Expat

What is a Patriot?

October 22, 2014 by Carey Jane Clark

As Canadians living in China, we are known as expats or expatriates. Webster’s defines an expatriate as someone who “leaves one’s native country to live elsewhere.” That’s us. But there is another meaning of this word: “to renounce allegiance to one’s native country.” That is not us. In this way, there is nothing ex- about us. We are patriots.

Although Sprout, nine next summer, has now officially lived more of her life in China than in Canada, all of our children are still fiercely Canadian. For JavaMan and me, our hearts are in two places. While we love our adopted country, nothing will ever take the Canadian out of us.

Evidence of our patriotism is there, everyday, in small acts that assert our Canadian identity, like the time we struck up a conversation with a stranger in a restaurant because he strolled in wearing a Montreal Canadiens jersey. Or when I picked a fellow Canadian–from Vancouver, as it turned out–out of a crowd for her accent. Or the time we infected some of our American friends’ kids with the occasional sentence-completing “eh?”

That Canadian identity rises up with more urgency when we are touched by news from “back home,” like the unspeakably tragic news we have learned this week: that Canadian soldiers–more than one–have been killed by acts of terror, in our own native land.

As our children set the breakfast table this morning, Sweetpea began mindlessly humming the Chinese national anthem. It’s natural. She hears it every day at school. She looked up suddenly and said, “I’m humming the Chinese national anthem, and I’m not even sure I remember how to sing, O Canada!” That’s natural too. She’s had far less opportunities to hear it than most Canadian children her age. Before breakfast, we played O Canada via YouTube–in English and in French (Sweetpea insisted).

I didn’t share with our children the news we’d learned about the soldiers. That kind of thing is hard enough to process when you’re back in Canada. I’m not sure I’ve fully processed it all. But I was glad to sing O Canada this morning.

I’ve never meant the words more. God keep our land glorious and free.

We stand with you. We mourn with you. We are far from “home,” but home has not left our hearts. We are patriots.

Our China: The Local Market, Part 2

February 11, 2013 by Carey Jane Clark

Welcome to the second week of “Taste of China” posts. In these posts, I’m attempting to give an idea of what it’s like to live in China–a taste of this country for those who’ve never lived here. In last week’s post, I introduced the concept of the market in China. Whereas some markets are dedicated only to foods, our local market has a little more to offer. Last week, I wrote about the fruit and vegetable stands. Here are a few more of the offerings in our local market.

The simple egg is still a bit of a mystery to me here in China. Eggs are not sold by the dozen, but by the half kilo (a measurement called the 斤 jīn, used for buying everything from fruit and vegetables to yarn for knitting). I can buy eggs with inspection stickers for up to $3.20 a half kilo, but I always buy the cheapest kind (no stickers) for around $0.80 per 斤 (jīn). These humble, stickerless eggs have lovely bright-colored yolks, and resemble what I might purchase at an organic farm in Canada. Sizes are irregular, but mostly large, and almost all the eggs one sees in the market or the supermarket are brown. Other than the fact that they are inspected (and perhaps come from a different variety of chicken?), I don’t really understand why the expensive eggs are more expensive. At the same place I buy chicken eggs, it’s also possible to buy pigeon or duck eggs as well.

Generally speaking, here in this city, it seems harder to find whole chickens here than pieces. (This was not true where we lived in the south of China.) When you do find a whole chicken, it is truly whole. It will have its head, feet and probably its entrails intact. At most markets in the north, things are a bit more “civilized” than the south. When we bought a chicken in the south, we picked it out live, it kicked its last inside a bucket and it was plucked and cleaned out right before our eyes. Our kids have no illusions about where their food comes from!

Next week I plan to share a little about other kinds of meat sold in the market, and as a little bonus, I’ll share a special recipe that’s a family favorite. But to complete our tour of the market, we must stop and buy grains.

Here I can buy several kinds of rice (including red and brown), millet, buckwheat–groats or flour, oatmeal–groats or rolled oats, dried beans, flour for dumplings or for baking and various kinds of oil. I buy things by the 斤 jīn here too.

