EatingAsia

In Chengdu Now, as Then, Less is More

Here's a sight not familiar to us from our time in Chengdu: slabs of pork belly set to hang for a time outside, in the cool damp chill.

In the mid-eighties flour, cooking oil, and other staples were rationed and meat, though eaten daily in many city households, appeared more often as a flavoring than as a main ingredient. A dish of huanggua rousi (stir-fried cucumbers with pork), for example, might include two cucumbers and at most two tenths of a kilo of pork, sliced thin enough to travel amongst the vegetable pieces. Because Chinese pork had (and has) so much flavor, we never wished for more meat.

Those days are gone, from the looks of apartment balconies all over town. Suspended from railings and clotheslines and strings strung between the backs of two chairs are fatty squared-off planks of pork -- larou, or bacon -- and links of plump, lard-dotted fresh sausages thick as a broomstick. Every Chengdu household, it seems, is taking advantage of the cold weather to cure its own pork.

The larou -- savory, salty, richly larded but not overwhelmingly greasy, deeply porcine -- is my new favorite pork product. Our first morning in town a vendor at an open-air market offered me a slice; it melted on my tongue, leaving a lovely lingering lick of smoke. We've had it as a cold starter -- simply sliced, again -- and several times stir-fried with sweet Sichuan leeks.

 

It's a dish that conjures the relative abundance of Chengdu's food stocks in the twenty-first century prosperity and its mid-eighties shortages all at once.

Each lusciously wok-crisped, smoky larou slice is luxuriant in its richness, but the meat is used sparingly -- sliced tissue thin, as all meat used to be, and balanced by a profusion of green, garlicky leeks. A palmful of halved dried chili peppers says 'Sichuan'.

Straight Out of the Box

So here we are, in Chengdu. So, so many changes. On our first afternoon we wandered for five hours in a half-daze, looking for recognizable landmarks. We found only two: the yellow-bricked Jinjiang Hotel and, up the street, the gargantuan statue of Mao Zedong.

But much remains the same. The winter weather -- a damp chill that creeps to the very core of your bones and then, without warning, surfaces in shivers . The old, smoking men playing dominoes and board games in the park by the river. Padded jackets, ear muffs, arm warmers. The easy friendliness of the locals -- which has, to me, always made China's interior 'hinterlands' more pleasant places to be than its capital and coastal cities.

And the xiaochi ('small eats'), unapologetically hearty and unsophisticated.

Ten minutes after dropping our bags at our hotel we were sitting on baby stools just inside the gate of a work unit, where this ayi ('auntie') was serving noodle dishes and dumplings from a single burner and a table just outside the guardhouse.

I struggled mightily with her heavy Sichuanese accent, but we managed to chat a bit about the local love of mala (spicy and 'numbing', from dried chilies and Sichuan peppercorn) and reminisce about lao Chengdu (old Chengdu); she moved to the city from southwestern Sichuan in 1987, two years after we left.

 

As her 83-year-old mother watched from her chair, ayi made us a mean liang mian -- sturdy, preboiled noodles mixed with garlic, sugar, crushed peanuts, dried chilies in oil, and plenty of huajiao --

 

suanla fen (or suanla ferrr, as Sichuanese say, hot and sour noodle soup -- wonderfully elastic bean starch noodles, greens, and two kinds of pickled vegetable in a thin broth soured with black vinegar and spicy from dried chilies), and shuijiao (boiled dumplings -- top photo), served with a sweet-and-spicy dipping sauce.

 

I sat in the wet cold listening to ayi's jokey banter and the click-clacking of mahjong tiles from inside the guard house. I smiled and nodded at a curious older local who wandered over from an apartment block to have a good look at what the two foreigners were eating.

I hung my head in the vinegary, spicy steam rising from that bowl of suanla fer and felt unspeakably happy to be back.

Chengdu has undergone major plastic surgery. But I get the feeling the city's generous heart is intact.

For photos of Chengdu, then and now, keep an eye on Dave's photo blog, which he'll be updating regularly while we're in China.

Philippine Duman: An Artisanal Product Par Excellence

It takes at least twelve hours to transform one 800 square-meter of rice into duman, a cool season specialty made in Pampanga, a Philippine province about an hour's drive north of Manila. We were lucky enough to observe the amazing production process. Read about it, and view Dave's slide show (be sure to go to full screen, and select captions) over at Zester Daily, a newish site devoted to the culture of food and wine.

While you're there, have a look around. Zester Daily was founded by a former LA Times reporter, benefits from the skills of seasoned editors, and counts some great writers and photographers among its contributors, You'll find us there at least once a month.

