Wrapping Jiaozi, Not Presents, on Christmas Eve

This is another I Hate Jiaozi story, part two. This is completely, utterly true, and I can provide witnesses if necessary. Forgive me if I get some of the smaller details wrong. 

Several years ago I was teaching in a suburb of Beijing with a very nice foreign staff and the usual mix of nice, competent Chinese staff,  and incompetent dullards.  The dullards were usually in charge. The foreigners, although in different departments, socialized occasionally, always careful to ask Chinese colleagues in the same office or department to come along. They seldom did, but seemed to appreciate being asked.

One of the Chinese colleagues was a woman--let's call her Mei Mei--who had excellent English. She had taken an MBA in the US and was somehow hired as a math teacher, despite the MBA and no teaching credentials. She referred to herself as a member of the foreign staff, which is fine, but we noticed she was quick to criticize anything we did in the classroom as "That is foolish foreign thing." "Foolish foreign thing" included giving pretests to see how students knew about a subject matter before teaching it, a method which prevented teachers from wasting time teaching concepts that were already mastered. Another  "foolish foreign thing" was a syllabus. You get the idea.

So, Christmas rolled around and the married couple with the biggest apartment offered to host a Christmas Eve potluck. After much consultation of schedules, it was decided that a four o'clock gathering, with a meal at five, fit into everyone's plans pretty well: the family with the two kids who were going to see Santa at seven could join us, eat and play games, and get out in plenty of time. I had a gig singing carols at a hotel at eight. Everyone else wanted to go to church at midnight, Skype home, or get merry in their own way. The hosts, Disa and Jarvis, scrubbed up their big flat. Jarvis, being a Southern boy, decided we needed plenty of ice and spent a week manufacturing spotlessly clean ice cubes out of drinking water, two trays at a time (all they had: good ice cube trays were at a premium at the time.) Disa made home-made Christmas rolls, her family specialty, the yeast sent over from Saskatchewan by her mother. On the 23rd, as she was kneading the dough, her cell phone rang. She ignored it. Within seconds it rang again--and again--and again. Same number: co-worker Mei Mei. She washed her hands and was reaching for the phone when it rang again, this time a different number. She answered it and Mei Mei shouted, "Ah-ha, you are so bad, Disa, you don't answer if you know it's me." Mildly annoyed, but with great restraint, Disa explained she had been kneading bread dough and couldn't answer it on the earlier calls. Mei Mei ignored this and charged into her topic: she was bringing an American friend to the Christmas Eve dinner. Disa wondered vaguely how Mei Mei knew about the dinner but was too polite to ask. She explained that several of us had to leave for other events--notably Santa--and that we were meeting after work at four, planning to serve a potluck meal at five, and that Mei Mei was welcome to bring whatever she liked, if she wanted to contribute anything at all.

Mei Mei stated flatly, "We are eating at six."  Disa explained that the young Koothrapalis wanted to see Santa, had tickets to see him at a Christmas Eve party at a hotel. and that they had to be out before six-thirty. Mei Mei repeated, "We are eating at six," and Disa said kindly that it was potluck, the food would be out all evening, and Mei Mei was welcome to join at any time, but that dinner was served at five. Mei Mei informed her that all foreigners eat dinner at six and Disa replied that in her very foreign Canadian homeland, her family ate an early Christmas Eve dinner at five sharp so they could attend a carol sing at their church at seven, leaving the Christmas rolls to cool on the counter so they could be consumed with cocoa before turning in. Mei Mei then uttered those deathless words, words which Disa informed me later "chilled her to the bone."

Mei Mei asked, "Do you know what is jiaozi?"

Christmas Eve rolled around. We met at Disa and Jarvis's big flat around four and put food in to heat in their two tiny toaster ovens. We played Dirty Santa. We drank bourbon on the rocks. Around five, we began to fill our plates and eat. Everyone was happy: the kids were young enough to be delighted by everything, the food, the adults who wanted to play with them, the presents heaped upon them. The family cat condescended to let us pet her. Contentment reigned. A Christmas pudding made the round, with mince pies, gingerbread cookies, plates of fudge...coffee was brewed.  The rolls were baking, filling the house with the heavenly homey scent of bread. And then the doorbell rang.

