I'm hopelessly behind on converting my journal notes into prose. Here's a few random bits:

A Sunday in early November

Li Xu ferried Julie and me to meet the Master to discuss continuing our Tai Chi lessons. Master Li lives in an apartment about a mile north of the main downtown intersection. We met Li Xu at the intersection and headed up the main street. Shortly before Master Li's address, a bunch of little mountains suddenly rear up, and the road changes from a four-lane, tree-lined boulevard to two lanes boxed in by temporary construction walls. Naturally, these two lanes are shared between motorized traffic, pedal traffic, and pedestrians (and trickles of what might be sewage). Master Li's apartment building is part of a cluster of blocks scheduled to be demolished by the end of the year. Although they are less than three years old, some planner somewhere has decided to replace them with an artificial lake. I'm sure it will be beautiful. Some of the buildings are already gutted, the doors and windows removed in anticipation of demolition.

And now for a word about traffic:

At my last job, in Fremont (Seattle), I had to cross a few roads underneath the Fremont Bridge (beneath the watchful eye of the Troll). This ultimately compelled me to look up the Washington state law for jaywalking. Here's my informal summary:

1) If an intersection is controlled (traffic lights count but not, I think, stop signs), you can only cross with the little green man.

2) If an intersection is uncontrolled, it has a crosswalk, whether marked as such or not. Pedestrians have the right of way in crosswalks.

3) On the road between two controlled intersections, pedestrians may not cross.

4) On any other normal road, pedestrians can cross at will but do not have right of way. (Note, however, that the driver is still criminally liable in a collision unless the pedestrian stepped out suddenly.)

Once I learned this, I became much more agressive crossing the street, more willing to play chicken with oncoming traffic - with the caveat that I always leave pleanty of time to back out of the way if the driver holds to a lethal course.

This is essentialy how everyone crosses the street in China, except that they rarely look for oncoming traffic. Once I heard a honk, and looked, and Molly commented, "We're the only people who look."

My definition of a road is a place with cars and no pedestrians., and of a sidewalk, a place with pedestrians and no cars. These definitions are meaningless in China. People and cars (and bicycles, and motorcycles, and pedeled tricycles, and motorcycles converted into motorized tricycles, and carts drawn by lawnmower-like engines on long reins, and ghastly, sickly trucks, and the occasional water buffola) mingle freely on any paved, semi-paved, or unpaved surface. The result is that it is impossible to walk anywhere out-of-doors without continual danger of collision.

And so, finally, as Julie, Li Xu, and I were searching for Master Li's apartment, at one point they crossed the street ahead of me. I looked left, and saw an oncoming bicyclist on a course which would pass several yards in front me. She, however, had projected my course under the assumption of aggressive forward movement, and planned to pass just behind where I would shortly be. Fearing the consequences of additional traffic in both directions, out of scope for her scenario but quite relevant to mine, I declined to cooperate and simply stopped where I was. This confused the poor girl terribly, and instead of continuing on her original course, which would have avoided collision by a wide margin, she instead set a beeline for straight for me. I didn't move, she couldn't make herself turn, and finally I had to reach out and catch her bicycle by the wire basket, and she still ran over one of my feet.

Such was my first traffic collision in China.

22 Nov

We decided to try and prepare a traditional American Thanksgiving dinner. This plan was finalized on Thursday morning, so I joined the American students' morning lesson with Lu Dan, and instead of having a lesson we went downtown to shop for ingredients. Turkey (houji, fire chicken) is not available in Guilin, so we focused on mashed potatos. I attempted to make butternut squash bisque, and did manage to find a gourd of the same approximate size, shape, and color as a butternut squash. (But it turned out not to taste much like a butternut squash.)

We didn't have enough pots, so we stopped by a little shop near campus for pots. This is the same shop where, several weeks ago, I purchased pliers. For that transaction, I was accompanied into battle by three of my college students. That worked out fairly well; the lady wanted 10 yuan for incredibly crummy pliers, I offered five, she refused, I left, and she shouted okay. Actually, I think those pliers are a rip-off at any price. I tried to twist out a soft metal door jamb bit and ended up bending the plier jaws. I'm not sure what metal the pliers are made of, but I think it could be usefully repurposed as children's modelling clay. Anyway, we needed pots, and she had big, flimsy aluminum pots. She started by asking 28 yuan for a big pot; we ended up paying 35 for two pots and a potato peeler. This also turned out to be a false economy, as the potatoes got burnt in the paper-thin pot.

So we had burnt mashed potatoes, watery and weak butternut squash bisque that wasn't really butternut squash; also some limp, greasy french fries, and some applesauce that I didn't try as there was nothing to have it with.

At this point, our Chinese guests were looking at us pretty sceptically. Many dispersed to the computers, and some took food to Art in the hospital. At this point, with the cooking finished and a few pots available, I started on the cookies. We had purchased flour, baking powder, and baking soda from the bakery across the street from the middle school, as none was availale in stores. Chocolate came from chopped up Dove bars, butter was purchased from the kitchen of Rosemary Cafe, and white and brown sugar were storebought. Eggs were no problem. And Art had an aged but functional toaster oven. So I set to it, drafting a very sceptical Lu Dan and Zhang Ming to mix and churn. I abandoned the canonical round cookie shape, opting instead for a mega-cookie approach which made maximal use of the limited oven space. Folded aluminum foil substituted for cookie tins; this approach worked fairly well except during oven extraction. Extraction required three people, four hands and knives, and a careful dance of motion coordinated with cries, mostly mine, of "xia," down, and "shang," up. How did the cookies come out? I think it's fair to say that they redeemed the meal and restored my culinary credibility. (Or perhaps 'established' would be more accurate.) We ate chunks of cookie straight off the sheet, chocolate goo smearing our faces as we barely avoided burning our tongues. We immediately inserted the second sheet of dough, already prepared, and commenced to squat on the floor by the oven, cookie vultures. The second sheet we washed down with lightly refrigerated ISO 9002 milk, drinking from small clay cups. Heaven. We made seven or eight sheets of cookie, and none lasted more than three minutes.