, oras much like a hockey puck, as some others. It has a delicate figgy sweetness.

Best for beginners

This lotus mooncake is sweet and a little mysterious, with hidden notes of honeydew. Nothing chewy. Nothing salty. Just a whole mess of sweet.

Least surprising

Starbucks says it's blueberry macadamia flavor. Wethink it tastes like blueberry and coffee and caramelized sugar, and it has thesame texture from surface to center. It’s basically a soft chewable hockeypuck. The flavors are sweet and identifiable to the western palette but stillnot as sweet as candy or birthday cake.

Still speechless

This mooncake has the consistency of Play-Doh and is burstingwith chewy dried meat. It smells like anice and is reminiscent of the aroma in Taiwaneseconvenience stores. Bottom line: It’s pretty disconcerting to run into saltymeat strings when chewing through an otherwise sweet mass.

Let’s call it “just ok”

Could be lotus. Could be something else. It’s sweet with an odd tendril of an even sweeter musky flavor. If I didn’t know better I'd say there was a touch of circus peanut in there somewhere.

Leave it to the experts

There’s a really meaty egg yolk at the center that's been dried out and intensified. The texture is off-putting, at times hardand dry, at other times flaky and chewy. It’s encased by that generically sweetgel all mooncakes seem to have, but it continues to be meaty tasting at the same time.Pretty intense.

Most flavor fighting

The inside is crunchy with grains, but the sweet gel and thegrains are duking it out. The grains want to taste like fields and farms,but the gel stills wants to be cake and sweet. Lacking harmony.

Birthday worthy

My Chinese teacher spent a lot of time telling me how muchshe loves ice cream mooncakes so we hunted down a place where they hadn't soldout yet. This led us to Haagen Dazs and their exorbitantly expensive versions. Theverdict: They're not mooncakes, they’re ice cream coated in chocolate. Andthey’re awesome – especially when your other options involve dried meat and eggyolks.

same old new

2011-09-11T14:30:00.000+08:00

Adjusting to a new place is always a dance between the good and the bad. It’s about discovering how much you really like this, only to get slapped in the face by how much you hate that. Back and forth. Happy and hating. The main issue being that everything is different. All of it.

Take language. In a new place you can lose the ability to represent who you are via the spoken word. You find your voice lacks nuance and rhythm, and the things that come out of your mouth will never be confused with the perfect songs of sentences you used to love to say. You are well aware that saying, “This food is good” makes you sound like a second grader, except that unlike your standard Chinese second grader, you can’t even name the vegetables on the table.

And shoes? Even though you live with 1.3 billion other people who all need shoes – and who also produce the rest of the world’s shoes – there are no shoes in your size. (Or at least no women with feet as big as yours.)

The water? Don’t drink it. If you use it to wash your vegetables – along with soap because you really don't want to know how they fertilize crops in China – then after washing your vegetables with tap water, you have to wash them again with distilled water to wash off the tap water. Yes, I said wash off the water.

As for crossing the street? The walk sign says it’s your turn but don't be fooled. China's drivers have unanimously agreed to disagree on the rules of the road. So don't put a foot past the gutter until you've done an Exorcist-esque head spin to assess the likelihood of being run down. Look for trucks, bicycles, buses. And thousands upon thousands of deathly silent electric scooters.

Make sure there isn't a delivery truck barreling down the sidewalk or a taxi short-cutting its way up the wrong side of the road. And you wouldn't naturally worry about this, but you should also look out for drivers ignoring their own red light in order to turn left and force their way through oncoming traffic – from the far right lane.

Amidst all of the new there is one thing that survives on the idea of staying the same: Starbucks. If you buy enough coffee (or if your awkward Chinese draws enough attention while you're there) there will come a day when the folks who make your mocha will see you coming and already know your order. And when they ask if you want your usual – that drink you could find in Seoul, and then went on to order in Washington, D.C., and now drink right here in Chengdu – it makes things feel a little bit normal. The no shoes and the don’t drink the water and the sounding like a second grader all take a back seat to the fact that this place is becoming your home. And you like it.

At least until you have to cross the street.

glow, market stall

2011-09-07T21:38:00.000+08:00

spectator sport

2011-09-02T20:39:00.000+08:00

火锅 is hot pot

2011-08-31T18:36:00.000+08:00

Hot pot is exactly what it sounds like, but it's also much better than it sounds. Hot is the spice and the food and the oil and the air. Hot is your skin and your throat and the eel after it cooks. Pot is the container sitting in the middle of your table, with its contents boiling and rolling and making everything better. And it is beloved here in Chengdu.

Maybe it’s eating oil-boiled food straight out of the pot in August, and maybe it’s the spice, but eating hot pot makes you sweat. It's also all about the thrill of the chase, spelunking around in spicy broth using chopsticks and ladles and serrated spoons to find all of the things you’d dropped in earlier.

The hardest part is keeping yourself from eating the items that need more time to cook – the lotus root that given time will become soft and chewy, the quail eggs whose insides melt into orbs of molten yolk if you can wait. But at the same time you should hurry up and get at the pieces that are ready much more quickly, the thin slices of meat and the sheets of tofu skin. It’s both hard to wait and hard to know. And it’s hard to catch every bit of Sichuan pepper before it sneaks onto your tongue and the numbness sets in.

What you drop in the pot to soak up the spice is up to you. There were pork & coriander meatballs presented on cucumber slices. And there was eel… it came to the table fresh and horror-show-bloody but when it came out of the pot it had been transformed into something so good and rich and right. It was instantly something we’d order every time.

But one of the things we’d ordered, a sort of thick rice noodles, just never turned up – except on the bill. We pointed this out to the server and then like clockwork another server came over and produced the missing dish from thin air. (Actually she found it on the lowest rung of a small stand next to our table.) It was strange to discover the missing dish hiding like that when all of the others had been so dramatically delivered to our table or even dumped into our pot by a server. So in a sort of ultimate Chinese test, where a passing grade would mean a whopping $2 off of our bill, we told the server what we thought.

And we passed the test. Not only did they take the rice noodles off of our bill, but we received a very educational explanation about why the noodles had never made it onto our table in the first place. Something about how Server 1 had put the noodles on the shelf but had neglected to tell Servers 2, 3 or 4 that they were there. Naturally this would be a problem in a restaurant where one person is assigned to bring an item near the table, another puts it onto the table, still another dumps it into the pot, yet another swoops in to remove the empty plate, and 16 others circle at all times just to keep the air moving. Not that we begrudge the breeze. Like I said, hot pot makes you sweat.

neon, with pup

2011-08-29T23:00:00.001+08:00

welcome to our home

2011-08-28T18:18:00.000+08:00

In Chengdu there's a magical apartment full of chili oil and fresh vegetables, tofu chunks and fire. It's easy to walk past and not know that you have a standing invitation to visit. That you're welcome to come in and eat at their table.

This is a place that people tell friends about in near whispers. As in, don't tell a bunch of other people because then the retired couple that runs this little restaurant - and lives here - might be overwhelmed and then our favorite lunch place won't be the same.

This husband and wife have a flow in the kitchen. And with the kitchen being a small stretch of a place there's not much room to stray from the plan, which seems to be to take the fresh things that line the shelves and turn them into wonders.

I want to spend more time watching them in the kitchen. Watching the way the wife preps the ingredients and lines them along the windowsill. The way the husband takes them in a certain correct order and uses two woks and fire to make them delicious.

At one point, as I watched the husband cook, the chili had so overcome our shared cloud of breath that I choked back a cough, afraid to insult the finished product by seeming weak. Truly, each and every dish they turned out was worthy of appreciation.

We ate in an outside patio, under a loose tent. Accompanying our group were vats of chili pickle baking in the August sun and an oscillating fan. Each time the breeze from that fan made its way back to me, my heart nearly skipped a beat. Each time I ate a bite of the food, it skipped two.

foundation

2011-08-27T10:29:00.000+08:00

miracle in chinese

2011-08-25T19:40:00.001+08:00

I called the restaurant with my cell phone. I told the person who answered that I wanted these three things. I said I would pick them up. Then I went to the restaurant and picked up my order. It had these three things.

before the bread fell on the ground

2011-08-21T21:17:00.000+08:00

mystery breakfast

2011-08-20T13:04:00.000+08:00

This dumpling has something to do with vegetables. We know that because last Sunday morning when we said the Chinese word for vegetables to the lady behind the wall of steaming baskets, she pointed at the steaming basket with these dumplings inside. Then she packed some into a wimpy plastic bag.

The dumplings were awesome. Soft and savory. As for the actual ingredients, that's a real mystery. But it always is. Under ideal mealtime circumstances we're usually working with a best guess level of understanding. At worst we discover a secret Santa level of surprise. As long as you're free of allergies and not a vegetarian it usually works out ok.

summer chat, on yellow

2011-08-19T12:49:00.003+08:00

learning

2011-08-18T09:14:00.002+08:00

We were taught how to play mahjong (麻将) a few weekends ago and it was fairly straightforward: memorize the pieces and what they’re called, learn how to arrange them in the proper groups. I can recognize and remember the pieces. And I know what I have to do. But I have no strategy, nothing that shows I organically understand what I’m doing. In other words, I know enough to sit down at the table but I don’t know enough to win. It’s like my Chinese. The real players, the born players, could easily run me over and take their win. But so far they just offer encouragement. It's the best kind of beginner's luck.

sunbrella, sunset skirt

2011-08-16T20:57:00.004+08:00

how to say takeout (打包)

2011-08-15T19:27:00.002+08:00

When you’re speaking Chinese in China you have to not mind blathering on in front of wide-eyed strangers all focused on you like you’re the one monkey at the zoo. You have to not mind because within that group of people is the one person who may eventually figure out the riddle of what you’re trying to say. When it starts happening you can feel the tilt of understanding tip in your favor: she’s crazy… she’s crazy… she’s crazy… wait a minute, I think she means fish-fragrant eggplant! And with that discovery the crazy evaporates and they invite you inside.

It’s a wonderful moment, and you have to work for it – and wait for it – because it doesn’t come easy. But once it does, once that communal light bulb goes on in all of your heads, the butchering of the language and the over-sized pantomime is worth it. You’ve communicated.

In fact, a few days ago I was standing outside a restaurant doing this very thing, and once the group of seven or so restaurant staff finally figured out I was trying to order take-out we were really rolling. It only took five more minutes, along with the help of a translation app on my iPhone and the restaurant's picture menu, to figure out what I wanted to eat. In my personal China this is defined as success – and I say that without a single note of sarcasm.

Once the food was ordered I was invited inside to wait while it was prepared. I’m convinced this is because at the time I was sweating more than anyone else in Chengdu and they were worried I might die. So I followed their suggestion and sat down in front of an air conditioner which they so nicely pointed right at me. I was presented with hot tea and one of the staff talked to me about how much he loves watching American wrestling. I understood at least half of what he was saying which by my current standards of communication is pretty awesome.

And the food… the food was incredible. The top layer of the crispy duck rice (脆皮糯米鸭) was perfectly crisped rice, below that was a chewier rice layer and at the very bottom was the rich bacon-y layer of soft smoky duck, with its crisped skin facing bottom. The fish fragrant eggplant（鱼香茄子）was all sour and hot and sweet, with ginger, chives, pepper, and garlic swarming over silky eggplant, the flavors building to a molasses-tinged burn.

It’s these kinds of things – the guessing, the wrestling, the eggplant – that can really teach you Chinese.

mug

2011-08-14T12:19:00.003+08:00

fire food

2011-08-12T18:34:00.002+08:00

We had been warned. A man had seen fit to actually come out of his restaurant and tell us that the food there was hot. Except that we were speaking Chinese so the word he used was 辣. He said it over and over – even after it was clear that we understood Chinese.

After convincing him we were ready for the spice, our other problem was that we had no clue what they were serving. So we played charades on the sidewalk until we had guessed the two main options. “Rabbit” was easy. After he said the word for rabbit, which we knew, I used my index and middle fingers to make rabbit ears and he nodded happily. Guessing “frog” was more of a challenge, mainly because we didn't know the word. Also because in trying to pantomime what he meant, the man kept moving his arms in a way that was more reminiscent of flapping chicken wings than hopping frog legs.

In the end we ordered the rabbit and as Shi-Wen would later say, “If this food isn‘t hot, then nothing is.” It made us sweat. A lot. In fact, before last night I didn't know it was possible to actually feel your ankles perspire.

The big metal bowl they plunked into the sunken center of our table was filled with molten hot oil, ginger, cilantro, garlic gloves and big green chilis – all swirling around pieces of hacked-up rabbit and red pepper and cucumbers. We would dredge around with our chopsticks looking for rabbit – then drag it out and slop it through the sauce bowls before using our teeth to separate the meat from the small and only vaguely recognizable bones.

Our sauces were mercifully mild, but that wasn't our doing. In fact when the staff had asked how hot they should make our sauces, we said, in Chinese, “a little” hot. The girl who was helping us, and who’d landed that role because she was most adept at understanding our Chinese, then turned to the girl who was preparing our sauces (the one who every time we spoke to her looked at us with a blank smile) and distinctly told her to make our sauces with no heat at all. And hallelujah for her because she was absolutely right.

As was the man who had come out on the sidewalk to warn us. He was 100% right about how our lips were on fire and how they nursed wispy licks of chili flame each time we ate a bite. But what he had neglected to mention was how awesome the food was. And how well it goes with peanut milk. And how it’s the reason crowds wait outside in the August heat, crouched on small plastic chairs, breaking sunflower seeds open with their teeth as they kill the time it takes to get a table.

It’s also true that small Chinese children pointed at me and my sweating ankles. And maybe that made me sweat a little more. But I would do it again.

And when I do I’m getting the frog.

dinner rush

2011-08-11T22:24:00.002+08:00

茶 is tea

2011-08-10T23:09:00.002+08:00

There’s a place where tea is served under an unexpected roof, its drinkers tucked into the underbelly of an overpass. From here you can’t see the sky. There is only the cement ceiling, swaths of it coated in fresh white and the rest just peeling away. Swimming past are city girls in summer dresses taking a shortcut through the shade, and cyclists bobbing gently by the tables and tea drinkers.

Each fleeting breeze comes from a fan plugged into a long and winding cord, and the stone bridges lead to nowhere, like the stunted versions resting on aquarium floors, covered by more water than they cross. The line of hedges separating the tea drinkers from the traffic hides everything but the buses, their passengers watching us through glass windows, making this feel even more like a separate world.

The Chinese spoken down here is unintelligible not only because it is a new language for me but because it is spoken among friends, so it degrades, like voices captured in soup cans, lost in the quick speak and casual mumbles used by people who know each other well.

The man across the way shakes open a large painted fan. He moves liquidly, each pass of the fan raises his white hair and then lets it fall with the gentle current. A left-behind newspaper is snared by someone who hasn’t yet finished his tea. A dog is asleep. And a table near a fan is claimed by someone looking for a breeze.

