Everyone knows about the earthquake. Both in China and abroad news of the wreckage, the dead and the injured is everywhere. It has been 2 weeks and one cannot turn on a TV here and find news on anything else. It is shown on buses, in restaurants, even at the gym. The coverage of the disaster in China is reminiscent of the coverage of the September 11th attacks in the US in 2001; the images of the injured, the rubble, the brave young heros risking their lives to find signs of life in the destruction are replayed constantly, everywhere.
Broken buildings, broken bodies, broken families and hearts.
The western media has on the whole praised the Chinese government for its quick response and for the relative freedom it has allowed the press in communicating the disaster and its figures to the public. Yet what no-one is really talking about is the heightened tension in the air, this electric buzz that can be heard throughout the country right now.
The Chinese people are talking. The voices are small and the channels narrow, but there is a subversive voice coming out in hushed whispers between college students, bloggers and the parents of children who have died due to the use of substandard building materials in the construction of schools. Protests that are not being aired. Images that are not being broadcast.
In ancient China the advent of a large earthquake was taken as a sign from God of changing political times and a turnover of the rulers of the country. I even learnt the other day that the first rudimentary instruments used to detect quakes were developed in ancient China and used by sages to predict the collapse of dynasties. Although these are old superstitions, I did ask some of my young Chinese friends about them and all of them knew what I was talking about. So while the young people in cities don't tend to believe such things anymore, they still persist in the background of folk wisdom and knowledge. No doubt the government is aware of this.
There are also a myriad of stories circulating online that are not being broadcast on national television. A town invaded by thousands of frogs just a day or so before the quake turned to the local government and asked whether a quake was expected. They were told no and went back to their homes, only to be crushed as buildings collapsed in the quake the next day. The government withheld information. The government lied. The government allowed people to die. People in isolated areas are literally killing each other over scarce resources such as food and water. Soldiers of the PLA are fighting the homeless victims over provisions. Whether or not these stories are true is not up to me to determine, and they are very likely exaggerated. At least some must be told by opportunists or attention seekers -- disasters like this tend to create these kinds of conspiracy theories. Yet it is the fact that this is happening that fascinates me. There is a certain nervousness to it all, like watching an R-rated movie in your living room while your parents are out of the house. And everywhere people are talking about it in hushed whispers, when they're sure nobody's watching.
The tension is exacerbated by the build-up to the fast-approaching Olympic Games and the clamp-down on all sorts of social unrest that has been going on all over China. I noticed more police cars on the streets of provincial Changsha, and extended patrols. One police car has taken to coming into my closed off living community every evening and it unnerved me the first couple of times I saw it -- policemen looking out of the vehicles' windows and shining flashlights, as if looking for some fugitive. But it's been happening every night for a while now and has just become a part of the routine.
I myself, along with all the other foreign teachers who had at some point this year left the country, were called into the local Public Security Bureau this afternoon. They wanted to confirm our addresses, see our passports and visas. One of the other teachers told me that in her 5 years of teaching here she had never been there -- I have been there 3 times already having arrived last September. The importance of registering with the PSB within 24 hours of returning to the country after a trip was drilled into me yet again. They're keeping tabs.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Know Your Mother
Mother's Day was just yesterday -- probably the only holiday celebrated in China in just the same way as it is celebrated in the West: gifts, flowers, cards, dining out.
Being on the other side of the world, I called my mother to let her know I was thinking of her and that yes, it was Mother's Day in China, too. And then I read Thomas Friedman's column in the New York Times, "Call Your Mother". It really rung a bell with me.
Growing up is about a lot of things but something that seldom gets talked about is how, for better or for worse, so much about growing up is getting to know your mother. It is amazing how selfish we are as children in our belief that mother is just mother, nothing but mother, that her sole purpose and duty in life is to be mother, to mother, to care for us. I try to think back and recall just how long I had held this belief.
It is much later that one realizes, to one's distress, that mother is really just a girl who grew up. That someday I may be mother myself.
"Your mother had dreams too" says Friedman.
Reminiscent of a famous Brazilian song that goes:
"Voce culpa seus pais por tudo,
Isso e absurdo.
Sao criancas como voce,
O que voce vai ser quando voce crescer."
This translates to something like:
"You blame your parents for everything,
That's absurd.
They are children like yourself,
What you will be when you grow up."
Being on the other side of the world, I called my mother to let her know I was thinking of her and that yes, it was Mother's Day in China, too. And then I read Thomas Friedman's column in the New York Times, "Call Your Mother". It really rung a bell with me.
Growing up is about a lot of things but something that seldom gets talked about is how, for better or for worse, so much about growing up is getting to know your mother. It is amazing how selfish we are as children in our belief that mother is just mother, nothing but mother, that her sole purpose and duty in life is to be mother, to mother, to care for us. I try to think back and recall just how long I had held this belief.