Chengdu

Mementos from Chengdu - an admission letter, IDs, travel permits, the hated White Cards

On July 27th 2005,at exactly 4:20 in the afternoon, our Malaysia Air flight left Saigon, where we'd been living for a little over two and a half years, for Kuala Lumpur.

There were difficult good-byes at the airport -- we were especially touched that most of Dave's staff turned out to send us off, and with a river of tears to boot -- but we boarded the plane happily. Under different circumstances our time in Vietnam would probably have been better (fodder for another post at another time, perhaps). But the fact is, we lived there miserably and couldn't wait to get out.

It was thirty months before we even considered returning. We booked our tickets with trepidation. How would it be? Would we want to leave as soon as we arrived?

It was a fantastic trip. Saigon had changed -- or, more accurately, we had. We'll never move back -- with some places living is apples to the oranges of visiting, and for us Saigon is one of those places -- but we adore Vietnam more with each visit.

I'm thinking that's how it might be with China.

Tomorrow we're off to Chengdu, where we taught English for a year (6 months for Dave) in the mid-eighties. Our time there was ... intense. We changed and grew and learned about ourselves and each other, about what it means to really be challenged, about China and about history and the ways in which it molds a country's present in ways good and bad.

Everyone has turning points in their lives. Chengdu was mine -- the Big One that determined much of the course of my life and in many respects made me the person I am. Dave and I -- we'd known each other for only six months before I left for Chengdu alone in August of 1984 -- are married because of Chengdu. In a roundabout way we live in Kuala Lumpur, and have lived in Hong Kong and Shanghai and Bangkok and Saigon, because of Chengdu. I write about food because of Chengdu. On my way to figuring out what I wanted to be when I grew up long after I already had grown up, I benefited from/wasted (I go back and forth on this, usually landing on the side of the former) many years in graduate school, because of Chengdu. In China I sharpened my elbows and learned how to stand up for myself; when I am assertive it's because of Chengdu. I am a social and political liberal and deeply distrustful of propaganda in any form, from any government, thanks to that year in Chengdu. After all this time away from China I'm still immediately at ease whenever I hear Chinese spoken, and when I travel I look for a Chinatown because to me Chinatowns feel 'normal'. That's because of Chengdu too.

That doesn't mean I loved Chengdu unconditionally. That year was a colossal bitch. There was good stuff -- food of course, and amazing conversations and late nights with Sichuanese friends capped off by manic, high-speed bike sprints through streets that rarely saw cars. There was the luck and privilege of living in China far, far away from the capital of Beijing just as things were changing, just as Deng Xiaoping's kaifang gaige (opening and reform) was gaining traction. In 1984 and 1985 the air in China crackled with possibilities (as well as other, more visible things) and everyone in Chengdu and everywhere else we traveled (Tibet excepted) was hopeful. It was an exciting time.

 

University housing -- there were actually more trees than we remember

But I worked for a big institution (Sichuan University) and its bureaucracy was unrelenting and unbeatable. Petty cadres meddled with my classes in the most ridiculous ways. I formed attachments to good, hard-working students only to see them get shafted by their work units at the end of the school year. I played hide-and-seek with a waiban (Foreign Affairs Dept -- the university unit charged with monitoring us foreigners) that read my mail, monitored my visitors, and tried hard to scuttle my friendship with a grad student whom they deemed a rabble-rouser. I got worn down by winter below the Yangtze, a region considered too temperate for indoor heat despite lows of 2 C, by bone-numbing damp cold, gray skies ('Dogs bark at the sun,' is a Chengdu saying that describes how rare it is to see a clear sky), and coal smoke, by a nagging cough, constant stares, and the snarky little cabal of foreigners amongst whom I lived. Silly stuff I suppose, but it added up.

By the time Dave and I returned to the USA I'd developed a classic love-hate relationship with China. I was sad to leave but swore I'd never go back. I did, of course, when we moved to Shanghai in 1996. But when we left Shanghai I rejoiced. And, except for five brief days in 2001, I haven't returned.

But for the last year or so I've been feeling like it's time. Taiwan reminded me how much I am still a 'China person'. And I'm thinking this trip might be OK.

Chengdu holds a pretty unique place in my heart, after all. Dave and I returned for a week in 1991, and I spent 3 brief, whirlwind days that I can't at all remember there in 1997 (with my grad student friend from the mid-eighties -- take that, waiban!). I know that it will be completely unrecognizable, that most of the city's street vendors and open markets are gone, that its quaint wooden houses have been bulldozed, that hole-in-the-wall restaurants with one wok and two tables are a thing of the past, and that careening midnight bike rides down the middle of Renmin Lu will probably be out of the question.