Men’s pants are hiked above the knee, well above the knee, and the grey breeze keeps coming. The dust from the traffic, the embers from the cigarettes, it all drifts through. Drifting the way the server does, from table to table, opening his large plastic thermos in a cloud of steam and refilling each of our glasses. Making the bright green leaves rise in a flurry and then settle to the bottom again.

spaceship, with granny

2011-08-09T22:24:00.002+08:00

faces on the bus

2011-08-07T22:49:00.002+08:00

relaxing, with dog

2011-08-06T23:34:00.004+08:00

two sides, same country

2011-08-04T19:10:00.001+08:00

China is a shifting heap of anything and everything, with a billion people navigating the contrasts and contradictions. In Chengdu’s side streets a Maserati will as likely run you down as a hard-charging old man and his bicycle will — the Maserati propelled by European engineering, the bicycle gathering momentum from the industrial-sized photocopier bungee-corded to its frame.

The corner vendor dredges your tofu from a plastic bucket on the pavement next to the peaches and drops it, unceremoniously, into a thin plastic bag. Or a doorman ushers you into an air-conditioned luxury mall to buy Louis Vuitton and Prada. The corner vendor is lively and fun and nothing she says makes sense the first time because her Chinese is so overcome by local dialect. The luxury mall is sparkling and cool, and desperately empty on a Saturday afternoon.

Someone out there is buying expensive China. Someone is the reason that luxury cars sit in the parking lots and new construction projects boast high-end living in the sky. The bakery at Kempinsky Hotel even sells $5 batches of macaroons; each piece delicate and then chewy, with paper-thin tops and buttery insides. But it was empty there too.

It’s the supermarket that’s always full, and usually with a crowd around the lychees. When I asked a young woman which lychees were good she responded by picking up a single fruit and rotating it for me to see, then putting it in my bag. Again and again she’d pick up a lychee, show it to me, and then put it my bag. Before she left I had a bag filled with perfect examples of the fruit. The lot rang up at fifty cents and each was wonderful: thick, wet and dewy.

This is China. You can eat fifty-cent lychees along sidewalks that are spat upon by shirtless men and treated far worse by small children with no bottoms to their pants. Or you can eat $5 macaroons in empty air-conditioned malls that sparkle and shine. As an outsider you sometimes crave the macaroons, but the lychees have a richness you can’t just whip up overnight.

pink sandals, pig parts

2011-08-01T21:33:00.002+08:00

street with trees, puddles

2011-07-31T20:47:00.002+08:00

meat market

2011-07-30T14:30:00.002+08:00

waiting, parking lot

2011-07-29T15:50:00.002+08:00

friends, escalator

2011-07-28T21:32:00.001+08:00

HOV, market

2011-07-27T15:38:00.002+08:00

summer fruit

2011-07-26T20:02:00.001+08:00

Chengdu is hot, and here the heat carries with it the construction and chemistry of an ever-expanding city. Each avenue has cranes lifting buildings to scrape the sky. There are the workers fitting the beams and concrete spines, and there is the detritus that is falling. Falling on us, falling on the trees, falling on our view. Each breath has a tinny taste and the sky has traded blue for silver grey. But there are also sweet tastes along the streets. The fruit vendors know that breaking into ripe fruit will help you forget the summer heat. I asked a vendor about the box of round purple fruit with little green leaves and stems. Mangosteens. She took one, plucked off the top, twisted the body until it cracked. She turned the exposed insides to me and I took a piece, ate it. Its pulp was sweet and humid and difficult to pin down. And good. Good like summer-warmed fruit can be good. And good because it reminds you that not every great thing is defined by being the tallest, the fastest, the brightest. Sometimes it just has to be the sweetest.

six things we learned at beijing international airport

2011-07-24T12:14:00.003+08:00

Spending time on the tarmac

Dinner on the tarmac is not a good sign
You’re in trouble if the food and beverage carts rumble down the aisle before your plane takes off. Those little trays of soggy food are saying, “Don’t be angry with us but your plane isn’t leaving anytime soon; also, can we agree that your consumption of this yummy meal is like promising not to go stir crazy while we wait?”

You cannot have fries with that
An airport just isn’t the same after three runways worth of airplanes have been turned back because of “heavy storms.” Once the planes had disgorged their angry passengers, those passengers unplugged every check-in kiosk and used the outlets to recharge their cellphones and laptops. They banded together late into the night to shout indecipherable demands at airline staff. And they overran McDonalds and bought every last morsel of food that place had to offer. Once the crowds blew through the only thing left for a latecomer was a Coke… and there were no fries with that.

Beijing hotels don’t like dogs
But people love them. Strangers will take the elevator to come and meet your dog because they saw him from upstairs. Children will make him origami temples out of slivers of white paper. And fellow pet-owners will show you photos of their own pets which are safe at home. But while overnighting in Beijing with a dog is great for learning dog-related Chinese vocab, it’s not so great for getting a hotel room. Why? Because most Beijing hotels don’t take dogs. So even though a day of traveling across the globe has left you with a singular desire for a shower, you will instead spend the night in the airport practicing how to say, “Since you like my dog so much, do you think I could use your cell phone?”

You can sleep on anything
Ok, maybe you can’t but the Chinese travelers we saw could sleep anywhere. When the chairs and sofas were all taken, the floor was the obvious place to go next. But after that? Try the conveyer belts that trundle your checked bags away from the counter and towards the airplane. And those big plastic tubs they use for backpacks and odd-sized luggage? Put your kids in them or flip a few over to make a raised sleeping platform. But the real winners in the sleep Olympics were the older guys who’d managed to commandeer a small fleet of golf carts as their own personal dormitory. While the carts recharged in a corner, each guy got comfy on his own row of plush seats. Fortunately for them, this was out of view of the folks curled up in oversized Tupperware.

You shouldn’t cut in line
(But if you do, we’ll help you first)
When the airport is undergoing a period of intense turmoil there are two ways to receive assistance from staff. The most popular is to identify a group of people that is already waiting and shimmy your way up in front of the group. The alternative – deciding who is furthest back in the group and standing behind them – didn't seem very popular.

When we got to the check-in counter for “Fly To Chengdu Attempt #2” it was 4:30 a.m. and things were already a mess. The only option we had was to sidle up to a thick group of already-waiting travelers and see what happened. What happened was that we ended up in front of an English speaker who promptly told Shi-Wen (aka Stefano) that cutting in line wasn’t cool.

Shi-Wen knows cutting in line isn’t cool but he also knows that a prerequisite to cutting in line is that there is actually a line. Was there a line that morning? That’s debatable. Was it a good idea to talk to this guy about how frustrating the whole situation is to a newcomer? Definitely.

Not only did this guy appreciate our frustration, but he also helped make sure that when he got to the front of the line we were right there with him. When it was all said and done, with his assistance we had either cut in front of a great many people or waited in line local style. Success.

Strangers will let you use their cellphones
First we borrowed a cellphone to make a call from the tarmac after we’d been waiting there for over two hours. After we’d gotten off of that plane (still in Beijing) we used someone else’s phone to say we would not be making it to Chengdu that night. Then, after our night in the airport, we borrowed yet another phone to announce that we were on a new flight and finally! on our way to Chengdu. But after we hung up, there was an announcement saying the plane had a problem and we all had to get off. At that point we decided maybe it’d be better if we just stopped calling.

Flight attendants on airplanes = canaries in coalmines
After removing ourselves from Flight #2 we sat on a bus waiting for news. Zero announcements were made but the bus eventually dropped us right back where we’d started – in front of the same plane as before. Only now, the fire truck and the fire hoses from earlier were gone. Did I neglect to mention the fire truck and the fire hoses from earlier? My bad. What about the smell of jet fuel and the big puddle on the tarmac? Well those were gone too. However, if these changes weren’t enough to make you want to hop right back on the airplane and cross your fingers for Chengdu, you could always be like me and ask a flight attendant if it was safe to be getting back on the same plane. Her answer came with a big smile and oodles of enthusiasm, “We’re here, so don’t worry!” That’s great… Just promise you’re not planning to feed us right away.

shoe repairs while you wait

2011-07-22T16:00:00.002+08:00

moving

2011-07-22T15:07:00.001+08:00

Moving across the world is a fantastic and ugly adventure.

Fantastic for the opportunity to see, taste and live a whole new everything. Ugly because getting to that point is a long and exhausting haul. Along the way there are needles filled with vaccines and there is sweat because moving in July is ill timed, particularly for the folks who are tasked with dragging your sofa from one continent to the next.

Since your new home uses a new (to you) language there are months of Chinese flashcards, and in an effort to protect against culinary homesickness there are almost as many months of gorging on food favorites you worry won’t be the same where you’re going.

There is also an appointment for the root canal you’ve been avoiding, because as little interest as you have in getting an American root canal, your interest in relying on newly minted language skills to negotiate so much as a Chinese teeth cleaning is even less.

But in the mess of to-do’s and don’t-forgets the only true mandatory is momentum.

More than anything, it’s momentum that moves a life across an ocean. It shoves you past the pile of address changes. It keeps you at a trot through the visa applications. And it makes sure you get on the plane before it pulls away from the gate.

Then during your flight all of the hopeful preparations and small, singular steps come together into something so tangible that your plane lands you right in the middle of it. Later you can thank momentum for carrying you past the jet lag and smack into China.

and for our next destination...

2011-07-04T00:51:00.010+08:00

There’s no telling where life will take you. And later this month ours is taking us to a country a-great-many-hours-on-a-great-many-airplanes away.

In a big, fluffy, general sense we've known this was coming for a while. What we didn’t know was that our wall calendar always knew a bit more than we did. By the looks of it, the wall calendar already knew where we would be going (and when) last year when we bought it in Milan.

We discovered this when we flipped our calendar from June to July, and its previously random stream of color combinations landed on the above. Realizing our calendar has such an expert grasp on our futures could have come in really handy. Particularly when we were trying to figure out logistical details the old-fashioned way.

Perhaps we should take comfort in the fact that two human brains and a wall calendar have managed to independently come to an agreement on where we should move our lives and when. We just begrudge the fact that the wall calendar figured it out first.

luxury is watermelon in the summer

2009-09-01T20:48:00.021+08:00

Korean summer is perfect for heavy chunks of sweet watermelon, noodles in ice broth, and honeydew-flavored ice cream bars. It's hot and muggy and when it's not raining, the sun beats down with single-minded ferocity.

Slowly, though, the heat is leaving us. Today the sky was clear and blue and the breeze was crisp and fresh. No sign of humidity or pressing warmth. It feels like school's about to start and soon I'll be having nightmares about not remembering my locker combination.

As fall comes in with its first baby steps I'm realizing how quickly the summer rushed past. June, July, and August blew by in waves with a few pauses for front page news... the death of another former president, or the opening of a demure little plaza called the "Dream of Seoul."

Former President Kim Dae Jung died of pneumonia on August 18 and just as Koreans had done when former President Roh died only a few months earlier, mourners paid their respects to their former president at alters set up around the country. One of these sites was at Seoul's City Hall where people waited in quiet lines under white tents for the opportunity to lay a flower under a large photograph of the deceased. Each individual then moved to a place in front of the alter where some remained standing and others bowed several times in succession.

The funeral ceremony in front of the National Assembly was attended by presidential delegations who remembered the Nobel Prize winner as Seoul's summer sun blazed above. At City Hall there were yellow balloons emblazoned with the face of this democracy activist and at the funeral even the highest ranking attendees wore paper visors made especially for the event.

Earlier in the month Seoul had celebrated the opening of a giant plaza where only months earlier there had been a simple median studded with trees. The transformation was lightning fast and incredibly successful. As soon as this new plaza with its fountains and statues and grand spaces for walking was opened, Koreans flocked to it and enjoyed their brand new public space.

Their enthusiasm was well-founded. Gwanghwamun Square is a great space and showcases the statue of Admiral Yi Sun-shin in a way that simple traffic rushing past never had. And the water that jumps from the ground, in lines and spurts, has become the country's most popular water park. No one seems to mind that it's sandwiched between ten lanes of traffic.

But now September's here and the summer is gone... which means it's time for another vacation.

the travelvore

2009-07-12T15:39:00.015+08:00

Shanghai's soup dumplings changed my life. Or, if I'm going to be less dramatic about the whole thing, I could say that Shanghai's soup dumplings helped define a consistent inconsistency that has appeared in my eating habits over the past few years. It was over steaming baskets of these pork-filled delicacies that Stefano-ssi and I decided to call me a "travelvore."

My research (i.e. Eating food for 34 years) indicates that the eating habits of a "travelvore" can best be described as herbivore meets carnivore with a lot of air travel in between. Take the example of pork: I don't eat pork at home but when it's in a soup dumpling in Shanghai, I've resigned myself to eating it well before my plane lands in China. And standing in line waiting for a seat at a jam-packed soup dumpling restaurant doesn't make me reconsider my decision, instead it confirms that I'm in exactly the right place to break my no-pork rule.

If these dumplings could be found closer to home I might be tempted to fully convert to carnivore; you could say the same thing about melt-in-your-mouth Italian prosciutto. But thankfully, and unfortunately, the authenticity of such pleasures tends to decrease as the distance from their birthplace grows. And so I eat San Daniele prosciutto with abandon in Milano and stand in line for soup dumplings in Shanghai.

Some of us travel for the eating and in the case of soup dumplings - or xiao long bao - the flight is worth it. These delicate pouches of soup and pork are tiny and fragile and if you're too rough with your chopsticks you'll breach the core and the salty rich insides will be lost. If you're lucky, the broth might dribble into your vinegar dish or the spoon you're supposed to be holding under the dumpling at all times, and you'll be able to recover the delicious liquid. If you're not so lucky, it'll slip through the slats of the steamer basket never to be slurped again.

The dumplings are made by wrapping minced pork and solidified broth into a tissue-thin dumpling skin. When the packets are steamed, it not only cooks the pork but melts the broth, turning it into a mouthful of boiling hot soup. These dumpling are usually made to order and should arrive steaming hot to the table. You're supposed to bite a small steam vent into the top of a dumpling - rather than eating it whole - and once some of the heat has escaped you can suck out the broth and eat the dumpling. The entire experience is a sort of wonderful culinary magic.

In Shanghai it's easy to find great food from China's other regions as well, including Sichuan cuisine which is known for its slow burn. We had dinner in the garden of one Sichuan restaurant and both enjoyed the tongue-numbing pleasures of a large pile of shrimp snuggled with dried red peppers. While the effects eventually faded they weren't helped by my room temperature cucumber juice which was somehow not as refreshing as I'd hoped.

We also waited "just one moment" [translation: just one hour] to eat in a local place that a friend recommended. It was void of tourists and worth the wait mostly for the people watching and an excellent eggplant dish that reminded us of a vinegary Italian capponata. We also tried another type of pork dumpling, this one with thick breading and a bottom that was deep fried and crispy, and coated in sesame seeds.

Shanghai's reputation for incredible food is well-deserved, as is commentary about the breakneck pace of development and the resulting particulate cloud that hangs across large swaths of the city. Walking just a few blocks here will not only leave you with dust in your mouth from multiple construction sites, but will show you Shanghai before, after, and in-between.

