7
On the Culinary Edge
I’m usually an adventurous traveler, particularly when it comes to eating. My family traveled lot when I was a kid and my sister and I were always encouraged to plunge in and experience the regional cuisine. From chicken’s blood soup in the Himalayas to raw pickled herring on the streets of Amsterdam, I’ve sampled quite a few local delicacies, some more to my liking than others.
But in China I find myself erring on the side of conservatism. We are working such a tight schedule putting the show together. When I imagine one of us getting sick from being just a little too brave, it makes me want to rush to the nearest McDonalds. But I don’t like being the nervous nellie of the bunch – I have a reputation to uphold, after all. A couple of days ago, a few of us headed out for lunch at one of the nearby alleys. We walk through dirty cobblestone streets cluttered with small outdoor markets of raw animal parts, like pig heads and cow brains. “What do you feel like, Deb,” asked Nate. “Don’t care, so long as it’s clean.” Clean. “oh, then we’re in the wrong place,” said Nate. I settled for somewhere he and Xiao Yu had gone to the day before and tried to banish clean from my mind.
This is the home of Sichuan cuisine – spicy hot pots are all the rage. We sat in an open-air stall, four of us gathered around a rickety table, with a big vat of oil and a burner in front of us. Our starter was homemade fresh tofu from a stall up the hill. Dip it in Sichuan chili with enough salt, garlic and oil to cure an entire animal. Unbelievably tasty. For our main course, we chose skewers from the rack at the front of the “restaurant.” Some basics – cilantro, squash, cucumber. And some not so basic – fish skin and chicken claws – I avoided both. The tastiest was the dried tofu – it looked like skin – but softens up after about five minutes in the hotpot. Dip this in a different oil. But don’t eat the chili peppers themselves.
And so I realize it’s impossible to be in China and not experience the food culture. In fact, to miss the food is to miss part of what makes this place unique. One of the “many” Chinese sayings I’ve had repeated to me over the last couple of weeks is Chi fan le mai you, or “have you eaten yet.” It’s the equivalent of “hey, how are you,” and illustrates the centrality of food here. Though the producer in me tells me to play it safe and stick to the known, the traveler in me evokes another Chinese saying, “follow the local custom when you go to a foreign place.”
Talking about food, what is the state of "organic" farming as we know it in China? I suppose out of necessity, many people practice sustainable "traditional" methods, and the Chinese are known as some of the best farmers in the world, but is anyone tracking regional organic methods before the rush to industrialize that trade as well?
Even though with China coming up in the world, we are mainly talking about the metropolitan cities in the east coast. Remember there are 800 million farmers who live in the inland, in which the industrial growth is still lagging behind. Those 800 million people need male children to take care the farming jobs for the family. And in the mean time, based on the birth control policy, only one child in a household is allowed. Therefore, people abondoned their female babies to save the quota for the future male babies. That is why most of the adopted babies are females. I can guarantee that over 90%, if not 100% of those babies are from "developing" areas in inland China.
We just returned from adopting our daughter in Chongqing just last month. Yes, there is something called the Family Planning Policy. It began in 1978 and has curbed the population rate. Now, they are beginning to work on the newest dilemma: air pollution. Really, only in the countryside do families give up their daughters. It is uncommon in the cities. The farmers need the boys to help out on the farm and to help take care of them in their old age. The farmers do not have pension plans, etc... so they rely on the future income of their son(s). The U.S. Consulate processes about 56 babies a day into the U.S.
Gail, the one thing to remember is that China is huge. To answer your question, yes the One Child policy is still in place - though for China's 55 ethnic minorities, two or even three children is allowed depending on circumstances.
As for preferences for males over females, you can't generalize this for 1 billion people. The Chinese government has run publicity campaigns to encourage people to have daughters, and a law has been proposed to make telling mothers the gender of a fetus a crime. The current ratio of male to female births is 119 to 100, much higher than the world average of 106 to 100. Urban Chinese families often treat daughters as little princesses, so attitudes vary depending on socioeconomic status.
I don't like that gender discrimination, I think it is no good because where the farm workers would find women, if are sent all to other nations. I think they should have a better planning on the agriculture. Programs made by the goverment to make the people who work on farms to had something to have when they are getting old. I think is unfair, this happend when a country is overpopulated.
Honestly, as a Chinese I have mixed feeling when I see the baby girls were adopted by foreigners. I admire the compassion and loving heart of adoptive parents, but meantime I certainly think it's best for a child to live and grow up with her real parents. This is a very sad and awkward reality in today's China. In some poor rural villages (as many villages in Chongqing area are), some baby girls are abandoned simply because they are born as female,which is absolutely unacceptable in terms of basic human rights and conscience. But I think this kind of things can only be reduced after improving rural people's education level and financial condition, and obviously it takes quite some time. One thing needed to point out though, this kind of thing rarely happen in Chinese cities. Girls are usually treated as equally as boys in Chinese cities nowadays, especially in educated young couples' families. For example, I just had a baby girl (my second kid) last year, and my whole family was very happy about it. We got a lot of rewards from both my and my wife's families in China for having her. My older brother even rewarded me with a big bonus of USD1000 as this is the first and only one girl in my generation in our big family. She is absolutely treated as a family princess...:-)