But I'm hoping for something, anything, that hints at my first home away from home ... even if it's only a fine bowl of dandan mian.

Dave's been digging through old slides and photos. Way at the back of my filing cabinet I found a manila folder of mid-eighties Chengdu mementos. Among the old Sichuan University IDs, 'white cards' (anyone out there remember those? or FEC?), 'Alien's Travel Permits', class lists, and my poison-pen Letter to Editor that appeared in the China Daily (my first published piece, I suppose) were notes I'd prepared for a presentation on studying and working in China that I gave after I returned to the USA in 1985.

Under "Advice to Others -- How to Get the Most Out of China" I'd penciled "Go without expectations, without specific goals. Take it all in, let it happen."

Good advice, then and now. After eight and a half years I'm going back to China. And for better or worse, I'm just gonna let it happen.

 

Dave and I in 1985, on the Sichuan University campus. We both have a lot less hair now.

Good and Greasy

Here we are, eighteen hours into the New Year. The passing of an entire decade is a significant event. I wish that I had some appropriately weighty musings to share with you.

Unfortunately all I can think of at the moment is what Dave and I ate for breakfast this morning.

 

We took our first meal of the new decade in George Town, Penang, at a food court tucked deep inside Chow Rasta Market. We went in search of only a glass of kopi peng (iced coffee), and found one.

But as we sat at our table getting caffeinated the sounds and scents of a good fry drifting from the char kuih kak stall at the food court's edge woke our sleeping appetites.

We've probably eaten, at most, four plates of char kuih kak, a.k.a. stir-fried carrot cake (the 'cake' is not really made from carrots, but from daikon, known locally as white carrots), since moving to Malaysia 4.5 years ago. There's a good reason for this -- the dish is fabulously, grossly unhealthy.

If you're referencing char kuih kak, 'greasy' is an adjective of high praise. It's the sort of dish that you know, as you're loving every bite, will put you in the ground sooner rather than later if you eat too much of it.

But we figured what the heck -- it's the first day of an entire decade! Dave and I passed a relatively low-key Eve, so why not make up for it on the Day? Sure, it ain't a bottle of champagne or a tub of caviar, but a plate of char kuih kak says 'celebration' in its own 'I know it's bad for me but today I just don't care' sort of way.

 

Char kuih kak starts with a well-seasoned cast-iron griddle boasting the diameter of a truck tire, a generously sized bowl of oil, and a jiggly radish cake, which the vendor cuts into squares by pushing it through a cross-hatched wire rack.

The radish cake cubes are vigorously stir-fried with lotsa oil (note how he keeps it close to hand -- and warmed -- right on the griddle) and dark soy sauce. When the cake is ready he pushes it to the side of the griddle, adds one egg per order (you can ask for an extra egg) -- breaking the yolks but essentially leaving the egg(s) be -- and a few dabs of chili paste.

Bean sprouts are next. They're quickly stirred into the eggs,

the radish cake is pulled forward and incorporated (with another spatula tip or two of oil to smooth things along) with a few quick stirs. As some point bits of crackling have also found their way into the mix.

 

The lot is dished up on a square of banana leaf -- a nice old-style touch (the leaf releases a bit of scent when it's hit with the hot fry-up) that's all too rare among char koay teow and char kuih kak vendors these days.

This vendor's been working his stall at Chow Rasta for about twenty years, and his char kuih kak is excellent: the radish cake is soft but not mushy, bean sprouts retain a bite, and everything -- egg and nubs of crackling included -- is touched with smoke. He's not cooking over charcoal, but we didn't miss it.

It's a greasy pile, no doubt about that, but if there's a better day of the year on which to start with something a bit over-the-top we don't know it. If every day of 2010 begins this well we'll be fortunate and happy campers indeed.

Happy New Year, and best wishes for 365 days of goodness in 2010!

Char kuih kak, outdoor food court off Jalan Chowrasta (between Jalan Kuala Kangsar and Jalan Penang), Chow Rasta Market, George Town, Penang. Mornings. Other possibilities for good eating at this food court include curry laksa and mee jawa. The freshly made Hong Kong-style chee cheong fun (filled with shrimp and/or chopped pork) are only yibande (so-so).

Update: EatingAsia reader and Penang native (now Stateside) Jenny was so excited about this post that she ran out to buy the ingredients for this dish and made it for her husband for their 11th wedding anniversary. If you're similarly inspired you can find her recipe here.