Oh wait a minute. Need a set of clothespins, a bucket, a mop, a flyswatter, some garbage bags? Well fortunately, our market has a little hardware store too (as well as a small toy store, a stationery store, a fabric store, and a small electronics place that sells extension cords, lightbulbs, and at Chinese New Year, plastic red lanterns).

It’s always fun to shop for something new. We often look up vocabulary before we go to the market if we’re buying something unusual we don’t already know the name for. My favorite trick is to print out a picture of the item I need from the internet. Neither strategy guarantees success, but we usually come back with what we went looking for, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. Either way it’s always an adventure!

Making Mooncakes

October 9, 2012 by Carey Jane Clark

Last week here in China was Mid-Autumn Festival, also called Moon Festival or “Golden Week.” We spent the whole week visiting with friends. The weather was absolutely beautiful.

Moon Festival lands on the 15th day of the eighth month of the Chinese lunar calendar, so it moves around a bit in terms of where it lands in September/October.

A big part of the celebration of the festival is eating mooncakes. They are a traditional food, which we actually enjoy quite a bit, but we are told that they are kind of like the Chinese version of fruitcake. Not many people actually like to eat it, but everyone takes a bit to celebrate the season.

I thought it would be fun for the kids and I to try to make mooncakes. I spotted mooncake molds at the baking supply store we frequent (an essential stop for buying things like butter, cheese and cocoa at good prices). The store also sold the filling and two essential ingredients that I shopped all over for before I realized they were right back at the store where I bought the molds. Everywhere else, people looked at me strangely when I asked for them. (Not that this is an uncommon experience for me here!)

It’s actually rather rare for people to make their own mooncakes. Even my quintessential kid resource on Chinese cultural festivals, Moonbeams, Dumplings & Dragon Boats, which usually offers a recipe to go along with each festival, simply said that most people buy their mooncakes. And in buying mooncakes, presentation is a big part of things. A good quality box of 12 or so mooncakes can run you up to $100 or so. Much of it is about the bling on the box:

I still thought it would be fun to make our own.

Mooncakes vary depending on region, but here in the north, the most popular type of mooncake contains nuts (and that’s our favorite) so that’s the kind of filling I bought. I dug up a recipe for the pastry from an expat forum, and we were in business. [This recipe has now been removed, and I have posted it here.]

The dough is really unusual. The recipe said to mix it in a “large bowl” but when I was only using 100 grams of flour I wondered. Indeed our lump of dough was pretty puny, and instead of making 12 standard mooncakes, it made only 6 small ones (I bought small molds).

If traditional mooncake molds aren’t a collector’s item, I think they should be. They’re so beautiful:

Ours is new-fangled, and spring-loaded, which definitely makes mooncake production easier!

The basic steps began with rolling out the dough, which is sleek and oily-looking, but in reality the oil content is very low (the sugar content, however, is pretty high!). According to Sweetpea, who ate the last leftover bit, it was yummy all on its own. I tried a few first to get the hang of things and then Sweetpea took over:

The recipe says to roll it between “plastic film” but I cut two sides of a ziplock bag, and used it. It stayed put and peeled back much more easily than plastic wrap would have.

The unidentified lump in the foreground of the picture above is the lump of filling. After rolling out the disc of dough, you form a ball of the filling and wrap the dough around it, then fit it gently into the mold. We pressed down gently on the cookie sheet to make the beautiful pattern on the top, then popped the mooncake out, ready for baking.

After this, all that’s left to do is bake them for 10-12 minutes. Halfway through the baking time, the mooncakes need to be brushed with an egg wash. (This makes them shiny when they’re all done. I was pretty generous with the egg wash, which was a good call.)

Like fruitcake, the mooncakes get better if they’re left a couple of days to allow the filling to soften up the dough. But we sampled them right away anyway.

Chinese friends who visited for Canadian Thanksgiving were impressed with my efforts–they’d never seen them homemade before–but upon tasting them, declared they could tell the filling was commercially produced and challenged me to make my own filling next year. They also said I should come up with unique fillings that aren’t as sweet as the traditional ones, because less sweetness is appreciated by the Chinese palate.

We found the process a lot of fun. I think I may be up to the challenge!