The cutting-edge skyscrapers are some of the world's tallest and looking across the HuangPu River (ignoring the construction along its shore) is like staring into the face of any American skyline, all lights and twinkle and modern pride. The city's parks are top notch and reminiscent of New York's Central Park in their function as a green mirage at the center of a bustling city. There are also the architectural reminders of Western powers that in the second half of the 19th century opened Shanghai to international trade. Largely art nouveau, these formal buildings stand out like three-dimensional urban graffiti where European visitors scrawled out "we were here" in bricks and mortar.

Leave behind the skyscrapers and formal promenades and in ten minutes you'll be walking through narrow-street neighborhoods with clothes on laundry lines, men balancing chicken cages on motor bikes, and women selling lethargic frogs out of mesh bags. Young women wash their hair at the curb, men in pajamas and rain boots clack pieces across checker boards, and an old couple eats the insides out of a watermelon they've cracked open with their hands.

Children on tiptoe take turns dunking their faces in a bowl of water, grub vendors count their merchandise with tweezers in one hand and a cell phone in the other, and no one thinks about the bullet train that shoots visitors into the city from the airport at 400 kilometers per hour.

This is a city jammed with personality and if you smile, people smile back. It's in stark contrast to the stoic posture of Beijing where the pressing weight of several thousand years of history, culture and government have squeezed the gaiety out of the city. By contrast, Shanghai feels happier, lighter, and more international. With great food. The perfect place for a travelvore.

[Note: When we landed in Shanghai and the captain turned off the "fasten seat belts" sign, we were not allowed to leave the plane. Instead, we had to wait for our official welcome party to board. Composed of several people in hazmat outfits the group went up and down the aisles pointing large laser guns at each passenger's forehead. If your bangs were in the way, they made you move them. If you were sleeping, they didn't even wake you up. The laser guns were thermometers and the hazmat brigade took every single person's temperature before they would let the plane disembark. Reportedly, if anyone within 3 rows of you came down with swine flu, you would get quarantined right along with them. It's this sort of thing that reminds you you're in China.]

the people's memorial

2009-06-04T06:32:00.017+08:00

The eeriest thing about the memorial ceremony for former President Roh last Friday afternoon was the silence. There were thousands of people filling the streets in every direction and the only thing you could hear was the ceremony.

Anyone who's spent more then five minutes in Korea knows that this is not a place where people whisper, or murmur, or talk quietly because they're worried the world might hear the gory details of their conversation. No, this is a place that screams and grunts and shoves.

But the memorial service was quiet. Admittedly it was not without gentle shoving and Stefano-shi took a jab to the kidneys when he was moving too slowly for the ajumma behind him. But, the thing that it had in the greatest supply - aside from yellow sun visors - was quiet.

Seoul's downtown streets were closed to traffic and people who weren't standing in the streets were sitting along the curbs under garlands of yellow balloons emblazoned with Roh's face. Everyone was wearing yellow sun visors with his face printed on the brim and hearts cut out of the sides. Again, if you've spent any time in Korea, you know there's a sizable portion of the population that prefers to minimize its contact with the sun, and a memorial service is no exception.

We'd arrived at this part of the city on foot and when we came across our first intersection crowded with people instead of cars everyone was looking in a single direction. At first we couldn't see what they were looking at, but eventually we noticed their eyes were glued to one of the many giant TV screens on the top of Seoul's office buildings. This screen was broadcasting live coverage of Roh's official funeral which was taking place at Gyeongbokgung palace. Once that ceremony was complete the ex-Presidents body would be brought to City Hall for what was described as the people's memorial. The people's memorial was what the people in the streets were waiting for.

President Roh had never gone to college yet he passed the equivalent of the Korean Bar Exam and was elected to several public offices, culminating in the presidency. His modest background garnered him a loyal following and these people came out in force to pay their respects. Memorial shrines popped up across the country after his death including the two that we saw on Friday. One was in front of the Seoul Train Station and the other was outside the gate to Deoksu Palace. At both memorials there were portraits of President Roh, white chrysanthemums (the traditional Korean funereal flower), and a line of people waiting to bow before the memorial.

The memorial ceremony at City Hall was performed on a stage to the side of the main green and was broadcast on large screens above the plaza. It appeared to be a traditional Korean ceremony and incorporated traditional dress and costumes, music, dance and dramatic readings. We stood in the street watching from a distance, seeing the action unfold on the giant screens. No one said a word and people around us cried quietly as they watched.

There weren't many Westerners in the mix and we were roaming around for at least an hour or more before we saw any non-Koreans among the throngs. Despite the size of the gathering it still felt intimate enough that when we finally turned to leave (before the ceremony had finished) it felt a little awkward to face everyone still watching the Memorial and walk through the crowd.

Regardless of the charges against former President Roh or his decision to jump off a mountain rather than face them, you could tell that he was an important man to Korea and its people. The silence, more than anything, made that very clear.

hong kong high life

2009-05-14T19:49:00.019+08:00

Hong Kong is all about tall skinny buildings sprouting out of an island, and somehow it manages to be the home of both I.M. Pei architecture and butchers in flip flops. This city is a most excellent jumble of food, shopping, and personality and while the prices could be better, the vibe's about perfect.

In 1997 the United Kingdom returned Hong Kong to China, and since that time Hong Kong has been referred to as a "Special Administrative Region" of China and has its own flag and government, and freedom of the press. But it is still very Chinese. Rather than obliterating Chinese culture, the U.K. instead seems to have spent its decades in Hong Kong folding western appreciations into the eastern mix.

Hong Kong resembles a petite New York. It's a city that's easy to navigate on the subway and for all of its slick skyscrapers and banking acumen, its neighborhoods are where Hong Kong's personality really lives. Made up of Hong Kong island, Kowloon on the mainland, and the new territories, it's more than a single place and the people who live here can tell you about each area's specific nuances.

For a visitor, especially one from Seoul, it's amazing to see the amount of foreigners who live in Hong Kong. In fact there are areas of town where if you were to be dropped in blind-folded you would sooner guess you were in New Orleans than Asia. There's a real mix of people in this city and it produces an energy that I haven't felt elsewhere.

There's also the danger that comes with countries where cars drive on the "other" side of the road. At pedestrian crossings warnings of "Look Left" or "Look Right" are painted at your feet and I find that the quickest way to place yourself in the path of an oncoming truck is to look down and start reading the road.

Hong Kong is also like Beginner's China where your arrival is a gentle one. Things make easy sense to the Western mind but the personality of the place is still pleasantly new. Start your day with the view over Victoria Harbor. Wander through the bird market where vendors count out wriggling grubs with a pair of tweezers and a steady hand.

Eat spicy food and egg custard tarts. Drink tea from vendors along the sidewalk. Wait until sunset and then go to a rooftop bar where the highrises are level with your Campari and soda. Later swing back down for drinks in the nooks and crannies of the city.

I'd be happy to go back to Hong Kong. I love it's scraggly apartment buildings and the way all scaffolding is made of bamboo. I love the eating and the shopping. And I love the way the incense coils smell as they burn.

'Cause there's nothing that says vacation like incense wafting through a temple and food so spicy your mouth burns.

spring lights

2009-05-10T08:58:00.011+08:00

Buddha's birthday is one of the biggest holidays of the year in Korea and its celebration would be nothing without light. Acres of lanterns and entire parades bloom from the glow of a zillion bulbs and flickers.

At this time of year Seoul's streets are hung with lanterns and temple courtyards are swathed in giant quilts of color. While the blanket of decorations is not as thick as the Christmas décor that sprouts in the U.S. after Thanksgiving, the extra color definitely stands out. Spring is a fleeting sensation in Seoul and quickly gives way to a suffocating summer, so the colorful decorations are just one more reason to love the season while it lasts.

Buddhist temples host street fairs and cultural festivals in honor of the holiday and everyone flocks to these events. Buddhists come to celebrate the religious holiday; other Koreans come to join in the fun; and tourists come to explore a colorful part of Korean culture. You will rarely see as many Westerners out in Seoul as at the Buddha's Birthday celebration. And for good reason - if you're in Seoul, this is considered a not-to-miss event.

Seoul's lantern parade, which winds it way through downtown every year, celebrates Buddha's birth with a gentle wave of light. Women in traditional dress carry large glowing lanterns. Flames shoot out of the dragons' mouths. Tiny blinks of light trace the outlines of elephants, lotus flowers, and everything else that is pushed or pulled along the route.

The atmosphere is festive and families line the streets waving and snapping photos. For the second year in a row there was a threatening drizzle as the parade began - resulting in some of the participants wearing plastic ponchos over their traditional attire - but the real showers never came.

The parade is always great fun; think Fourth of July meets the Disney Light Parade. Kids are happy, adults are happy, and occasionally a happy band marches past. It's also a great crash course in Korean tradition. Participants wear traditional outfits, play traditional instruments, and embody traditional characters.

And gigantic dragons breath real fire. Really, what more can you ask for?

tick tock tokyo

2009-04-18T21:38:00.016+08:00

Tokyo is a giant wristwatch of a city and somewhere behind its ordered face there are interlocking layers of new technology and human drama propelling the city forward. But on the surface the focus is on lines; lines that are straight and lines that are diagonal. Lines that are as regular as the minute marks on a watch.

The populace moves at a regulated urban rhythm that looks a lot like time-lapse photography, all starting and stopping and coming and going. Anywhere else and this action could bleed into a blur, a swirl, a mess of the human form running headlong into itself and others - but not in Tokyo.

In Tokyo you wait in line for the ATM and you wait in line for the train. You wait in line next to the girl in the kimono who is behind the girl in the stiletto heels. And then someone gets in line behind you.

For an outsider, the city's order is a surreal dream that makes perfect sense while remaining utter nonsense. You don't know what the signs say, what the announcements are announcing, or how to communicate with most of the thousands of people surrounding you.

But you still know where to stand. It's as if everyone within the city limits is regularly swept up by Tokyo's minute hand and dropped perfectly into their place, which just happens to be in line with everyone else.

tokyo sidewalks

2009-04-07T20:02:00.008+08:00

Tokyo is a buzzing beehive of a city, right up there with New York and London except with less diversity. Make that a lot less diversity: no one is overweight and no one left home without first looking in the mirror.

Take me to Tokyo to see men who dress like this. Show me red blazers and striped pants. Bold black glasses and bags that stand out in the crowd. In a city so criss-crossed with life and energy and blinking signs five-stories tall, these flashes of style bring you right back down to earth.

But the show comes flying past fast. And if you're not quick with the camera you'll only get a memory, because these guys don't dawdle - they swagger.

and tokyo makes 10

2009-04-05T14:51:00.015+08:00

Locals may say otherwise but to an outsider Tokyo is all about organization and order, and when it comes to marathons the city does not disappoint. In fact, the only disappointing thing about the race was my left knee. And even that didn't stop me from finishing, although I'd give it credit for a damn solid effort.

Tokyo was a great place for a tenth marathon and felt suitably eventful. People kept asking me why I wasn't running the Seoul marathon instead of heading all the way over to Tokyo - but that was exactly the point. I wanted to go somewhere and make my tenth race something more involved than stepping out the front door. So, we hopped on a plane bound for Tokyo, onto a $30 bus bound for the city, and into an I'll-choke-if-I-write-it-down priced hotel overlooking the race start. Yes, overlooking the race start - because while Tokyo may be good at planning races, Stefano-shi is excellent at planning trips.

That being said, no one can prepare themselves for their first encounter with the Tokyo subway system. It's a thing of wonder, not only because the Japanese actually stand in line to wait for the next train, but because there are so many trains, and train lines, and station exits. Shinjuku station - the closest station to our hotel - is one of the busiest train stations in the world and it looks the part. Two million people pass through the station every day and it has around 50 exits. That's 50 ways to exit this station alone...

The day before the race we successfully, if perhaps a bit slowly at first, used the subway to get to the race expo. It was your standard marathon expo with vendors and samples and running-related merchandise, but it did differ from the usual race expos in one way: it shared the convention center with a manga (aka comic book) convention. And while it was fairly easy to distinguish between who came for the comic books versus who came for the marathon, the teenage girls could really throw you off. Apparently the dreams of awkward adolescent boys everywhere have come true in Japan where everyone, including fashionable young ladies, loves comic books.

We went to Italy for dinner the night before the race - apparently you can do these things in Tokyo. We actually went to Eataly, an Italian restaurant and gourmet food store in Tokyo's Daikanyama neighborhood. This place deserves any praise it gets. If I closed my eyes as we ate, I was back in Milan; their food is incredibly and deliciously authentic. We had a pizza margherita which was perfect (I thought I was back at Gamba Rotta on Via Moscova), and pasta with pesto reminiscent of meals we've had in Genoa. There is no doubt that this meal qualifies as one of my finest carbo-loading efforts in a long history of carbo-loading efforts. (Note: Carbo-loading before the Rome Marathon shall remain in a category all its own.)

Come race day morning I simply rolled out of bed and across the start line. Of course it was a little more complicated than that but not by much. I was one of some 35,000 people running the race so it was a pretty festive start with a great mass of people all moving in a single direction. It's always a thrill to be in a massive crowd that shares the same goal of forward motion. Some of us will take four hours, others will take two, but we all take the same path through the same rain or sun or shooting knee pain.

Alas, unfortunately the shooting knee pain was specifically for me. I don't really know what happened but at 35 kilometers my left knee stopped wanting to participate. I'm not really one for stopping or quitting so I just kept trudging along, alternating between the ultra-effective techniques of foot dragging and body lurching. (Think Swamp Monster exiting the lagoon.) I'm sure it was especially attractive along the highway overpass + bridge combination which was near the end of the race. A lot of marathons have these grim passages toward the end of the route and the only thing they're good for is reminding the human body that it's a lot harder to run uphill than on a flat surface.

Up to that point, though, it had been a good race. Stefano-shi made excellent use of the subway system and found me at two pre-determined locations along the route. There were also a lot of runners in costume to provide distraction, especially after the drizzle started halfway through. I spent a fair amount of time running behind a man wearing a towel and a shower cap who would sporadically squeeze a yellow rubber ducky at the crowd, and spent a few miles behind Mr. and Mrs. Claus. Also, due to the never-ending cheering of Japanese spectators, and because it sounds a lot like "shrimp" in Italian, I learned the word for "GO!" in Japanese.

I was ecstatic when I reached the finish line but also a bit cold since the weather had been steadily deteriorating. It was solidly grey and rainy when I finished and I was looking forward to my race "towel," whatever it turned out to be. Before the race we'd all received race packets replete with motivational advice such as: "For the first few kilometers, you had better run like warming up. No need to panic and be prepared for start in a relaxed manner." Having experienced this sort of English I was certain that the souvenir towel promised to race finishers would actually be the standard Mylar wrap, but no, it was an actual towel! Not bad at all.

After the finish line hoopla and medal-receiving, Stefano-shi found me and saved me from a long walk back to the family reunite area. Saving the ten minutes of wandering around looking for your family makes a big difference when you just want a hug and a piece of floor to sit on. Not only did I get a hug, and a place to sit on a folding table, but I also got a bowl of udon at a great fast noodle place by our hotel.