Mei Mei stood behind the door, muffled to the eyebrows, carrying a sack of flour in one hand and a sack of raw ground pork in the other. Next to her stood a man, similarly clad, also carrying groceries. Once his coat was shed he looked to be Mei Mei's twin. No introductions were made, other than "This my American friend" and when he spoke, his accent was definitely Beijing (although his English was superb.) Mei Mei strode into the party and stared at Disa and said disapprovingly, "I told you we eat at six." Disa said very graciously that we had begun the potluck at five, and to have a seat and sit and enjoy the meal. The Koothrapalis, sensitive to social situations as well as mindful of the time, got up to help clear a space at the table, bussing their dishes to the kitchen (and incidentally washing them as well) prior to leaving. Mei Mei glared at them and said, "Clear off the table. Disa, why you not have a big dish ready for me to make jiaozi?" She then sniffed and said, "What is that bad smell?" (I am assuming it was the baking bread.) "I hope it won't hurt the jiaozi."

Make jiaozi she did. She directed her friend (Brother? Lover? Husband?) to clear the table--which he did by picking up the dishes and taking them to the kitchen. She preferred a more direct route, and placed them on the floor, which made a little Christmas miracle for the cat (not so much for the rest of us.) And then she began her task of scolding, directing, folding, rolling, stuffing, boiling without stop for over five hours.

I then witnessed one of the finest acts of hospitality I have ever witnessed: there was not a word said by either Disa or Jarvis to indicate that anything was wrong or out of place. They had smiles on their faces as they helped to turn their entire apartment into a jiaozi factory. They offered their guests more bourbon (and partook of it themselves) while chaos reigned. There was flour everywhere, and soon wet flour from the dough making process. I had to leave as scheduled for carol singing, but a few witnesses remained until the two o'clock finishing time, and they were just sober enough to report that Mei Mei scooped up virtually all the jiaozi into plastic bags (along with a hefty portion of the Christmas Ham) and took off, leaving behind a mountain of filthy dishes. A small bowl of jiaozi, stinking with raw garlic and vinegar, was left behind for the foreigners to taste, portioned at exactly one each. 

For weeks after, visitors to the home were welcome to take out a credit card and start chipping away at the fine layer of dried flour-and-water paste that encrusted the cracks in the lovely tiled table. I think Disa and Jarvis slept all of Christmas Day. When we went back to work on Boxing Day, they had not a word to say about the incident (they were also still hung over.) However, at the end of the day, as I was passing Jarvis, he made one comment. "You know what we call Mei Mei now?" he asked. "Um, the Jiaozi Fairy?" "No, the Christmas Cunt."  

You can draw a lot of conclusions from this about how Chinese are this or that, and Foreigners are all X and Y, but if you do, you are missing the point: I am writing about Mei Mei because clods exist all around the world, and she was a world-class clod. Her ethnicity had nothing to do with it. Had she been Czech like my grandmother's family no doubt we would have been braiding hoska all night.

Yet I wonder if there was some piece of propaganda, some commercial or newsreel that all kids in China saw one day which featured a happy band of jiaozi makers kindly showing a delighted foreigner how to wrap those little bastards. Virtually every Chinese friend I've had over the age of 45 has wanted to make jiaozi with me. Friends from age 30 to 40 don't seem to have this desire, and they don't even know the songs from  The Sound of Music. I don't have a lot of friends in the under thirty group, outside of the rock music scene, but from what I can tell, none of them have the slighted interest in rolling anything other than a cigarette. So, you tell me: was Mei Mei a product of her time, or just a stone-cold idiot? I think we can both side with the latter. As for Disa and Jarvis, don't we all wish we had more friends like that? Canadian friendliness and Southern boy charm (yes, two more cultural stereotypes) combined to show true graciousness under a very awkward situation. Well played, Foreign Friends, well played. 