- Carey Clark

Off to a Great Start

March 16, 2012 by Carey Jane Clark

Chinataxi

We arrived safe and sound on Wednesday evening and were settled in our apartment. It’s a little cold. For anyone moving in after the Spring Festival (Chinese New Year), there’s no heat being turned on, since the date for the heat to be turned off for the season is just a month away. Although North America has, by and large, been enjoying a milder, shorter winter, here in China, the winter has been longer and colder than usual. How lucky for us!

Fortunately, JavaMan brought some heaters from the south (where there is no central heat) and we’ve been huddling in the couple of rooms that are warm, making forays into the rest of the apartment to unpack and make and eat meals. The long range forecast looks more encouraging than the next week or so.

On Thursday, it was bright and sunny, and the kids and I were feeling adventurous and happy to be back in some of our old stomping grounds. We decided to take a little trip to our old neighborhood and look up some old friends. We also had the excuse of going to the market there so I could find something I hadn’t been able to find in our local market. I was sure it was possible to buy the item (brown rice) in the local market, but couldn’t recall the proper Mandarin word for it. I knew right where to go in the old neighborhood.

We had a lovely time. As we walked through the market, several people recognized us and struck up conversations, remarking at how much the children had grown. It was a little sad to me that Sprout seemed to remember nothing of either the market or our old apartment complex, but the older two children recalled plenty. We ran into the mother of a former classmate of Sweetpea’s from the brief few months they studied part-time at a Chinese kindergarten, and some other old friends. We were even invited in for tea at the home of some friends who lived in the complex. When JavaMan was away on business once for an extended period, she helped me watch the kids while I ran to the market, and generally looked out for us. She has us call her “nai nai” (grandma).

We were more than pleased with our little adventure.

And then it was time to go home.

Blame it on the jet lag, perhaps, but it hadn’t occurred to me when we left our new home to find out any information about how to get back to it. I knew the area. I used to pass it when I came home from the university I taught at for a semester. But I didn’t know the proper names of the streets or any significant landmark. I could tell you that it was across from a high school and close to railway tracks. I could even do this in Mandarin. But I couldn’t name a single distinctive feature of the place.

I decided to take a taxi and tell him to go to a place I knew was supposed to be near our home. However, on the way there, I reconized none of the apartment buildings. I also noticed that the taxi fare was twice as much as the way out, and the road we took seemed wrong to me.

We disembarked and wandered around for a while, at which point, I told the kids it might be a good idea if we prayed. I told them I was lost. Finally, I decided we needed to be closer to the other road, and the best thing to do would be to get in another taxi, because I was sure we were not within walking distance of our new home.

When we got in the next taxi, the driver looked at me and asked, “Where to?” and I proceeded to explain that we were lost, that I had just moved back to the city, and wasn’t sure exactly where my new home was. He looked at me rather dubiously and asked again, “where do you want me to take you?” I described, as best I could, our new apartment building, adding a description of the local market. He threw up his hands. “There are many markets like that here.”

He started driving, and trying to follow my very vague instructions. The conversation in the car went something like this:

“Maybe you could call your husband.”

“I don’t have a phone.”

“Here. Use mine.”

“Umm, I don’t know his number.” (It was on my Facebook, and we had no internet yet. My computer was, of course, at home.)

“You don’t know his number?”

“No.”

“How about his workplace? Where does he work?”

“I’m not sure. I know his boss, but I don’t know where the office is.”

“Where is his boss?”

“In America.”

“How long have you lived in China? Your Chinese is not bad.”

“Two years.”

“Two years, and you don’t know where you live?”

I explained again we had just moved back the day before. I wasn’t earning any smart points, and I could see that he was getting agitated. He pointed at the meter. I told him it wasn’t his problem, and that it would be okay. I suggested we drive back in the direction of the old neighbourhood.

This seemed to satisfy him for the moment, and within minutes I noticed some familiar landmarks. We had arrived home.

I thought that finding ourselves again would restore my childrens’ confidence in my navigating abilities, but as we walked through the door of our home, Sprout, who has lately taken on a flair for the dramatic, declared, “I’m never going shopping with Mommy again!”

Today I bought a new SIM card for my cell phone and learned the name of our bus stop.

- Carey Clark