Not a bad way to end the day, and a 10th marathon.

cambodia is calling

2009-02-09T20:54:00.029+08:00

Angkor Wat is one of the few places in the world where real life looks like the movies and where even the highest expectations exist only to be exceeded.

Our late night arrival in Siem Reap definitely lived up to our expectations in that it was hot and tropical and the absolute opposite of where we'd spent the weekend before. (Freezing our toes off at an ice festival in Northern China.)

On an Angkor Wat visit you quickly discover that there is driving that needs to be done. In fact, the temples of "The" Angkor Wat are but one grouping in an area absolutely teeming with beautiful temples. The sites closest to the tourism-fattened city of Siem Reap are a twenty-minute drive away while temples devoured by jungle can take almost two hours to reach.

Travelers can reach these temples in a number of ways. Some rent bicycles on the cheap and spend their days in a dusty haze of fatiguing adventure. Still others take a dusty, and dirt cheap, ride on the back of a motorbike. Others spend a little more cash for a tuk-tuk and battle the dust with a handkerchief held to their mouths. Still others splurge on a car and driver and regret their choice only when it comes time to hazard unpaved roads (in a Toyota Camry) because the driver's worried that without taking a short-cut they won't make it to the next temple before sundown.

You can guess which option we chose.

It's safe to say that this trip to Cambodia really struck both of us as something incredibly special. The experience of seeing the temples - in their varying states of grandeur and decay - was beyond wonderful and belongs on anyone's Life List of Places to See. These structures are of a scale that is difficult to imagine without literally standing at their foundations and struggling to see it all with one set of eyes.

The stones - and therefore the temples themselves - are covered in finely carved illustrations. They seem too beautiful and too well-preserved to be real. Different temples have different stories to tell but the imagery throughout the sites is consistently gorgeous. And awe-inspiring. Leave me alone for a year with a piece of stone and a chisel and I still wouldn't have a clue how to take a material that is strong enough to build buildings and finesse it into the delicate wrists and ears of Angkor Wat's female forms, the apsaras.

Several of the temple groupings have been unceremoniously ravaged by nature and serpentine tree roots are now as much a part of the structures as the original stones. The effect is mesmerizing because most of us have only seen this sort of thing in the movies or imagined it in fictional fantasy worlds where ancient temples have been hidden from the rest of the world by misty jungles. But these places exist. They're not just in books and movies and on Disney's Jungle Cruise. They are in real jungles, in the very real country of Cambodia, and they will blow your mind.

So will the lives of the people here. If you visit the outlying temples and spend any time driving through the countryside you will share the roads with mopeds, and cows, and shoe-less children riding bicycles that are a head and a half taller than they are. You will see the simple thatched homes - on risers about 8 feet off the ground - under which naked children chase chickens while still other kids play alone in rice paddies and puddles.

These are poor people and they live in very poor conditions - but you'll notice that they still send their kids to school. And these kids make it home along the roads, riding their oversized bikes and balancing brothers and sisters, on their way back to lives that are very different from what most westerners are fortunate enough to consider normal.

This is the poorest place we have ever been and yet it is also one of the best. Truly, one of the best. The treasures of Cambodia, the treasures of these people, are such a bounty of man-made miracles that you can only hope one day they'll bring a modicum of prosperity to those who call this country home. But I'd imagine that as tourism increases, and the numbers of visitors continues to swell, things will have to change or the temples won't last.

When you visit these places now there's a freedom that's difficult to swallow. There are very few barriers or blockades, and the temples become giant three-dimensional mazes. On our visit to Beng Mealea our driver had us climbing over and through the ruins, squeezing into corridors and exploring spaces that seemed straight out of adventurer's tales. I'd be shocked if it stayed this way - this unrestricted - and from what our driver told us, the numbers of visitors are only increasing.

During your visit - depending on the hour of day and which temple you're visiting - you can sometimes find yourself with a few minutes alone in a quiet corridor or maybe catch a perfect photo sans other tourists wandering through. But turn up for sunset or sundown at one of the traditional places to watch the occasion, and you will find yourself surrounded by an international gaggle of surprising proportions.

Not that the gaggle doesn't come in handy. Especially when someone neglects to bring a flashlight for crossing Angkor Wat's moat at the pitch-black hour of 5:00am and still doesn't have a flashlight when it's time to locate the lotus pond from which to watch the sunrise. (Note to self: bring flashlight next time.)

Then as the sunrise comes and both Angkor Wat and the gaggle are illuminated, it's a toss-up over which of the unveilings is more awe-inspiring. Angkor Wat and it's very recognizable silhouette? Or the large number of people who will quietly huddle around a lotus pond before dawn just to see that silhouette?

Cambodian cuisine is also worth a try and might best be described as the sweeter, milder cousin of Thai food. Siem Reap is teeming with good restaurants although visiting the town market might give you pause in all matters food-related. Vendors sit foot-to-gill with tubs of squirming fish while sharpening their blood-caked cleavers. There are piles of parts better left unidentified, and vendors catch catnaps between bags of separated egg yolks and small walls of bok choy.

But this is Cambodia. Cambodia with its tuk-tuks and its temples in the trees. Cambodia where it's hot and sticky and there's always dragon fruit for breakfast. Where temples have giant faces and flights of stairs so steep and so thin that you need to prostrate yourself to climb them. Where there's dust and there's beauty and there are more stones than you can count.

This is Cambodia. And this is one of my favorite places in the world.

Harbin is cold and icy

2009-02-08T09:16:00.018+08:00

At one point during our visit to Harbin, Stefano-shi turned to me and said exactly what I'd been thinking: "This is the coldest place we've ever been." We were standing on a frozen river at the time and the wind was driving past us in snow-tinged gusts. Horses pulled sleighs along the surface, confirming that the ice was indeed solid, and people used what can best be described as fireplace pokers to propel themselves around on metal chairs doubling as sleds, assuring us that frozen rivers are meant to be fun.

It's worth noting that world famous ice festivals don't exist without ice and frozen rivers notwithstanding, cold temperatures in Northern China are all relative. For this time of year - the MLK long weekend - we were actually experiencing a veritable heat wave as air temps didn't plunge below zero.

In considering the geographic hand the city was dealt, Harbin deserves credit for the sheer unadulterated grandeur of its thinking. This city has affectionately taken its biggest drawback and amplified it into a full throttle advantage. Go ahead and name several cities where ice won't melt between December and February. Excellent, now of those cities, how many have responded with multi-storied ice palaces and full-sized ice pirate ships?

Workers scrape ice off the highways with squares of plywood nailed to boards and if you spend any time indoors your boots will quickly be resting in a pool of melted black slurry. Historically, Harbin was a Russian railway stop and so this Chinese city also has an unmistakable Russian flair. Much of the architecture is distinctly European, wooden nesting dolls are the easiest souvenirs to find, and the frigid airport is filled with underdressed Russians transiting through after vacations in warm places. The chemically-red cherry on top of Harbin's scenic milieu was the unmistakable pair of nuclear cooling towers we noticed on our way out of town.

Nuclear cooling towers and sandal-wearing Russians aside, Harbin's ice festival is one of the wildest things I have ever seen. The sheer scale of the ice sculptures and the intricacy and quality of the work is absolutely mind-blowing. This is also the most fun I've had outdoors in wintertime. Ever shot down a four-story ice slide with only your winter coat between you and the cold, smooth ice? I have, and it was awesome. All four times.

The festival has three main sites around town, each worthy of as many hours as your frozen toes can take. The biggest park felt like a small town populated by the world's most famous cathedrals, temples, and palaces - all made entirely of ice. The open spaces and paths of a second park were lined with gigantic sculptures made of packed snow. And a third park smack in the center of town was sponsored by Disney and its ice creations all referenced Disney's internationally recognizable repertoire.

The scale of the structures at all three sites was magical and the experience of being in the middle of these ice and snow cities was worth every flight of ice stairs we had to climb. Yep, even the stairs were made of ice - apparently you can still do that sort of thing in China.

It's hard to get photos that really do justice to the experience, partly because your camera keeps freezing and partly because photos can never really show just how good a pair of toe warmers feels on a cold Harbin night. (Among other things I credit our toe warmers with allowing us to join a very long bunny-hop on the ice field under Milan's Duomo, and with letting us hang out with a little Chinese girl who kept asking us - in English - to go down the slide with her.)

We should have taken our new bilingual friend to dinner; she might have been able to save us from our enough-food-to-feed-a-small-village ordering technique. We think the wait staff may have been trying to warn us but our lack of shared language got in the way and we ended up with one very large fish in sauce, noodles, and tofu; a big bowl of chicken, mushrooms and noodles; and about five pounds of deliciously vinegary shredded potatoes. Oh, and beer that we drank out of saucers.

When people walked past our table they laughed. Good naturedly and with big smiles, but they definitely laughed. And at one point in the dinner show performance - this was a restaurant in which costumed performers belt out party songs at ear-crushing volume - the man on the microphone directed all attention in the room towards our table and then said something hilarious in Chinese. I say hilarious because everyone else was smiling, not because I have any idea of what he said.

And that's part of the fun of visiting China - it's one big experiment. You don't know what people are saying. You never really know what you're eating. And you sure don't know how they built all of that stuff out of ice.

eating in beijing

2009-01-15T21:42:00.017+08:00

There's something you should know about China.

It's probably going to sound obvious but I consider the following piece of information to be incredibly important.

Chinese food is better in China.

When I say Chinese food is better in China, I don't mean it in that way that Thai food is better in Thailand. Of course Thai food is better in Thailand, but I've also had some respectable Thai food from a storefront restaurant in my old Chicago neighborhod.

But the food we feasted on in Beijing? Not a single meal failed to surprise us in the best ways. We had plates that were light and fresh. Nuanced and complex. Most were steaming, all were delicately seasoned, and none left us starving an hour later. I've never tasted anything like it from a white take-out container.

Our Thanksgiving meal consisted of Peking duck with its luxurious crisped skin, savory sauces, thinly sliced vegetables, coarse sugar that we'd all assumed was salt, and thin pancakes to hold it all gently together. I assure you that no one missed the turkey.

Each morning we would walk around the corner from our hotel and visit a small restaurant run by two young sisters. Each time we came in, the sister with the crimped hair would be snoozing at one of the tables, her head cradled in the crook of her own arm. The other sister would be standing directly under the TV that hung in the corner, staring at whatever drama was playing that morning.

The food that the two sisters would alternately bring to our table was homey and filling. The dumplings were made in a small nook of space near the cashier which was closed in by a wall and the windows, and when the chef finished crafting his savory and wonderful packages of vegetables, or fish, or pork... he would have to leave that space and then leave the restaurant.

He would step out of the front door, turn left, and then walk down the sidewalk past the restaurant's windows. Presumably he would enter a separate door that led to the kitchen. Luckily he could use a small sliding window joining the kitchen and the restaurant to deliver any soup we had ordered. He would pass the bowl through to one of the sisters, its steam leaving a trail.

One afternoon we shared a never-ending lunch best compared to watching a clown car unload. The energetic game of charades we'd played with the waitress to place our order had gone well enough and soon after she left, food started to appear.

And then more food showed up. And then a little more. No one in our party was sure it would ever stop and on several occasions when we thought that it had stopped, we were corrected by the appearance of yet another delicious entrée landing on our table.

We had no real complaints because the food was varied, delicious and dirt cheap. Vegetables were combined with complex sauces but remained light and fresh. Other dishes had a caramelized richness that added flavor but managed not to weigh down the ingredients. There were fish dumplings with coriander, and other dumplings fluffy with the combination of egg and tomato.

We also wandered down a hutong for our second taste of peking duck. The duck was not as delicate as it had been in our first meal but the surroundings were as if we'd plunked ourselves down in someone's back room. The tables were mismatched, the ducks were hanging next to my Mom, and the owner was swatting flies throughout the meal.

Lively surroundings are the accompaniments that make good meals great and China is all about the surroundings. There are people yelling, chomping, and chop-sticking. There are teapots, bicycles, and small pitchers filled with vinegar. You sit on different chairs, you eat from different plates, and the food is - no doubt - better for it.

I don't know what I expected from the food in China, but I know what I'll expect from now on.

beijing for beginners

2009-01-04T14:41:00.014+08:00

The most compelling sensation that you will experience in Beijing is the knock-down, drag-out fight between China's past and present. With its 5,000 year history, China has existed for an eternity in comparison to the bright-cheeked newborn that is the United States. Yet China is also throwing itself into the present with such vehemence that it's impossible to tell whether China's greatest glories will be those that jump-started recorded history or the advances that the country is so doggedly pursuing today.

For Americans, China is the other side of the world, an "other" that is represented by Lo Mein in little white boxes and "Made in China" tags on most of our consumer goods. China is a country that communicates in a language most Americans don't understand and cannot read, and is known for something like a billion people on bicycles. We close our eyes and see Chairman Mao, or a defiant silhouette in front of a Tian'anmen tank, or the serpentine wall we're told can be seen from space.

The 2008 Olympics, however, offered an education in what China wants us to see. They pulled the billions off of their bicycles, and organized them in perfect rows of perfect moves on the floor of the Bird's Nest. The structure itself was a confident run past tradition and into trend-setting, and gave the country a new calling card. It's no accident that China is now nearly as famous for its modern architectural choices as for its traditional staples of tea and rice.

Despite these visions of a new tomorrow, tradition can still be found in Beijing. There are the tourist sites and there are the tours, but what is in question is how long the sites without paid admission will last.

One of the greatest pleasures of travel is seeing how other people live; walking down small streets in search of real life. The best place to wander in Beijing is down the dusty honeycombed blocks called "hutong," which are unfortunately being cleared for newly-commissioned beauty.

For a visitor, the beauty of Beijing is found as much in the hutongs as anywhere else. These snug streets edged with homes and small businesses and real people are where you can see life being lived. There's the woman repeatedly slamming a large fish on a doorstep before handing it over to her customer for dinner. And the man selling sweet potatoes from an oil drum attached to his bicycle. And kids playing, and TVs glowing in dark corners, and stockpiles of green leafy vegetables behind red wooden doors.

Beijing's hutong are dusty and different and they are disappearing. I don't live in Beijing and I hadn't been there before, but even I could see China's future steamrolling right through its living past. It's tough because while progress can be picturesque, reality is often even more so.

tofu soup and tea

2008-11-17T20:17:00.013+08:00

A couple of weekends ago we headed out to visit the largest and best preserved palace in Seoul but first stopped at a small mom and pop restaurant for lunch. My tofu soup came out rapidly boiling and spicy, and Stefano-shi's ramen hit the spot. Unfortunately when we left the restaurant what had started as a cloudy day had transformed into a rainy one and we were without umbrellas.

Two umbrellas from a subway vendor later and we were back on our way to the palace. But then it started to rain harder and the puddles got deeper and we decided this was no day to tour the many acres of palace grounds. It was, instead, a day to drink tea among Insadong's art galleries.