15 Minutes of Lame

http://jandan.net/2015/06/09/i-hate-jiaozi.html

Well, let's see: my old post about "I Hate Jiaozi" was translated into Chinese WITHOUT MY PERMISSION and posted to the above site. I'm credited as "Big Chink in China" which is ironic. I have no idea if the translation is good. I should be glad to have some reference made to this site at all, as some of my posts (all original work I threw together myself) have appeared on OTHER websites with other people claiming ownership. Having worked in publishing, I know how to create a legitimate copyright trail. I'm not concerned about that. I AM concerned about a bad translation, or a post appearing in unfriendly territory. For example, I wouldn't put a post in The New York Times about how all the test-tube babies I know grew up to be creeps, and how their parents, for the most part, seemed kind of bored with the baby once it was born, a sentiment echoed by a friend who was an IVF specialist for a number of years. (I might, however, put in on www.xojane.com) Like it, hate it, no me importa, I still hate jiaozi. 

Missing

I miss so much--the smell of rain hitting the Beijing streets, the wondrous quiet of cruising down the alley ways at three a.m. on my noiseless electric bike, getting together with friends for dinner and the chaos that ensues when one of them can't remember how to say the name of the place in Chinese...

I miss having a wide circle of acquaintances, of having a creative partner who got my artistic vision and helped to put my ideas onto film, of meeting for cocktails in swank hotels and giggling over the events of the day. I miss my friends so much that I cannot even open Facebook anymore, because to see updates causes me an enormous amount of pain. 

Last year I was dumped by someone I truly loved, and for a month or so I could not even hear music without extreme pain. Now I can't stand to think of my life in China without wanting to curl into a ball and cry. My mother is ill, I'm here: I don't see her as much as I should, because I'm trying to find a job, and I have this household to run, no easy task as I'm not just keeping a house clean but putting organization into a god-awful mess of a house that was run by bachelors for more than ten years. 

I adore my boyfriend most of the time, except when he's being a dick (roughly one hour out of four) but--how I miss my independence and freedom and the way I could step outside my apartment and find something fascinating going on any time of the day or night. Remember when I bought the huge turtle to save him from being eaten, and put him in Granny's pond in her garden? No, of course you don't, because you weren't there. Nobody here knew me there. 

I've heard one of my dearest friends is repatriating and I cannot wait to see her, because she's one of my horcruxes, holding a splinter of the soul I left behind. I don't know how long I can stand living in the US or how long I need to. I wish I could scoop up the boyfriend and go home to Beijing, because I cannot imagine being without him. I wish my parents would magically be well enough not to need me around. So many wishes, and no real knowledge. All I know is that I let someone break my heart, and it set off a chain reaction and here I am, trying very hard not to remember what it's like to glide in utter stillness down ancient avenues in the darkest of nights, deeply aware of my soul expanding in the silence.

You Call It a Job Fair, I Call It Hell

So, the big Job Fair I’ve been so excited about rolled around. Needless to say, in the house of Chef, this is cause not for celebration but for consternation and crap behavior on his part. To start with, the night before the job fair, I went to bed feeling a bit punk and quickly developed both a fever and a sore throat. This was Chef’s cue to forget to brush his teeth, check his blood sugar, take his meds, and inject himself with insulin, which put us on a ride on the Crazy Bus. 

When his sugar is too high, he’s combative, whiney, and argumentative. Too low, and he’s the same, coupled with completely unreasonable and borderline psychotic. And let’s not forget the special hell of something big happening with his family that day that sets off anxiety and depression. All together now: let’s keep the girl awake. Let’s start shouting that she’s snoring loudly, even though she’s been awake with a sore throat and fever for more than half an hour, then let’s jerk upright screaming hysterically that cold fingers touched the small of his back. (Impossible, due to the barrier of quilts between us, a 102 degree temperature, and more important, had I wrapped my fingers around any part of his body it would not have been anything as innocuous as his back.) I finally slunk out to get a bit of sleep on the sofa before rolling out of bed and getting ready to go. 