It is much later that one realizes, to one's distress, that mother is really just a girl who grew up. That someday I may be mother myself.
"Your mother had dreams too" says Friedman.
Reminiscent of a famous Brazilian song that goes:
"Voce culpa seus pais por tudo,
Isso e absurdo.
Sao criancas como voce,
O que voce vai ser quando voce crescer."
This translates to something like:
"You blame your parents for everything,
That's absurd.
They are children like yourself,
What you will be when you grow up."
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Mango Lassi
The first time I was introduced to the mango lassi I could not help but be skeptical. Milk? With mangos? I had long since freed myself of the superstitions that had haunted me as a young child (or so I thought), but to be so outwardly defiant of them? To deliberately mix milk with mangos was, to me, akin to deliberately going out of your way to walk under a ladder. Why risk it?
But boy was I (and all Brazilian nay-sayers) wrong! Those Indians sure know how to make an exciting, refreshing drink! And who could blame them, with the soaring summer temperatures in the sub-continent and an abundance of tropical fruits?
Once you go lassi you never go back, and I have from that day on always ordered a mango one when I go to an Indian restaurant -- no death by abdominal cramping, I promise!
Could it possibly be true that for every food-related superstition there exists an equal and opposite delicious recipe on the other side of the world?
I bought 3 pounds of ripe mangos the other day and in the hot muggy weather we've been getting lately here in Changsha they were very quickly going overripe.
I made the mango I could not finish into a delicious mango lassi using the recipe below, found at Simple Recipes (no cardamom in mine):
Mango Lassi Recipe -
INGREDIENTS:
1 cup plain yogurt
1/2 cup milk
1 cup chopped mango (peeled and stone removed)
4 teaspoons sugar, to taste
A dash of ground cardamom (optional)
METHOD:
Put mango, yogurt, milk, sugar and cardamom into a blender and blend for 2 minutes, then pour into individual glasses, and serve. Can sprinkle with a little cardamom.
The lassi can be kept refrigerated for up to 24 hours.
Makes about 2 cups.
Enjoy!
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Don't put your finger in your belly-button
Old wives' tales and senseless superstitions are an integral part of growing up in Brazil. Much more so than most of my big city friends, I was exposed to Brazilian folklore through vacations spent in the much poorer and rural parts of the country, in the arid northeast with my father's side of the family or on long summer vacations at a farm owned by my uncle in the interior of Sao Paulo state.
Growing up in a cosmopolitan city with access to an international education, however, quickly moved me away from the tendency of children to take such tales literally. I was defiant and challenged them head-on with a somewhat callous attitude. I recall for instance, a nanny who warned me not to put my finger in my belly-button lest I do some sort of irreversible damage to my digestive tract. A finger in a belly-button could result in sudden death.
"That's not true, I've put my finger in my belly-button before", I challenged. And after a moment's trepidation I stuck my finger in my belly-button, wiggling it around for good measure.
Silence.
The poor nanny's face was ashen. She looked like she was either going to be sick, or faint. Maybe both.
"Never do that again" she said, in a hoarse whisper.
"Why not?" I asked, sticking my finger in my belly-button again, more confident this time that I wasn't going to die a sudden and painful death.
Despite such stubbornness on my part I must admit that it was sort of scary to defy my nanny and stick my finger in my belly-button. Surviving the incident came somewhat as a relief -- after all, what if she was right? And the extent to which some of those beliefs stuck with me was only to be realized many years later.
Growing up in a cosmopolitan city with access to an international education, however, quickly moved me away from the tendency of children to take such tales literally. I was defiant and challenged them head-on with a somewhat callous attitude. I recall for instance, a nanny who warned me not to put my finger in my belly-button lest I do some sort of irreversible damage to my digestive tract. A finger in a belly-button could result in sudden death.
"That's not true, I've put my finger in my belly-button before", I challenged. And after a moment's trepidation I stuck my finger in my belly-button, wiggling it around for good measure.
Silence.
The poor nanny's face was ashen. She looked like she was either going to be sick, or faint. Maybe both.
"Never do that again" she said, in a hoarse whisper.
"Why not?" I asked, sticking my finger in my belly-button again, more confident this time that I wasn't going to die a sudden and painful death.
Despite such stubbornness on my part I must admit that it was sort of scary to defy my nanny and stick my finger in my belly-button. Surviving the incident came somewhat as a relief -- after all, what if she was right? And the extent to which some of those beliefs stuck with me was only to be realized many years later.
Like Ice Cream to a Frog
I remember vividly one of my first books as a child. It contained no words and was printed on cloth, so the story in it was told through a series of very simple pictures. It went something like this:
Little Green Frog.
Little Green Frog comes across a huge ice cream cone and eats it.
Little green frog starts to blow up like a balloon.
Little Green Frog gets bigger and bigger and starts to float away like a balloon.
Eventually, Little Green Frog bursts.