My plum tea tasted like fruit juice simmered in sweet syrup and had three pine nuts bobbing on the surface. Stefano-shi had a five flavor tea that was bitter, salty, sweet, sour and strange. We shared a plate of rice pastries and watched the rain continue to patter outside. And before heading home we stopped at our favorite arcade for a couple of rounds of couples' video games.

So it wasn't the day we'd expected but I can't complain. I discovered three perfect rainy day accompaniments: tofu soup, sweet plum tea, and couples' video games. Rainy days will never be the same.

our next president

2008-11-06T21:06:00.010+08:00

Something big has happened, something absolutely monumental. And to try to say what it means, to try to summarize it in a few sentences, could never do it justice. Here I am, thousands of miles and a handful of time zones away and I could still feel the electric hum of votes being cast and counted, and tipping slowly, steadily, and then all in a rush towards this amazing jolt to history and our times. I will never forget how it felt to be this excited about what an individual could do for our country. And I will always remember the thrill that real hope can inspire, the dizzying sensation that this thing could really happen. And now here we are, in a different place, with a different perspective, thinking of the possibilities that lie before us. And after Tuesday, isn't anything possible?

november 4, 2008

2008-11-04T20:05:00.007+08:00

For those of you wondering whether the U.S. presidential election is big news around the world, I give you today's headlines in Korea. I may not be able to read the front page, but I can certainly identify photos of Barack Obama and John McCain when I see them.

Italy is also apparently keeping a keen eye on the election details and when we talked with some Italian friends this weekend they wanted to know what happened with the "zia" of Barack.

Just to put things in perspective, how about naming the president of South Korea... without using google. Extra credit goes to anyone who can name his opponent in the most recent election.

As I post this entry, Americans are waking up and heading to the polls... and making the news that we'll all read about tomorrow.

il vino e il polvo

2008-11-03T21:16:00.018+08:00

When we started our dusty trek to the winery, and took those first steps out of La Morra and into the vineyards, we seemed to be headed in the right direction. But then something happened and we went su (up) when we should of gone giu (down). And then giu (down) when we should have gone su (up).

The vineyards seemed to run well into forever, with line after line of grapevines shooting into the distance like pinstripes. Somewhere along the way we lost track of the trail markers and didn't know if we were supposed to go up and over the hill standing in our way or not. Turns out we were.

So, after a long dusty haul - that included going over the hill - we arrived at the Renato Ratti winery, pant cuffs stuffed with yellow silt and shoes that looked like we'd recently undertaken a lunar landing. When we rang the bell and apologized for being so late the voice that squawked out of the call box made sure to clarify..."TWO HOURS late"...and then paused for effect.

I think we gained back some of their respect when we explained that we'd walked to the winery - yes, on foot - and gotten lost in the process. The small piles of dust that sprinkled across their floors in our wake seemed to confirm our story. We even got a glass of water before we embarked on our belated tour of the wine museum.

The tour was short, dank, and musty as Stefano and I followed one of the winery employees through an old monastery. We could make out barrels in the basement (where not all of the lights were working) and came to appreciate the unique shapes of wine bottles from the region. There was a collection of historic wine labels and photos of the man who started it all. In all honesty it was a lot of fun roaming around the small museum - and this was before the wine sampling made everything even better.

The Renato Ratti tasting room overlooks a horizon lined with grapevines and a region known for incredible wines. We sat there, wineglasses in hand, appreciating the fact that our jeans were coated with the very same dust that supported the growth of the grapes we were drinking. And these weren't just any grapes. These were nebbiolo and barbera. Grapes that become Barolo and Barbaresco, the wines people across the world recognize by their first names.

When the wines crossed our tongues in that place and after that walk, they tasted better than they have tasted anywhere else in the world. They tasted like the sun that had slowed us, and the dust that coated us. They tasted of the stories we'd heard, and a little of the impatience that had squawked at us for being late. They tasted like a day in La Morra.

And they tasted beyond perfect after a visiting Canadian cardiologist gave us a ride back to town. He not only saved us from an uphill walk back, but he should also be credited with keeping us from likely getting lost again. His generosity not only meant that we were able to catch the last bus back to Bra, but it also gave us the extra time we needed for a quick pre-bus meal. We had a glass of wine, some cheese, cured meats, a little bagna cauda...

and maybe just a little bit of dust.

burano with a b

2008-11-03T21:14:00.005+08:00

The island of Burano is a vaporetto ride from Venice and is not to be confused with Murano, the island whose name is synonymous with glassblowing. Burano - with a B - is the farther out island of the two and is known for its lace making and the vivid hues of its homes. It's also the island to visit when Venice seems a little more crowded than usual, or when you'd like to see just how big Italian mosquitoes can get.

Now, don't get me wrong, there are certainly tourists in Burano - and souvenir shops as well - but there are fewer of both out here. Instead, Burano's crowds are of the brick and mortar variety. They don't surge and they don't run you ragged; they simply stand still and simmer in the sun. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder these buildings are slathered in the red of cherries, the green of avocado skins, and the pink of Pepto-Bismal. They are the colors that buildings never are.

We wandered the pedestrian ways along the canals and tucked into stone backyards where laundry hung. We ran from the mosquitoes, marveled at a tipping tower, and started running again. We drank caffé made by a barista who ran the New York marathon in almost half the time I did and we took scads of photos in front of walls of every color.

Buildings may not usually be these colors, but after an afternoon in Burano you'll finally ask "why not?"

nature in numbers

2008-10-29T22:14:00.014+08:00

Don't worry about getting lost on a Korean hiking trail. It's not gonna happen. In fact, don't worry about bears or running out of food or being kidnapped. These are all things that happen if you're alone in nature. And one must remember that being alone in nature doesn't happen in Korea. Especially at Seoraksan National Park in the fall.

At Seoraksan hiking is done in throngs. Great heaving throngs with advanced levels of fitness... shocking levels of fitness. Old women click their tongues somewhere behind you on the trail and before you can get out of the way they will pass you at a trot. Thankfully for the rest of us, these ladies are usually dressed in fuschia and are never seen in groups smaller than 15 so they won't be mastering the element of surprise anytime soon.

I promise that you have never seen anything like this. And unless you've tried it, you can't imagine the pressure there is to keep moving on a hiking trail when half of Korea is breathing down your neck. Literally. Because as you're navigating the stone staircase twisting down the mountainside, they're on the step immediately behind you. And at their pace they're coming pretty darn close to breathing down your neck until they weave deftly off the trail and bypass the meandering amateurs. (Here I add that even the most crowded of Alpine ranges are undiscovered wastelands by comparison.)

The crowds are certainly part of the experience and we had a great time on our visit to Seoraksan. We hiked up, we hiked down. We laughed at warning signs featuring cute bears and their cute bear children. We had a delicious Korean lunch that our friend made. I even said "tasty!" in Korean when I started to eat it. (Not that I knew what I was saying. It turns out that our Korean language teacher has been training me Pavlov-style. She has me say the same phrase - Tasty! - at the start of every lunchtime language class, which just so happens to be when I'm eating my lunch. So now, without even thinking about it, anytime I put food to my mouth, I say "tasty" in Korean. She must be proud.)

We also had a traditional post-hiking meal which means that we went to a restaurant at the base of the mountain, took off our hiking boots, sat on the floor, and ate bibimbap and soup. And yes, the restaurant was full - note the long line of hiking boots at the foot of the raised dining area.

So... Hiking - great. Food - great. Traffic - not so great. It took three hours to get to Seoraksan but five hours to get back. And I can vouch for the fact that the bus driver was using all manner of shortcuts and creative driving to try to avoid the traffic. You don't usually expect that when bumper-to-bumper traffic comes to a standstill you'll be presented with a panoramic view of the hay harvest, but in Korea it's entirely possible.

Stefano-shi pointed out that once we got close to Seoul we crossed the same river four times - more attempts to avoid traffic. It's funny that we spent a total of eight hours on a bus for the pleasure of hiking Seoraksan with a million of our closest friends while our driver crossed the same river four times to avoid these same people.

And one last bit of advice we learned the hard way: hide your trail mix from soju-drinking hikers. Apparently the consumption of soju in the wild outdoors not only emboldens its drinkers, but gives them an overwhelming urge for the trail mix of strangers.

all together now

2008-10-25T18:03:00.013+08:00

Sometimes we worry that the uniquely vivid slacks so beloved by Italian males are going unnoticed since we've left Italy. So during our recent wander across northern Italy we made up for lost time... In Treviso. In Venezia and Burano. In Milano and Alba and Bassano del Grappa. The uomini of Italy didn't let us down and even made sure to hang out in pairs so that they would be easier to spot in a crowd. And for their efforts, we say: "Grazie mille. Our trip wouldn't have been the same without you."

Oh, and one more thing: "Punch pants!"

Songni san

2008-10-01T20:06:00.006+08:00

Before Saturday's trek we'd heard anecdotally that Koreans like to hike "straight up" and that there's no such thing as switchbacks on the trails here. I understand what they mean now, in the way that only someone who has climbed straight up a mountain without the use of switchbacks can understand.

Our afternoon was one of those sprawling physical quests where after you've poured so much effort into the attempt, regardless of the mounting feeling of impossibility, you just keep going. Putting foot after foot on the stone steps leading up, up, up. Smiling with hope at the people coming back down the trail, looking to them for some sort of inspiration or at least a raised fist and a shout of Korea's national mantra, "Fighting!"

We just kept going up and up, until we reached that top. And once we got there we shared a Gatorade toast, a great view, and the realization that going straight down probably wasn't going to be so easy either.

happy birthday, from scratch

2008-10-01T19:58:00.008+08:00

I requested... a three-layer chocolate cake with peanut butter cream frosting and a dark chocolate ganache glaze. I got... the best cake I've ever had in my life.

Thank you Stefano-shi!

34 in halong

2008-09-23T19:25:00.009+08:00

If a husband loves his wife he will spare her the knowledge that a gigantic meaty spider is lurking in the rafters of the thatched hut where they are eating dinner. He will keep this information to himself because he has an inkling that if his wife were to find out that these types of spiders live on the island where they are spending the night, she would never -ever- fall asleep in their small and exceedingly open hut on the beach.

I am happy to report that I am a loved wife and did not find out about the mammoth spider until well after breakfast the next day. That's not to say that I slept much anyway. Despite the sleepiness cultivated by an afternoon of kayaking and a birthday bottle of Vietnamese wine, our bodies noticed when it came time to turn off the generator. Our hut had two small oscillating fans, one pointed at each of our mosquito netted "beds," and the moment that generator stopped, the hot circles of air issuing from the fans stopped as well. So did the white-noise hum that had done such a good job of masking the scratching and rooting of nocturnal things.

Waking up that next morning was as much about rising to face a new day as it was about trying to find a new breeze. We stumbled out of our hut and found that our strip of sandy beach had grown overnight. With the help of the tide, the clear waters of Halong Bay had taken a deep breath and pulled back to reveal many yards of beach that were previously underwater. Strips of yellow sand appeared along the handful of islands visible from our beach and later that morning we explored one of them after kayaking through the calm bay.

The waters of Halong Bay are green and warm and in the best places they are so clear that you can see your feet shuffle along the sandy bottom. These waters have a habit of washing crowds of shells onto the beach, and gently rocking the jellyfish that float alongside your large dragon boat as it pilots to places both secret and wild. They are salty and tepid and reflect the sun like a 1000 watt bulb. They are the stuff of postcards and guidebooks and warrant every ounce of attention that they receive.

It was a thrill to be the only guests on an island. We hadn't expected to be the only people on our kayaking tour and were surprised to find that our only neighbors would be the staff: three young Vietnamese guys who, when they weren't snoozing in hammocks, were enjoying their nightly generator splurge of dance music and satellite TV.

On what turned out to be our personal tour of the bay we went kayaking twice. One outing ended in a glorious quest to avoid heatstroke, and the other delivered us not only through a small rock tunnel but also to a floating fishing village populated by entire families, their agile dogs, and the floating cages of fish they were raising.

Back at the beach we watched giant black wasps dig tunnels in the sand beneath our breakfast table and were amazed by the sun's quick work at drying our sopping-wet clothes. We went swimming and shell hunting, and took cold-water showers looking out on the bay. We sprayed DEET and SPF 50 and didn't brush our teeth.

The concept of luxury is fluid and I swear to you that last week it meant sleeping on a thin mattress among the ants and begging the wind to bring a breeze.

hanoi for beginners

2008-09-21T14:03:00.014+08:00

Don't believe what they say - it is entirely possible to cross the street in Hanoi. However, doing so means resigning yourself to unspoken traffic traditions and putting your health and very existence into the hands of a hundred people piloting motorbikes laden with children, vegetables, and 35 foot lengths of pipe. And that's just what's driving past downtown.

Take a drive even 20 minutes out of Hanoi and you will find the roads sparse with vehicles but edged with a thick bustle of random transport. Two hundred pounds of lifeless hog laid across the back of a motorbike, eerily pink in the sun and moving steadily along the road. A woman, her face shielded by the standard conical straw hat, holding equally tightly to the handlebars of her bicycle and to the five dead chickens she has in each hand; the birds picture perfect and moving only when the wind disturbs their feathers. Uniformed factory workers finishing their shifts and piling onto bicycles -- two friends onto a single bicycle, layering their four feet on the pedals and powering their way home together. A table and chairs balanced on a motorbike in the small chunk of seat left behind the driver.

It is absolutely no joke to be in the dead center of the road and see a motorbike that looks like a moving vegetable garden coming straight for you. Your brain locks and your body screams to run, but the only solution is to focus on the other side of the road and continue to put one foot in front of the other. Slowly. You must know and trust that the vegetables and their driver will either rush past your front, or veer to your back. There is no stopping for them and there is no stopping for you. There is only the constant flow. The occasional traffic lights only serve to create temporary parking lots in which hundreds of motorbikes pause - humming - and wait for the light to change and the streets to swarm again.

Hanoi is hot, so hot that people in the know resign their bodies to the midday swelter and sleep wherever it is that they find themselves. We walked through a small muggy market over which a random tapestry of striped fabrics had been hung. In the bright afternoon sun these fabrics cast watercolor hues on the marketplace below but the vendors didn't care; most were sleeping under their vegetables or alongside their eels. It was too hot to shop, and therefore too hot to sell.

Watermelon juice is one solution to these problems. Or better yet, a tall glass of watermelon juice and a fan blowing hot air through your hair and drying the sweat off your back. There are also delicious fresh lunches piled high with tangles of lotus root and banana flower, peanuts and bean sprouts. The taste is a mix of vibrant fish sauce and vinegar, and flavors that most westerners don't know how to begin to explain. And even in the heat there is delicious Vietnamese coffee, strong and syrupy with a basement of condensed milk. After swirling it all together the coffee is sweet and strong, and a reason to relax at a sidewalk café even if you're not yet tired.