Naturally, it rained a bit, and I had trouble finding parking, and I ended up driving down the street car tracks a little by mistake…but I got there, and I interviewed, and I stood in line for hours with an empty stomach and dry mouth and pounding head and poured my heart out to school principals. Dear God, I need a job, not just for the power of having money again, but because I’m at my best caring for and guiding children. I’ll figure out the rest later—how to take care of my dog, when I can see my parents, how to fit the Chef into all these plans—but oh, to be able to call myself a teacher again! That will be a wonderful, wonderful thing.

Bizarre Moment from a Navy Family Childhood

True story. I was in kindergarten, which means we were in San Diego. We lived in a newly-built subdivision in the midst of desert.  The entire neighborhood sprang up in less than a year—in fact, we had the first completed house. Our neighbors tended to be in the military as well. Sometimes ringing the doorbell at a friend’s house meant waking up a newly-returned soldier who, fresh from combat in Vietnam, would answer the door with a dagger in his hand and a crazed look in his eyes. Sometimes our neighbors were educated people, engineers who had travelled around the world with the Army, sometimes they were the enlisted men and their wives and families. For the most part, all of the men were gone, and the women were left to run things. There was a war on, after all, and even non-combats like my dad (Navy radioman) were gone for nine month deployments or longer.

My mom knew most of the ladies in the neighborhood. They traveled in packs to the PDX, sharing precious resources like cars and lawn mowers and punch bowls. Not many women drove back in the 60’s and fewer had access to their own cars. My mother could drive after a fashion, but she couldn’t drive stick shift, so my father made it a point to only buy stick shifts. Thus, we had a car, but it sat in the garage awaiting his return. My mother made do with the bread truck—oh, what a glorious day when the bread truck came by!---and the gift of a ride to the store when a neighbor offered. She often bought a month’s worth of food at a time, just in case the next ride wouldn’t come along for a while. (It was the 60’s, may I remind you, the nadir of the Canned Food Movement.) We also went out to eat in packs, two or three fatherless families hitting the Shakey’s together so our mothers could get the hell out of the house and talk to an adult for a while.

A few families in the neighborhood were non-military, or had a dad with a “regular” job at the base, such as jet mechanic, which meant the women’s days revolved around a hot meal on the table promptly at five-fifteen, when He walked through the door. Evenings were devoted to waiting on Him hand and foot. The ladies partied among themselves during the day and scattered like sad little clouds promptly at four, when it was time to Start Dinner. Since I was in half-day kindergarten (morning session, ugh) I was often dragged along with my mom to local houses for afternoon Tupperware parties, teas, and bridal showers.

Many of our neighbors had not, I believe, finished high school. Many had married quite young—seventeen was considered an “old” bride—and many were Southern. I remember very clearly one of my favorite families: they had a fascinating back yard with a fish pond, quail, and a chopping block for butchering livestock. The mother, Mrs. Cosby,  was very sweet to me, with good Appalachian manners, fresh from what can only be described as the backwoods. Her children were far older than I was, and everyone in the family had an accent so thick I often had trouble decoding what they were saying, and often ran to my mother afterwards to ask the meaning of phrases such as “Thankee” and “Tha’ thur’s a gra-cee-ous PLENNY!”  

On this particular occasion, a bridal shower for a sixteen-year-old, the women participated in a party game which left me mystified. I’ve asked my mother about it and she can’t remember much, but I’m still appalled when I think about it.

           

One of the older women took a dishtowel (imprinted with strawberries, the “theme” for the kitchen of the bride-to-be) and did a bit of mountain origami on it, producing a long thick tube with a funny-looking knot at the top of it. The women took turns passing it around, carefully handing it to one another with a funny grip, ensuring that it remained upright, topknot aloft. As they did so they chanted a poem, carefully typed out on a piece of paper for the uninitiated. When the towel finally slumped down from its upright position the women screamed with laughter and the unfortunate holder of the towel lost. This went on for a while until Mrs. Cosby remembered my presence and sent me out of the room to watch my favorite soap opera, Dark Shadows. (Two kids were trying to raise a demon in that episode. Quite wholesome fair compared to whatever was going on in the other room.)

