Just the other day (well a while ago, now), I read an amusing article about a culinary daredevil group situated in NYC, the Gastronauts, which embodies my ideal of a lame idea starting with a ring of friends and eventually metastasizing into a trend. My limelight-material idea is under development (ok, frankly, I harbor only the idea of developing one at the moment), but I hope whatever it comes to eventually infects people like the Gastronauts did, so that I can be the charismatic leader of an emerging cult (a long-time aspiration) and sell propagandistic merchandise.
I wanted to start my first blog entry with this article because I thought it would be a perfect springboard for my main topic: China. I've just concluded my five years' stay in the Chinese mainland (finishing all four years of high school in the semi-tropical pressure cooker that's Guangzhou) to resettle in Seoul, South Korea (my home country). I will attend college here, so I guess that means I'm stuck in this city for the next three or four years -- a major change that calls for a major undertaking, which is my blog. I've never been the diligent type, so an online journal demanding regular updates is quite a big deal. An inveterate blogger friend told me that her work doesn't end with taking photos wherever she goes. No, she also takes meticulous notes. I've never finished a notebook in all my four years of high school. I'm just not the note-taking-type of girl, but I'm trying to think of all of this as my first step towards adulthood. I'm willingly taking on responsibility (for some inconceivable reason).
But yes, back to China. If the Gastronauts wanted the galactic gastric fright, their destination would be China's Guangdong province, which is not only a global warehouse (where almost everything from A&F hoodies to Baroque-style clocks is made and exported), but also the slaughterhouse of everything that "flies, walks or slithers" (a Chinese expression... or what little I remember of it). Every marginally edible organism is fried, stir-fried, steamed, roasted, boiled, red-cooked or eaten raw. Whereas meat corners in the US are mostly limited to beef, pork, chicken, turkey, duck and lamb, my neighborhood wet market had on top of all that (minus turkey&lamb) dog, cat, crocodile, frog and scorpion. My father, a marketing manager for Hyundai, was treated to brain served raw from the cranium of a monkey knocked unconscious (yum!). It's supposed to be a delicacy meant for the finest guests (a great honor however you look at it), but my father left his serving untouched. He wasn't impressed.
I'm a very picky eater. For some reason, I'm rarely hungry, so I have the luxury of eating only what I find delectable (which doesn't comprise much). While living in China, I mostly kept to my expat bubble (limiting my outdoors eating to Japanese, Korean, Italian and yumcha), but whenever I left its exclusive demarcations, I was lost for what to eat. Rumors had it that the roadside kebabs were made of cat and rat meat. I couldn't stand the strong stench of chou doufu (stinky tofu: fermented tofu that is overpowering in its rotten taste) and century egg (similar). I didn't eat any Chinese food during my first two years in China; I couldn't overcome the initial shock of seeing the apalling hygeine conditions of its wet market.
With time, however, I warmed to the local cuisine. Waiting as the initial 15-minute wait became an hour delay (the Chinese sense of time) almost drove me nuts, but near the end of my stay, I found myself doing the same. The spitting out the taxi windows, the baby-pants with slits in the back (so babies can squat and release whenever and wherever they like), the cursing and loud fighting on market streets, I all found vulgar and unpalatable at first, but now I miss all that. It was part of the quintessential Chinese experience -- which is not the soaring skyscrapers or the designer buildings aside the Pearl River, but the times you have amongst the people of the deeply-rooted culture.
It takes time for an uprooted tree to take roots again. I find Korea hard to like at the moment (it's practically foreign to me), but I'll take roots again. No worries.
댓글 없음:
댓글 쓰기