Pho (pronounced "fuh") is the steaming bowl of beef and leafy greens known as the national breakfast of Vietnam. It is savory and wonderful and comes accompanied by tiny round limes that are squeezed fresh into your bowl. There are containers of hot and spicy sauces too, and if these seasonings aren't already on the plastic curbside table when you arrive, the regulars will pass them along. You might not notice because you'll still be trying to figure out exactly where to stash your legs as they most definitely do not fit under the tiny table; and your doll-sized plastic stool won't help because sitting on it started the problem by placing your knees up somewhere near your shoulders. But this is what eating somewhere else is all about - it's real food on the side of a real road sitting on plastic doll furniture with real people. And at the bargain price of a dollar a bowl I think I could get used to this.

Filling your days in the city is easy. There are art galleries in old decaying homes in which the interior gardens are often as beautiful as the art. There are haircuts and close shaves at a sidewalk barber under the leafy trees. There are lakes and pagodas and as many historic sites as you'd like to explore. (There are also people pulling turtles out of the picturesque lakes and shoving them quickly into their pockets but I doubt you'll find that on a postcard.)

It's possible to visit the infamous Hanoi Hilton with its well-known and unfortunate American connection. And while visiting the remainders of the prison, which now form a small museum, you'll discover that before the Vietnamese kept American soldiers there, they themselves were imprisoned there by the French who had originally built this place to hold Vietnamese political prisoners who resisted their rule. And yet even with the recent and violent history between America and Vietnam, there were still nothing but smiles from normal people on the street. Making eye contact with someone in Vietnam usually ends with a smile, unless of course you're wandering through the market at its peak and then you might get an encouraging shove to the side instead. In general practice it's best not to get in the way of people who've been up since 3:00am cleaning fish and killing chickens.

Once a year in Vietnam there is the Mid-Autumn festival celebrating not only the harvest moon but in more modern times, one's children and family. To the random foreigners who out of sheer dumb luck are wandering the streets during this magical party, it looks like a kid-pleasing combination of Christmas and Halloween. There are costumes and presents, candies and balloons; mice for sale by lantern light and fire lanterns intermittently rising into the sky.

The crowds were thick and motorbikes were constantly threading their way through the masses. But the feeling of this commotion, the mood in that sweltering block of humanity, was nothing but pleasant and light. I have never been in a crowd of people that was both so gigantic and so easy going, with children running the streets in devil horns and asleep on their parents' motorbikes by the end of the night.

Hanoi has that remarkable quality of looking as if a good solid thump on the back could make it all fall apart, while at the same time absolutely singing with the hum of life. The electrical lines that cross the streets like handfuls of long black snakes, and the aged trees that command so many patches of sidewalk manage - miraculously - not to intertwine.

The simple bowls of pho made in makeshift kitchens no bigger than closets and eaten every morning at the curb carry a country's well-deserved culinary reputation to places very far from here. And motorbikes that follow no rules successfully transport entire families through daily life while weaving through a thousand other families doing the same.

This is the place to watch chaos frizz into normalcy while a million moving pieces fall perfectly into place.

we didn't get lost

2008-08-25T19:28:00.022+08:00

The Korean peninsula likes to keeps us guessing. It uses a language we don't know and an alphabet we've only just learned to read. It talks to us and all we can do is smile and nod. But the smiling is more important than the nodding. Far more important. Because smiling means that you can get on the subway and ask a stranger how to get to the city of Suwon, and he will get off the train with you, walk you to your connecting train, and wait until you get on your way to Suwon.

And before you board the train the helpful man will say, "Have fun!" But then he will also quickly ask, "Can I say that? Is it correct to say "have fun'?" He'd already asked us earlier whether it is better to say "large" field or "big" field? Large field or big field? It's an admirable trait of many Korean English speakers... the desire to perfect their already solid English abilities. He's asking us how best to describe a wide swath of grass in English while we're just glad to know how to say "yes" and "no" in Korean on a good day.

These rudimentary language skills came in handy in our first real effort to transit and map our way to an unfamiliar Korean location. Our destination was the Hwaseong Fortress, a UNESCO heritage site in Suwon, outside of Seoul. After successfully arriving at the Suwon train station we got out our map and headed into the city past signs we had to sound out slowly and street names we thought we could read.

We poked our heads into a small store and asked the woman sitting at the cash register if we were going in the right direction. Actually, to be a touch more accurate, we said the name of the temple in our thick American accents and pointed up the street with a hopeful look on our faces. She nodded and pointed her own hand in that direction. And then Stefano-shi in a bold go at using our elementary Korean skills said, "Hwaseong Fortress, I walk?" And the lady nodded again. Hooray!

We did remarkably well and found our way to the perfect place to start exploring a fortress. Hot, humid, and uphill - we just kept walking up the hill and into the humidity until we reached the snack shop and the fridges filled with iced coffee and ice cream. And with our iced coffee and ice cream we explored the fortress all studded with turrets and temples, nooks and crannies. There was a big bell and someone's picnic laid out under painted rafters. And all the while storm clouds hung overhead but never let go of a drop.

We went aways in one direction and thought we might want to go a bit further until we ran into a very steep and very long set of stairs going straight down. We both looked at the stairs and then at each other, and then turned around again. We went back the way we had come and then some, and it was the perfect tour. Our route gave us great views of the city of Suwon, with its high-rise apartment buildings crowding any space not part of the hills. And in the end we realized that if we had followed our guide book's directions exactly, as in word-for-word, we would have made the fortress climb coming from the opposite direction and found ourselves on an ugly uphill trek. Instead, we saw it from the downhill side.

When we were back on the ground floor of the city we rambled through the marketplace all full of kittens in bird cages, dried fish in sacks, and sunglasses... jammed in and crammed in with someone screaming their benefits into a microphone. And on our way back to the train station we stopped for lunch at a kim-bap place and accidentally interrupted the staff's lunch. We ordered soba noodles, kim-bap, and udon soup and were rewarded with a flock of side dishes to boot: chilled kim chi, acorn jelly, sea weed, bean sprouts with sesame, green beans in chili. And in addition, since the staff was eating and happened to be generous, we benefited from a generous offering of chop chae (noodles) from their own meal.

Then we were back on our way to the train station where Stefano-shi bought railway train tickets for the way home (instead of taking the subway) and decreased our return trip to a brief 30 minutes. Sitting on the train, chugging our way back home to a home that's not quite home, was reminiscent of how we spent our two years in Italy. Not quite the same, but similar. Except that we woke up to a Musack version of the Beatles's Let It Be blasting from the ceiling speakers at peak volume as the train pulled into the station, presumably to wake up all the snoozers. Never had that in Italy.

summer in seoul

2008-08-16T22:24:00.008+08:00

Last Saturday was hot and humid and a most imperfect day for wandering around outside. But seeing as it was the first Saturday in recent memory in which we were free to do whatever we felt like doing, the taxing weather was a non-issue compared to the sheer exhilaration of having nothing on our proverbial plates.

We decided to work on our Seoul To-See list and found ourselves wading through downtown's thick humidity, exploring Deoksugung palace. It's a nice sprawl of greenery and historic buildings in the center of the city and a well-organized cicada battalion manufactures rhythmic static in the shadows. You wouldn't know you were steps from City Hall if it weren't for the high-rises peeking their way through the open spaces.

Our noontime wandering turned us both into glistening examples of the human body's basic cooling methods and it wasn't pretty. The whole sweat-dripping-off-the-elbow thing is far from picturesque, and from what I can tell, may not even be that effective. And when a small huddle of vending machines appeared in the distance we couldn't have been happier.

Not only were there cold liquids for sale in these magical machines, but included in that group was a drink we'd long been meaning to try: Pocari Sweat. Yep, the word "sweat" is part of the name. I guess it might make sense to someone, you're losing a lot of sweat - why not replace it with more sweat? Preferably the lemon-lime flavored Pocari variety. (Makes Gatorade sound downright boring.)

We got a second wind with our can of sweat and went on to finish our wanderings. Towards the rear of the park, by the art museum, was a rather European feeling space with a fountain and benches and manicured gravel. We took a seat on a bench under a vine-shaded arbor and found ourselves witness to the shared culture of relationships, or at least the shared practice of men getting stuck hauling around their girlfriend's purses.

Leaving the palace grounds we were sapped and hungry and looking for some serious air conditioning and food -- in that order. We ended up at a branch of our favorite bi bim bap place. I got a cold vegetarian bi bim bap and it was perfect. Fresh and light and a healthy accompaniment to the big vegetable pancake that we shared. And the best part of the meal? The large TV broadcasting the Olympics.

I will watch just about any Olympic event that you put before me and it's been great to see the Korean perspective. The sports that are embraced by the Korean public, and shown in force on local TV, are not the sports that Americans are used to watching in prime time. There's a lot of archery, judo, weight lifting, table tennis and badminton... all sports in which the Koreans excel.

Watching the opening ceremony was memorable due to the dramatic spectacle so well manufactured by the Chinese but also because we were watching it live on Korean TV. We couldn't understand the play by play but we did use our basic Korean abilities to sound out the country names as they rolled across the screen in Korean.

What I'd really like to see is a Korean athlete with a Pocari Sweat logo tucked into the corner of their jersey. I haven't noticed one yet, but there was a female archer whose vest featured a large cartoon panda, some floating hearts and the word "love" in big bubble letters. If cartoon pandas full of love are Olympics-worthy, I'd expect a Pocari Sweat logo out there somewhere... it would be downright staid by comparison.

august 6

2008-08-07T17:47:00.003+08:00

I've been busy with some special guests, but I'm back now.

seoul street scenes, 1

2008-07-17T19:14:00.009+08:00

I like the idea that in some cities you never know what you're going to see on the streets at night. Not in a dangerous or call-the-police kind of way, but in the selling-baby-rabbits-on-a-cardboard-box kind of way.

So it's late and we've been singing. We come up out of the basement noraebang and get a face full of Seoul's summer heat. The street signs are bright and climbing towards the dark sky, and our ears are ringing a little from that last song. What are we thinking about? I don't know... the joy of having air conditioning in one's home, a big soft bed to sleep in, tiny baby rabbits...

No. Wait. Back up. I was never thinking of tiny baby rabbits - but then I saw a whole stack of tiny baby rabbits and couldn't get them out of my brain. They were so small, too small to be away from their mothers, and some of them were wearing tiny t-shirts. And they were the softest little creatures ever. I know because I couldn't help but pet them.

In the middle of all the oohing and aahing and petting you find yourself asking that automatic reflex of a question: just who walks past this overturned cardboard box covered in baby rabbits at half past midnight on a Friday and decides to buy one?

But then a couple comes along and picks out a matching set of baby rabbits. The man selling the rabbits puts them in tiny t-shirts which are really just glorified tube socks that have had the toes and everything above the heels cut off. The couple then makes the rabbits kiss (really) before placing them in matching shopping bags and walking off into the night.

I'm sorry to say that I was so entranced by the couple actually buying the rabbits that I failed to get a photo of them doing so. The above photo of another couple pondering their own set of matching rabbits will have to suffice.

And no, Stefano and I didn't come home with a matching set of rabbits. But if we did, we wouldn't have made them kiss first.

Pork + Soju

2008-07-16T20:06:00.006+08:00

Among our colleagues in Seoul there's a little tradition called Soju Club and it's equal parts pork, soju, and crowd participation.

The pork is called "samgyupsal" and it's cooked at the table on a tilted griddle. Your server brings slices of raw pork that resemble very thick slabs of bacon, and lays them on the griddle - occasionally stopping by to turn the meat as it cooks. Once it's nearly ready, scissors are used to cut the meat into smaller pieces and diners use their chopsticks to pick up the pieces and wrap them in lettuce or sesame leaves, adding sauces and veggies to taste.

The best thing on the griddle - bar none - is the kim chi at the opposite end of the pork. The Koreans are a wise people and chose to put the pork at the top of the griddle mountain, while leaving the kim chi and onions at the bottom. This arrangement lets the fat drip its delicious way down through the onions and to a final resting place cuddling the kim chi. And oh, that kim chi is incredible. Food scientists might have chemical formulas for the magic that happens on the griddle - others credit the river of pork fat - but whatever the reason, kim chi has never tasted so delicious.

Soju, another critical element of Soju Club, is a fermented grain drink that's more popular than water in Korea. It typically comes in green glass bottles and is advertised everywhere by gorgeous women looking energetic and bright. However, I can report from first hand experience that while soju is definitely lighter than other alcoholic beverages, it's distant cousin could still easily be nail polish remover. I'm not one to eschew cultural mainstays with a simple "blech" but I do have to admit that when the odd bottle of soju hit the floor on Friday night, I shed no tears for the loss of liquid.

Soju is consumed in shot glasses and at this point it's important to note that one does not fill one's own glass in Korea - ever. So if you want to maintain your friends, you have to remember to keep an eye on their glasses... And if you're thirsty, you'd better hope that they're keeping a dedicated eye on your glass as well. If want to get really fancy about it you can fill your neighbor's glass by pouring the bottle with your right hand, and touching your right elbow with your left hand. This traditional gesture will definitely score you some cultural extra credit.

Crowd participation is crucial as there are many toasts to be made, and a lot of green bottles keep showing up on the tables. The crowd's interest and ability in keeping up with itself can be a delicate balance. The good news is that if you're like me, and order "naengmyeon" - my favorite cold soup - you can easily dump half a shot of soju in your bowl every round and no one's the wiser. But seeing as naengmyeon's too good to waste - with it's chewy noodles, hard-boiled egg, cucumbers, sesame seeds, and ice - I unfortunately had to wait until I had finished the better part of the soup to start using it as a soju repository.

The most important crowd participation comes at the end of the evening... Because after a night defined by pork, soju and greased kim chi there is nothing the crowd wants more than an off-key but enthusiastic rendition of Material Girl. With an encore of Sweet Caroline to follow.

last sunday morning

2008-07-08T19:12:00.016+08:00

Sunday is a different kind of day at the fish market. Slow, sulky, half-closed... like waking up from a long afternoon nap. Saturday's throbbing and icy metropolis has cleared out and left behind a shell of its former self. While both days have their charms, the chance of a bruising collision with an oncoming ice truck is far less likely on Sunday.

In fact, the flow of the Sunday morning fish market is gentle enough that the fishmongers notice your footwear. Having learned a shoe lesson on my first visit, this time I wore my rubber rain boots which happen to be covered in small fish silhouettes. As we passed the vendors they'd point at my boots. Point, smile, laugh...

Once I figured out what was going on I'd point at my boots and give them a thumbs-up, and and they seemed pretty happy with that. My theory is that the fishmongers had a certain appreciation for fish market boots with pictures of fish on them. Either that or they'd never seen women's feet that large before.

I hadn't realized it the first time I went to the first market, but there's actually a second floor and in addition to being a great vantage point from which to see all the fish market action, it's also a really good place to eat. The second floor walkway is lined with restaurants whose front doors look out on the market below and what these places lack in high-end atmosphere, they make up for with fresh fish. And then some.