Little Green Frog ends up as a green blob.
This story always puzzled and irked me, perhaps explaining why this childhood storybook is so vivid in my memory to this day. Even as a child I was a very rational creature -- what did this story mean? What lessons did it contain? Were frogs allergic to ice cream?
Today what remains from that story is a bizarre association I make between it and mixing mangos with milk.
For much as that poor frog probably loved ice cream, what child does not love mangos? Those succulent fruits, rich and ripe in the hot summer sun, heavy with thick yellow juice, hanging like honeycombs from the laden branches of the big mango trees, so ideal for climbing. There was undeniably some added pleasure in gorging oneself on the fruit as the sticky juice dribbled down ones chin, down ones hands and arms and onto clean clothes, to the terror of all mothers.
I could never help thinking as a child that there was some kind of sinful pleasure to enjoying something so thoroughly. That would explain why our devoutly Catholic nannies and grandmothers set out so determinedly to stop us. The mango, despite its unquestionable deliciousness, seemed to me as somewhat vilified in the Brazilian imagination, particularly in the tales told to us by grannies and nannies.
I was taught as a child that to eat mangos with my hands was very dangerous, potentially fatal, even. I might lose grasp of the slippery mango and get the pit caught in my throat. If that happened I would surely choke to death -- once lodged in a child's throat the pit is nearly impossible to extract. Countless children are said to have died in this manner.
It was also extremely dangerous to mix mangos with milk, or any other type of dairy for that matter. Images of the milk and mango mixture reacting violently inside us, churning curdling and causing the most violent of stomach pains and constipation often kept us away from mangos on days when we had had milk a few hours before at breakfast.
Last but not least is the "cão chupando manga" -- a Brazilian expression that translates directly to "dog sucking on a mango". In the Brazilian Catholic tradition, wrought with influences stemming from African religious practices, the "cão chupando manga" is a manifestation of the devil itself, one of the many evil forms it may take when visiting the earth (as a dog, to enjoy the sweet sinful taste of a ripe mango)!
The pleasures of the mango are thus vilified.
I don't know when or why the mango, milk and frog stories got entwined somewhere in my neural fibers. Somehow the frog is the mango in my mind, the milk and ice cream interchangeable. And the fear and distress I felt when trying to puzzle out the frog story somehow comparable to my fear of mixing milk and mangos.
Little Green Frog.
Little Green Frog comes across a huge ice cream cone and eats it.
Little green frog starts to blow up like a balloon.
Little Green Frog gets bigger and bigger and starts to float away like a balloon.
Eventually, Little Green Frog bursts.
Little Green Frog ends up as a green blob.
This story always puzzled and irked me, perhaps explaining why this childhood storybook is so vivid in my memory to this day. Even as a child I was a very rational creature -- what did this story mean? What lessons did it contain? Were frogs allergic to ice cream?
Today what remains from that story is a bizarre association I make between it and mixing mangos with milk.
For much as that poor frog probably loved ice cream, what child does not love mangos? Those succulent fruits, rich and ripe in the hot summer sun, heavy with thick yellow juice, hanging like honeycombs from the laden branches of the big mango trees, so ideal for climbing. There was undeniably some added pleasure in gorging oneself on the fruit as the sticky juice dribbled down ones chin, down ones hands and arms and onto clean clothes, to the terror of all mothers.
I could never help thinking as a child that there was some kind of sinful pleasure to enjoying something so thoroughly. That would explain why our devoutly Catholic nannies and grandmothers set out so determinedly to stop us. The mango, despite its unquestionable deliciousness, seemed to me as somewhat vilified in the Brazilian imagination, particularly in the tales told to us by grannies and nannies.
I was taught as a child that to eat mangos with my hands was very dangerous, potentially fatal, even. I might lose grasp of the slippery mango and get the pit caught in my throat. If that happened I would surely choke to death -- once lodged in a child's throat the pit is nearly impossible to extract. Countless children are said to have died in this manner.
It was also extremely dangerous to mix mangos with milk, or any other type of dairy for that matter. Images of the milk and mango mixture reacting violently inside us, churning curdling and causing the most violent of stomach pains and constipation often kept us away from mangos on days when we had had milk a few hours before at breakfast.
Last but not least is the "cão chupando manga" -- a Brazilian expression that translates directly to "dog sucking on a mango". In the Brazilian Catholic tradition, wrought with influences stemming from African religious practices, the "cão chupando manga" is a manifestation of the devil itself, one of the many evil forms it may take when visiting the earth (as a dog, to enjoy the sweet sinful taste of a ripe mango)!
The pleasures of the mango are thus vilified.
I don't know when or why the mango, milk and frog stories got entwined somewhere in my neural fibers. Somehow the frog is the mango in my mind, the milk and ice cream interchangeable. And the fear and distress I felt when trying to puzzle out the frog story somehow comparable to my fear of mixing milk and mangos.
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