It was forty years or so before I realized what that towel was meant to resemble, and another few years before I realized I may have been witnessing not a party game, but some antiquated bit of backwoods voo-doo. Mom doesn’t remember, and my source of reliable facts, my sister, wasn’t there. She was there, however, the day that Mrs Cosby invited my mom over for some “fancy” drinks. Mrs. C used her best gas station  give-away drinking glasses, and when she pulled out the jug of wine, she filled my mom’s Speedy Gonzalez 16 ouncer to the brim. Now that’s a gracious plenty.

Our Mommy Says It All

My mother has Alzheimer’s. I make an overnight trip to see her and Dad weekly. I call a lot. Sometimes she’s in a fuzzy little world where she’s not quite sure what I’m saying, and sometimes my sharp and funny mother is there. We call these two states Other Mommy and Our Mommy. Other Mommy smiles weakly a lot, and looks tired, and responds to any comment with “Well, isn’t that something?” Our Mommy makes a wisecrack. Other Mommy cannot remember a time when Dad was less than patient and kind (and trust me, that’s about the only memories his children have of him) whereas Our Mommy can still take a good dig at the foolishness of men. Both of the Mommies love to hear the dirt on people, although they differ in the type. Other Mommy likes to hear about the cast of Everyone Loves Raymond and Big Bang Theory, gentle “Did you know” type facts.  (Did you know Sheldon can really play the piano?) Our Mommy likes to hear about why the diabetic down the street is gaining weight, or why anybody (me excluded) is piling on the pounds.

So I was rambling on to Other Mommy about the idiot exploits of The Boyfriend and his ex, nicknamed Hippie Whore. Other Mommy was responding with “Boy, SHE’S something” which signaled to me that she wasn’t really processing much of what I had to say. Suddenly the marbles in her brain shifted and her eyes grew clear and bright. She reached over and rapped me on the hand. “All men are dumbasses,” she said. “It comes with the pants.”

He Doesn't Just Poop at Parties

There's always a naysayer somewhere, the sort of kid who sneers, "What's THAT s'ppozta be?" at any project he or she sees. This, coupled with the ubiquitous "Whydja use all them big words?" pretty much sums up peer relations until I was in my twenties or so. But the "suppose to be" comment still rankles, possibly because I still hear it on occasion (I'm a teacher and I work with a lot of lower-income kids.)

 Only slightly higher on the scale is the person who belittles or knocks down an event just as it's passing--the dinner guest who complains about too much garlic while gently belching over his coffee, or worse, the boyfriend who "lets" you plan, shop for, cook, serve, and clean a special dinner and then blasts you for serving too-large portions. I'm still ticked over a recent incident in which I was delayed (by the complainer himself) several hours, and then found that the oven was broken. I thought I did a good job of finishing on time and presenting a nice meal, but oh, no, the portions were too large. TOO LARGE!

I said, rather tartly, "Then say you can't finish and save some for later," only to be greeted with incredulity. No, can't do that, wasn't raised that way. I think of some of the things I was raised with--being told I didn't need to learn to drive because I didn't have kids, and that I didn't "need" college because I was pretty, that girls don't need math...and I think of the best thing I ever learned from a pop song. It was thirty years ago, but Neil Finn said it best when he wrote "You can choose what you choose to believe." I believe my efforts are worth more than condemnation for a perceived mistake, and if you want to wallow in what you see to be my errors, I believe you're full of shit.

Spring is Here, I Hear

We're all fools in April. It's the sunshine, I think, or perhaps the green on the trees. We hope that our own lives will unfurl like buds that were hidden all winter. We not only hope, but for a few minutes, here and there, we feel that our time will come. I felt like that when I was sixteen, that life was full of wonderful surprises that were just waiting to shower me with happiness, and in spring, in early April at least, some faint hint of that resonates through me. Somehow calling this "Topsy Turvy Day" and trotting out my ritual meal for whatever small children are around me seems a bit like a slap in Fate's face, but there you go: even if I'm alone, every April Fools Day sees me serving meatloaf with mashed potatoes dressed up as cupcakes, and cupcakes decorated like spaghetti and meatballs, and possibly a "fried egg" made of creme anglaise and half a poached apricot (with a sprinkle of nutmeg on top.) Like that rhododendron out front--the one that's almost dead--I struggle to bloom yet again.