Choosing a restaurant was easy - we went to the only one we could find that was open before noon. We took off our shoes (and rubber boots) and found a seat on the floor. I was happy to see that they had one of my favorite dishes on the menu; hoedeopbap is basically bibimbap with raw fish. So you get a bowl of rice with fresh vegetables, herbs, seaweed, sesame seeds and spicy sauce, topped with slices of raw fish. It's one of the lightest and freshest dishes you can eat in Korea and if it weren't for a certain someone's not very secret concerns about mercury poisoning, I'd be eating a lot more of it.

This restaurant's version was the best I've had so far in Seoul and the side dishes were good enough to be promoted to main dish stature. I'm used to seeing a small fried fish come out with my meal but I'm still not used to eating it. I sort of pick around with my chopsticks hoping that a hunk of delicious fish will volunteer to part ways with the substantial skeleton still inside it. Sometimes it works and sometimes I find myself looking for discreet ways to remove fish bones from my mouth.

Once the Hoedeopbap was no more, and bones were all that was left of the fish, we unfolded our bodies from their awkward positions on the floor and headed to the front door to put our shoes back on. I hadn't noticed it on the way in but hanging by the shoe shelf was a long-handled shoe horn. A nice touch. But even better, the shoe horn - along with a pair of random metal tongs - was hanging next to the omnipresent soju girl poster. Soju is a popular Korean alcoholic drink and if you haven't seen this poster, you don't live in Korea. (I fear she may be more popular than the president.)

While I was taking this photo the owner of the restaurant quickly scurried over and took away the shoe horn and tongs, presumably to give me a better shot of everybody's favorite soju girl. I didn't have the heart to tell her that I wanted a picture of the shoe horn too. Ok, not so much that I didn't have the heart to tell her, but rather that I don't know how to say "I like the shoe horn so you don't have to move it." So instead I said one of the words I do know in Korean - thank you - and took a few more photos of the poster without the shoe horn too.

Sometimes I worry that my lack of Korean language is keeping me from engaging with Koreans. But then I find myself laughing with fishmongers who like my rain boots, and smiling with restaurant owners over soju posters and shoe horns. I realize this is far from the height of international communication, but it'll have to do for now. At least until I learn the word for shoe horn.

noraebang is karaoke

2008-07-06T21:03:00.009+08:00

From the American perspective it's difficult to see why a group of friends would pay to go into a small room, close the door, and then sing pop songs for hours... but once you've done it, you'll want to start a petition to bring the love of karaoke to America.

Saturday night I walked into the noreabang a newbie and I came out a staunch supporter. Real karaoke is absolutely not about singing for strangers, or listening to the singing of strangers. The real version - the one you see in hundreds of noraebang in Seoul - is a small scale, heavily reverbed, private cabaret performance for your friends.

It's incredible fun and depending how luxurious your noraebang, it's potentially pretty darn cheap. You simply pick one of the many noraebang lining the streets of Seouls' liveliest neighborhoods and hope there's not a line of people who got there before you. In a typical Saturday night's progression the noraebang visit usually comes after a great dinner and a visit for drinks and darts at another place -- thus, after the eating and the drinking it's time for the singing.

You pay your $15 for an hour (and then ten more dollars for another half hour when you realize an hour just isn't enough) and you head on in and close the door. The room you've been assigned is larger than a bathroom but smaller than a college dorm room, and it's got sofas and chairs and a large machine that makes wonderful things happen. Wonderful things like the playing of videos on a large flat screen TV while song lyrics roll across the lower part of the screen. Inside we found tambourines, two microphones with colorful little hairnets on them, and a catalogue with thousands of songs to choose from.

The list of viable song options is far shorter for folks who don't speak Korean than for those who do, including those of us who may be able to s-l-o-w-l-y decipher the alphabet but still need at least half a day to sound out a full sentence. The good news is that the west's domination of pop music means that there's still a healthy helping of English-language songs to choose from. Simply pick a song, punch the numbers into the very large remote control, and then wait.

Some of us may be less Broadway-ready than others but it really doesn't seem to make a difference. There's enough reverb and tambourine to turn anyone's off-key attempt into a Grammy contender. Ok, not really, but that's why you drank the beer before you came.

Karaoke really is tons of fun - and this from someone who's spent a lifetime believing they sing about as well as a harbor seal. So consider this fair warning - if you come to visit us in Seoul, you're not only going to have to listen to me sing, but you're going to have to get behind the mic as well. You might as well follow the advice we received from our friends in the know and prepare a couple of karaoke stand-bys before you arrive. (There's at least one person out there who will be happy to know that my go-to karaoke song is quickly becoming Madonna's "Material Girl." And Stefano does a pretty mean version of Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline.")

While our 4th of July couldn't have been more different this year than last, this Uncle Sam and Lady Liberty still spent the weekend celebrating freedom... the freedom to sing poorly, loudly, and late into the night.

north vs. south

2008-06-25T18:18:00.010+08:00

Seeing the North Koreans play the South Koreans was a new enough combination, but beer and dried squid... that straw almost broke the camel's back. I say "almost" because that dubious honor is reserved for the $12 chicken nuggets that in order to rise above room temperature must be put in the soccer stadium's microwave by you after you buy them. At least the sauces were good.

We went with friends to see the soccer game on Sunday night and it was well worth the price of admission. If nothing else, it shows that soccer stadiums can be places where families congregate and petite Korean women feel at home. (Korea is very different from Italy in this regard. I don't even understand the Korean language but I'm fairly positive that the stadium wasn't filled with profanity-laden screaming. Or even anger for that matter. Just lots of chanting and flag waving and clapping. And some serious squealing by the ladies.)

Despite the begrudgery of some members of our party I decided to give the dried squid a chance. It was a school night and I'd already had half a beer, so I figured I might as well go whole hog and eat some dried-up pieces of fragrant sea life too. Good thing I did. Eating the stuff is vaguely reminiscent of fruit roll ups; you tear strips off of a larger sheet and while the concept may sound weird and a touch creepy, it tastes pretty good. Like chewy potato chips infused with salty fish flavor. That might not sound like a good thing - but it is.

The game ended in a 0-0 tie with a lot of running around but no goals scored. The two teams shook hands once the clock ran out and spent some time lingering together on the field. At one point the "One Korea" fans, who were holed up on the far side of the field, unfurled a giant white flag with a turquoise Korean peninsula on it -- the "One Korea" flag. Afterwards we noticed monks (didn't I tell you the stadium was a gentle place?) and others walking around carrying smaller versions of the flag.

Seeing the "One Korea" message was a pretty solid reminder of what would happen next. The jerseys would get thrown into duffel bags and the soccer balls would be collected and put away. The South Koreans would stay where they were and the North Koreans would get themselves back on their own side of the 38th parallel.

A gentle reminder that we live in a country technically still at war.

when in seoul...

2008-06-19T19:11:00.011+08:00

When you're roaming around the market on a Sunday afternoon and notice leaning towers of silver noodle bowls rising out front of a packed restaurant it's not difficult to choose a place for lunch. In fact walking past this crowded establishment immediately triggered our trip-wire for eating well around the world: look for locals eating - and then eat there.

The only caveat with this method is that you've got to be ready to go whole hog because when you walk into a place like this, you're walking into a different reality. You're not only going to be eating with the locals, you're going to be eating like the locals. This means zero accommodation for the things you're used to where you're from. And that, my dear friends, is exactly the reason you're here.

You're here to climb the thin staircase to the second floor, take off your shoes, and discover that unlike downstairs there aren't tables and chairs, there are only tables.

You're here to sit on the floor. Which in turn means you're here to keep shifting your body weight around until you can find a position in which your legs, or your feet, or your bottom - or some combination thereof - does not go immediately numb.

You're here to order by pointing at photos on the walls, or food on other people's plates, and then hope that the meal you've gesticulated at and nodded for, actually tastes as good as it looks.

You're here to use a set of chopsticks for your noodles, a spoon for your soup, and the scissors for anything that's too unruly to be tamed by either the chopsticks or the spoon.

You're here to clean your face and hands with thin napkin squares that you find in a bunch on the floor, and throw your garbage in a small pail that just barely fits under the table.

And not only do you get to do these things but you also get to eat the best food on offer, like cold chewy noodles with cucumbers and spicy sauce and a hard-boiled egg on top. You get to slurp the noodles and drink water out of cold metal cups and sit in your socks on the floor. And you get to pretend - for just a moment - that you, of all people, know the best places to eat in Seoul.

unexpected guests

2008-06-08T12:29:00.008+08:00

We have a screen door and a front door and neither has much space between it and the ground. You certainly couldn't shove a pencil outside without first opening both doors. Yet, somehow, this arrangement is not proving to be enough of a barrier for a very determined set of earthworms.

Why earthworms would want anything to do with our foyer is beyond us. We assumed they wanted nothing more than to scoot around underground and occasionally visit the surface after heavy rains. But you know what they say about assumptions and apparently earthworms in Seoul want to live inside. They are literally crawling under our front door and parking themselves in our foyer.

Before you ask I'll clarify that the worms aren't washing in with flood waters and they're not hiding in the treads of our shoes. These damn things are choosing - out of the vast geographical space available to them - to squeeze under two sets of front doors and then coil themselves up in our home.

The worm in the photo is one of six that have made the journey. When I picked it up to throw it out the front door it squirmed and twisted with a force I didn't know could come from a worm. The way it jerked and coiled between my fingers was absolutely disgusting and I have to admit that there were screams. (Thankfully not from the worm.)

You expect spiders inside. Anyone who's been in a basement is used to seeing roly poly bugs and thousand leggers. But earthworms? That's going to take some getting used to.

by popular demand

2008-05-28T21:49:00.006+08:00

Several people, including someone who's celebrating a birthday today, have asked to see the slug-like creatures for themselves. I tried to spare you from the horror of the idea that people are buying bags of these squirming creatures, bringing them into their homes, and then eating them, but you had to see for yourself. Fine, then... I give you slugs.

morning at the fish market

2008-05-26T21:09:00.012+08:00

There's no good place to stand in the Noryangjin fish market. If you stop moving for a second, even if you tuck yourself behind a parked ice-truck, you'll be in someone's way.

You'll be blocking the box of crabs that a vendor wants to sell or impacting the path of their moving bicycle or worse still, placing yourself in the trajectory of the saliva wad they're preparing to jettison from their throat. And the whistles and hoots streaming at you won't be because you're cute and adorable but rather because you're in the way and if you don't move right now at least they warned you before they ran you over with their ice-truck.

The floors are wet and anyone who's been to the fish market more than once is wearing rubber boots. The boots protect you from the water that's endlessly dripping from every surface. The boots keep the fish guts off your shoes and the jettisoned saliva off your ankles. But the boots don't keep you from falling: I saw a young ice man step out of his ice-truck and gracelessly thud to the concrete floor despite a sturdy pair.

The fish are no more graceful than the ice men and congregate on the floor in desperate groups. They shake and flop and do what they can to evade the fish women and their blunt blades and heavy lipstick. And for every fish woman with a cigarette dangling from her lower lip there's a fish man swinging an ice-pick. Both are more than ready to clean a fish of its innards in one simple tug.

The regulars here discarded their sense of wonder with yesterday's ice. A huge flounder flipped itself over on the floor and no one cared. A woman I was with bought a bag full of what I can only describe as giant pulsating horned slugs. And vendors ate breakfast snuggled into corners with piles of sea creatures born solely to populate nightmares.

It's a different place, the fish market. People fall out of ice trucks at all hours of the day and worms that look a whole lot like something else keep squirming until they're all bought up. And really, it wasn't so long ago that all of these writhing creatures were deep in the water where they belong.

But since someone went to all the effort to drag them up on land, it seemed a shame not to participate. So I did my part and went home with a kilo of mussels ($2) so fresh that they fought back when we tried to prep them. The kilo of giant shrimp ($14) is now in our freezer and I'm hoping they'll put up less of a fight. Then again, they're from the fish market so you never know.

friday night, 8pm

2008-05-26T21:06:00.014+08:00

There's no place like this in the United States. Chicago isn't like this. New York isn't like this either. And maybe Las Vegas is a little like this but I don't think it's quite the same. What we have here is a non-stop flow of people and light in every direction. All coated with a mysterious yellow dust that fills your mouth with a metallic taste.

It's hard to get used to, but in Seoul the flow of life goes both outwards and upwards. The buildings here have a focus on verticality that catches westerners off-guard. If you only look at what's in front of you - at what lives on the first floor - you're missing more than half the story. Because in Seoul the buildings are layer cakes of shopping, dining, hair-styling...

It's important to clarify that I'm not talking about a mall or a shopping center. It's a city street. And taking two steps forward is as varied as walking two flights up. The bold, tall, stretching signage that clings to these buildings is there to shake you free of the idea that what lives at the root of the building is the same as what graces its crown. Here you need to look at every floor or you'll never find the restaurant you're looking for. Koreans have no problem with this upward thinking - even the highest floors are filled.

But ground level has its pleasures too. The streets are full of vendors selling every kind of crap you can think of. The whole point of being out for the evening seems to be shopping; in brick and mortar stores, sure, but even more so at tables covered with cheap headbands, sunglasses, and flip-flops. Or better yet, knock-off purses... if you don't find what you want at the LeSportSac store you can always exit the store and walk ten paces to a street vendor selling the knock-off versions for pennies.

Street food is everywhere. There's the ubiquitous dried octopus seller, and the potato sticks in paper cups. Slices of fresh fruit sitting on slabs of melting ice. Tomatoes and kiwi ready to be whirred into juice by a blender plugged into some magical electrical source stretching from a far-off land.

The coffee shops are full, the restaurants are full. The vendors are surrounded by teenagers with money to burn. And the people just keep coming, streams of them. All arm in arm - couples, friends, old men. All dressed well and looking good in the light of the vertical signs. If you think of Times Square in New York or Piccadilly Circus in London... it's that kind of energy with the light and the swarms and the feeling that if you stood still and tried to withstand the flow you'd be carried away into the wild urban beyond.

Another risk the urbanites of Seoul face is a mysterious yellow dust that arrives here by way of winds from China. It's the only negative we've found in this city and even the mild levels we sucked into our lungs on Friday made our heads ache and our mouths go acrid. Alas, every pleasure has its accompanying toll to pay.

But even with the dust, Seoul is a city that we should all be hearing more about. Once you get here and start exploring you wonder why people back home aren't talking about this place. You wonder why no one was telling us that we just had to come here to see and shop and eat. But then you get distracted by four stories of glowing signs, and the crowd pushes you forward, and you fast forget what it was like to not know Seoul.

happy birthday buddha

2008-05-19T20:20:00.017+08:00

Last Monday was Buddha's birthday which not only gave us a day off of work but also the perfect reason to visit the Bong-eunsa Temple in downtown Seoul.

I may have already mentioned that this city's juxtapositions are infinite and spectacular. Seoul is a throbbing web of ancient culture and impulse-buys, jagged alleys and sparkling skyscrapers... And it's best appreciated by whirling yourself into the superficial and then escaping to the spiritual; dropping waist-deep into the low and then hurling yourself at the high. Get out there and don't stop until you see something you've never seen before.

We'd never been to a Buddha's birthday celebration so that fit the bill. To get to the temple we rode the subway to one of Seoul's largest shopping centers and walked through its powerhouse of shopping and consumerism. We walked out the front doors and crossed the street - and there was the Temple. As simple as that. One side of the street has all of your earthly needs while the other covers the spiritual.

The temple grounds - decorated with thousands of colorful lanterns - were packed solid with happy visitors who were all celebrating in their own way. Families were spread out on grassy patches to picnic and relax. The devout stood before a towering Buddha to bow and pray. Others stood in line to visit smaller golden buddhas in shady temples. And we stood back and watched it all.

The largest Buddha on the Bong-eunsa grounds stands several stories high and when you climb the hill behind him to get a better perspective you find that he drops perfectly into Seoul's skyline. Worshipers are scattered on the ground before him but he stands tall and unmoving as high-rises glint in the sun. Seoul's combination of spirit and cement has never been more obvious.

We ate lunch on the grounds after wandering through a packed marketplace of vendors selling all manner of delicious korean foods. We chose a green onion pancake which was fried in more oil than an elephant ear, and a spicy rice noodle dish which resembled giant worms more than anything else. As expected the food was incredible. Even better, it was easy to order since it was being made right in front of you and you could point at whatever looked good. (And it all looked good!)

Leaving the temple grounds we ran into several groups of schoolgirls giving out free hugs. While we appreciated their signs (in English, yay!) we didn't take them up on their offer, fearing some sort of international incident in the making. We couldn't understand all of the words in their "come and get a free hug" song - which, unlike their signs, was not in English - but they liked that we took photos anyway.

(Korea, by the way, is a great country in which to be a photographer. You're never the only one with a camera, and there's always someone whose camera is bigger than yours. The steal-my-camera target rarely rests on your shoulders alone.)

Despite skipping the free hugs we had a great time at Buddha's birthday. After celebrating, eating, and wandering through the crowds on the temple grounds there was only one thing left to do: we crossed the street and went shopping. Because, my friends, that is what you do in Seoul.

hey jude

2008-05-15T20:55:00.006+08:00

When you see a large group of professional Korean musicians in traditional dress you don't expect their playlist to include the Beatles but tonight after wandering around downtown Seoul eating street food and perusing dried octopus arms in the market we were treated to a traditional Korean arrangement of "Hey Jude." We'd joined a large crowd sitting on the steps of the Performing Arts Center and before we knew it we were listening to a three-song Beatles medley that also included Let it Be and Oblah Di Oblah Da. We didn't recognize the instruments or the sounds they were making - and the playbill explaining the concert was in Korean so we couldn't read it - but it's hard to miss three Beatles songs in a row. Especially when they're punctuated with something that sounds a whole lot like a kazoo.

Daegu: sounds like Tay-goo (part 2)

2008-05-13T20:39:00.010+08:00

Continued from the previous posting... more of what we learned about Korea this weekend.

4. You can bring your toothpaste to the sauna.

Ever been to a Korean sauna? I have and I can tell you that there are two key components. The first is a whole lot of water. And the second is a whole lot of naked people. And believe it or not, the combination works.

The women and the men have separate facilities (you can get the general idea via the pool layouts in dark red on the "map" pictured below) and so I can only report on the female version of the sauna experience. I'll also note that Stefano's experience seems pretty darn similar except with more bells and whistles; the men get free hair gel.

As for the ladies, you dump your clothes in a locker and then take your tiny towel, small bar of soap, and packets of shampoo and conditioner out to the sauna. At this stage you're probably trying to drape the too-tiny piece of terry cloth over as much of you as possible, choosing to focus on your front or your back as it's pretty clear that your towel is unable to fully cover one side of you let alone two. If there's ever been an exercise in futility, this is it.

And it's really very silly because once you leave the locker room the only thing you see is naked people. Naked people of every age, every shape, and every size. They're everywhere and in every position. Standing, sitting, floating, bending, squatting, stretching... even brushing their teeth. Nothing is left to the imagination and you immediately get the sensation that nothing about you will be any different than all of this.

So you drop your towel, you pick up a small plastic stool and two plastic bowls, and commence washing. Before you know it you're perched on a small plastic chair pouring bowls of water over your body while your neighbor's doing the same not one foot away. And that's just the start.

Next you move to the real reason you're there: a series of water pools of varying temperature. There's a medium heat pool, a pretty darn hot pool and a skin-scorching pool. (I have to admit that I couldn't look away from the skin-scorching pool as everyone who puts that first foot into the burning water makes some sort of pained expression; even the old pros grimace.) There's also the freezing cold pool which I appreciated after all of the high temps. I experienced neither the steam room (too hot) nor the massage by the naked masseuse (no reason to rush on that one).

The great thing is that once you settle in and take a seat in one of the pools, the day goes by as if you were sitting on your stoop. You have a conversation with your buddy, you watch people come and go... it all feels quite normal. Although I still don't think I'll be bringing my tooth brush the next time around.

5. The karaoke bus is an important development in vehicular entertainment.

Ever board a bus and notice a sound board next to the driver's seat? What about a microphone that is so carefully wired it'll stretch all the way to the back of the bus? The flat screen TV is also a pretty good clue. Or the karaoke song book and remote control.

All I know is that if you're boarding your bus and you see those things, you're in for the best ride of your life. Lots of buses these days have filtered water machines and tasseled curtains over the window - but I'm here to tell you that it's the karaoke that makes the difference.

If you're traveling with a good group of people there'll be a line of folks waiting to sing. We had people start singing even before the sun went down. They belted out ballads, rock anthems, and country classics. And our driver made sure that each one sounded like a pro. Not only was this guy great at making a 16-point turn in lieu of the standard U-turn, but he could tweak the sound board levels at the same time. His attention to detail was perhaps a little less appreciated on the curving mountain passes, but you've still got to appreciate his commitment to audio excellence.

Daegu: sounds like Tay-goo (part 1)

2008-05-13T20:33:00.009+08:00

This weekend we went on a language immersion trip to Daegu which is pretty funny because our normal life here is really one big immersion tour anyway: we walk around Seoul and do our best to communicate despite having zero language ability. It definitely makes us appreciate the Italian skills we had upon arrival in Milan although I've got to admit that our sign language has never been better. This weekend's trip was a first step towards developing stronger language skills and although we're no closer today to being able to express our needs in the Korean language, we did learn a thing or two about Korean culture which - frankly - is just as interesting.

1. Don't talk too loudly on the train.

It's a two-hour train ride from Seoul to Daegu and while the time goes by relatively quickly you're still left with nothing much to do for 120 minutes. The natural thing is to start talking with your friends and colleagues since they're sitting across from you and also have nothing to do. From our experience in Italy we know that this is not just an American custom and from what I've experienced on Italian trains, Americans display relatively tame train behavior. However, it seems that we're not quite tame enough for the Korean train system.

There's a lingering formality about the trains here. When you're at the station and first come upon your train waiting on the tracks you're actually greeted by a uniformed employee who does a quick little head bow and points you in the right direction - this type of greeting doesn't happen on Amtrak and the only American comparison I can make is what sometimes shows up in old movies with Cary Grant. Unfortunately, this uniformed attendent is also the person who tells you to quiet down if he thinks you're talking too loud. Which happened to us while we were having what we felt was a fairly muted conversation. And the worst part is that he does it in a quiet voice - kind of like a librarian - so that he's sure to model the proper volume of speech. You never forget your first time being reprimanded at a whisper.

2. You will pay a fine in the all-you-can-eat restaurant if you over-estimate how much you can eat.

For Sunday's lunch we went to this great all-you-can-eat Korean barbeque buffet. Every table has a skillet-like grill in the center and your job as the visitor is to go to the freezers along the wall and choose what you'd like to grill. It's a bit strange to be picking your meal straight out of the frozen food section but having tried it I've got to say that it's a pretty sound concept.

I walked past all of the beef and pork - tubs full of different cuts and types - and headed straight for the tentacles. There were two varieties of whole squid and one tub of marinated octopus and I've never been happier with eating a plate full of sea life. Having experienced both excellent and atrocious seafood in Italy I was worried that I might not be able to do justice to the marine life frozen in front of me but I shouldn't have worried. All you have to do is plop the creatures on the griddle, ignore them for while, and then eat them with rice.

But don't forget the scissors. Hats off to the Koreans on this one... scissors are a perfect addition to the standard silverware set. What better way to attack a meal that's comprised of several arms and a big bulbous body than with scissors? Or a big bowl of noodles in seasoned soy sauce? A knife and fork will have you chasing your octopus across the room and even experts cut their noodles before going at them with chopsticks. The next time you're fighting with food, give the scissors a try - it works for the Koreans.

The only trouble with walking past freezers full of meat and seafood, side dishes, rice, noodles, and soup is that you want to eat it all. And it's not too surprising seeing as it is an all-you-can-eat restaurant. But in Korea you'd better think again. Because if you think you want to eat it all, you're going to have to follow through or else pay a fine. And while I don't doubt that most of us can afford a $5 fine I do question whether we really want a formal reminder in front of our colleagues that we're a giant pig and wasted a plate of food. More effective than the fine, wouldn't you say?

3. Follow-up: Same goes for temple food except that the fine is bad karma because they really can't charge you.

Late Saturday afternoon we visited the Haeinsa Temple which is one of Korea's three major temples and is also a UNESCO world Heritage site. The temple is a gorgeous structure sitting on top of Gaya mountain and surrounded by lush greenery. However, this temple's prominence and fame derive more from what it houses (the Tripitaka Koreana) than from its beauty, which goes a long way towards explaining the importance of the Tripitaka Koreana.

The Tripitaka Koreana is made up of of 81,254 carved woodblocks and is a compilation of sacred Buddhist texts. The carving of these printing blocks was finished in AD 1251 and despite a jaw-dropping 52,382,960 characters carved into wood by hand, there are no mistakes. The buildings in which these wooden blocks have been stored over the centuries use a sophisticated ventilation system and a combination of charcoal, clay, and calcium oxide to absorb humidity during the rainy season and slowly give it back when the weather is dry. The fact that they're still around in all their glory - despite various invasions, wars, and fires - is no small feat.

We also were able to watch the evening drum performance during which several monks play four types of drums in succession. It's a moving concert and entire families gathered to listen to the various rhythms. The storm of noise was in stark contrast to the dinner we'd just finished. Everyone is welcome to dine at temple meals; there's no charge (you're expected to leave a donation) and you dine in the same large hall as the monks, although at separate tables. There are two rules to this experience in simplicity and spiritual harmony: 1. Don't talk, and 2. Finish everything on your plate.

It's surreal. In the dining hall there are only the noises of chair legs scraping the floor as people come and go and the hushed sounds of eating. That's it. You start by quietly grabbing a bowl and then just as quietly walking past several gigantic pots of food, scooping your portion into your bowl. This is where you have to keep in mind that despite appearing otherwise, the bowls are actually pretty darned big and it's wise to fill them appropriately.

The food was simple and good and as long as your eyes aren't bigger than your stomach there shouldn't be too many problems finishing. Although - truth be told - I had to ask Stefano to help me finish my soup. (Which I did without saying a word, thank you very much.)

At the end of the meal you bring your empty bowl to the kitchen sink and place it atop the towering piles of bowls already sitting there. All empty. I guess no one wants to risk making the monks mad, or sullying their offer of a free meal by not finishing what you take. Personally, I hope I didn't get any demerits for the two hot pepper slices that I left behind; I assumed that the monks in all of their benevolence would understand.

home is where the kimchi is

2008-05-06T05:49:00.014+08:00

After flying over Canada, Russia, and the Pacific Ocean we finally heard the words that we'd waited over twelve hours to hear, "Welcome to Seoul." And then there was the small matter of setting our watches. "It's 6:00pm in Seoul. We've crossed the international dateline so it's now Wednesday." So while our hearts and minds (and watches) still said Tuesday, our plane had instead landed squarely in Wednesday.

So we did it; we flew into the future and are here to report that it ain't half bad. In fact from where we sit it's looking pretty good. Seoul is an incredible city - one of the ten largest in the world - and I think we're going to fit right in. I use the phrase "fit right in" rather loosely here, of course. Seeing as we neither resemble the folks who fill this city nor speak their language it might be a little difficult to fit right in. But we sure like the food.

Eating in Seoul is an absolutely fantastic experience although I couldn't tell you exactly what we've been eating. There's a lot of rice; that much is clear. There are also piles of pickled vegetables, sizzling meats, lettuce leaves, and octopus - and that was just our first lunch here. Being unable to read the menu either renders you more adventurous or starving and we've decided to embrace the adventure.

The food here can be spicy and sharp but also homey and comforting. It's ok to slurp at the table and I'm happy to report that you get to use a spoon for your rice. The metal chopsticks are for everything else and we're getting used to the fact that they tend to get a much more slippery grip on things than the wooden variety do. You get a fork and knife if you order any sort of deep-fried meat slab (talk to Stefano about that) and tumblers filled with water seem to come standard with every meal. Another standard is kimchi, the pickled and spicy cabbage that we've been hearing about since the day we knew we were coming to Seoul. The good news is we like it.

Eating street food appears to be as popular as eating inside and by the few items we've already sampled I can see why. Street food is plentiful, cheap, and incredibly good. We've had thick pancakes filled with a layer of molten brown sugar and also cubed pieces of nougat dusted with rice flour. On the savory side we've seen sizzling sticks of meat and steaming pots of stewed bugs. There are sweet potato fries and snails and blood sausages. And all cheap, cheap, cheap.

Seoul and Milan are surprisingly similar and might as well be long-lost cousins with their shared interests in coffee and fashion. Seoul's streets point to a real obsession with coffee - you can't walk ten feet without running into an American chain (Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks) or an Italian-themed café. And while I'm sorry to break the hearts of my dear Italian amici I must admit that some of these coffee places can make a mean cappuccino.

And fashion... these people definitely know how to dress. No one's walking around in sweatpants and the only fashion "dont's" seem to result from an overabundance of fashion "do." For example, older men here like to take a nice suit with a pattern, and wear it with a nice shirt that also happens to be patterned. Unfortunately the shirt's pattern is wildly different from the suit's pattern and while either would be nice on its own you put the two together and bam! you're unintentionally stopping traffic.

Another unique fashion whim of the Korean male is the wearing of a purse. At first it looks as if the guy might be dutifully carrying the purse of a lady friend but no, said lady friend has her own purse under control. These guys are wearing their own purses and while I have no clue what they're putting in them, they manage to rock the look. Italian males, take note.

The city is also ringed by mountains and hills and there are several in the middle of town. It's great to look up from big city Seoul streets and see green peaks rising in the near distance. We've heard that you can take the Seoul subway straight to hiking trails and be on the mountain in less than an hour. (That's assuming you can figure out the subway system.)

It won't be easy living in a country where we can't speak the language let alone read the alphabet, but we're here to stay. Happily, we already know how to say hello and thank you and with only five days in country, we're feeling pretty good about our progress. The real question is how many days will it take Stefano to buy a purse?