Culture Shock and Frogs in NorthEast China

After some wild flower picking, and a quick jaunt around the “resort” grounds on a brand spankin new red pimp daddy of a mountain bike (owned by the Sun Mountain’s director, Mr. Yue Gong), I am ready to tell you all about Yabuli Moutai and drinking from teapots, eating fresh spring frogs, the value of fish eyeballs, how to say good morning in Russian, what a multi-billionaire looks like (when surrounded by 20 models and a golden shovel), and what it feels like to take a 3 day road trip with a bunch of Chinese people.

Trying to Keep Up

First of all, lets get something straight. The Chinese international students you meet at SFU might seem like a bunch of no-fun bookworms with their heads buried in their studies, but these are obviously NOT the kids from the Dongbe area of Northern China (kinda the same way that kids from Oak Bay are obviously not from the boonies of Metchosin… muahahaha). If city kids are having a fine time sipping martinis, these guys are straight to the heart of the matter and slamming back cup after cup of 70% Yabuli Moutai from 5-9 on a Monday night. Now add to the equation a first class drinking game where the goal is to drink exactly 1 unit of alcoholic beverage from the spout of a teapot without going over or under. Any more and you drink 1 extra cup… any less and you drink 3 extra cups. Yes… quite the orientation. Moutai, for those who aren’t in the know, is the Dongbe twist on Baijiou: a very potent Chinese rice wine invention that will knock you out and send you to bed with sweet dreams of kung-foo-fighting butterflies and grinning bouncy tiger/dragons as soon as your head hits the pillow. Don’t be deceived by its pretty red colour and slight berry flavouring… it’s a glass of diesel fuel in disguise.
Of course, I could have said no… but when will I ever have the chance to be the only young white girl gambé-ing with a bunch of construction workers, ski coaches, and generally good-spirited Chinese folk in an underground cellar-like room in a Korean BBQ restaurant in ____(insert name of whatever village that was)____ again? Therefore, I choose to GAMBE! (or “bottom up,” Mr. Yue would say with very enunciated T’s in practicing his engolishy.)

Well, I got that chance the very next night, as it turned out… and the menu was once again full of fresh local organic greens… and no, I don’t mean long leafy vegan veggies, I mean frogs. Yes, frogs. Big fat juicy Mountain Tree Frogs that have been hibernating all winter long and have stored up two big lumpy balls of blue-coloured fatty goodness just below all their vital organs and above their succulent legs. I will admit to that: frog legs are quite tasty and I can sort of understand the French for that… but know what is NOT tasty? Yeah… the lumpy blue things. But apparently the health benefits for your skin are innumerable and people pay big Reminbi for jars of that stuff in the city. And really? I should hope so. Poor little sleepy tree froggies didn’t know what hit ‘em. Regardless, I challenged someone to a just-out-of-hibernation-Spring-tree-frog-lumpy-blue-fat-ball-eating contest just for kicks. At 300 RMB ($40 and that’s a LOT up here) for a large bowl of them, I would have to just try some at least, right? Because when would I ever get the chance to be offered such a weird “delicacy” again?

The 5 Big Wings

Well, just this past weekend while on a road trip to the middle of nowhere, China, as it turned out.
The destination was Wu DaLian Chi: The Five Large Connected Lakes. Or, The 5 Big Connected Chicken Wings if you are me, and prefer to pronounce and translate this beautiful language improperly all the time. The trip was approximately 700kms long and mainly took place along one single highway that literally soared away behind our ambulance van due to the fact that the driver was partly insane and existed solely off momentum and cigarettes. (Yeah, the van had a red cross on the hood and flashing siren on top… no medical expertise inside though).

After what I thought was a thrilling ride through the countryside, seeing many different aspects of this enourmous chunk of land, 8 hours in a van had taken it’s toll and we were all ready for some yummy dinner before bed. But of course, this is China so dinner, as well as lunch and breakfast, are a big deal, so we sat down to a feast of feasts. Wu Dalian Chi is famous for its fresh, naturally carbonated mineral water that will turn your teeth black if you drink a hot cup of tea within 30 minutes of drinking this fresh water. Therefore, dinner was plate after plate of freshwater fishies stewed, steamed, and sauced. (If you didn’t know, I used to hate seafood with a passion, but have slowly been getting much better.) Sherry, my boss, was insistent on making sure I was well fed, and wanted me to know how important I was in being the only foreigner there, and so far from home, too! And naturally, what’s the best way to do this? Well, you offer your most esteemed guest a fish eyeball! Who knew?! I have been spending all this time avoiding fish eyes and brains and tails thinking they were nasty little bits of undigestable annoyances, and the main reason to hate seafood, while completely missing the point and not understanding a thing about Chinese culture and the true value of the eyeball. How ignorant. Thanks for the tip Sherry. Fish Eye = V.I.P’s only, and don’t refuse!

Hey Max, you hear that? I ate an eyeball. You’re next, sucker.

Wu DaLian Chi’s main attraction turns out to not be 5 big connected lakes at all. In fact, it’s a group of 14 dormant volcanoes surrounded by miles of rocky lava beds and beautiful volcanic poplar trees. Go figure! Made for some great hiking though. And now I’ve seen a Chinese volcano! Check. But maybe more importantly, I saw a bunch of Russians, got asked if I was a Russian, and was often spoken to in Russian. Dobora Outrava (or something that sounds that way = good morning!). Why? We were close to Russia! So, to celebrate we had full body volcano mud spa treatments. Very interesting.

The majority of the trip was spent on the road. Which made me very happy.

A drive through the Chinese countryside is like watching a modern day industrial revolution take place. Where a man in one area tills the land by walking alongside his cattle dragging clunky metal through the muddy soil, the next man sits atop an elegant invention of one chunky engine and four treaded tires that we like to call a tractor. One man goes to work by donkey-pulled wagon, another by bicycle, and a third carpools his friends by motor-powered wagon and one lady on board sweeps an annoying black plastic bag onto the highway from her seat on the wagon. Our ambulance wails for them to move over… we never went less than 130km/hour if we could. At one point we stopped for a break and I had to wonder about the hygienical standards of the local seafood market as half dead/ half alive fish and bugs were being sold in plastic buckets on the side of the highway. Nevertheless, big red gas stations still looked like beacons of hope.

At one point I dreamed I saw a Timmy Horton’s

I suppose for a handful of hardworking, successful, English speaking Chinese people, driving through impoverished Mainland China isn’t exactly thrilling. Actually, it’s probably somewhat depressing, if anything at all. “We got to see many sides of the country, the good and the bad,” Mr. Li said at breakfast this morning.
Many of my colleagues have studied English in university and hotel management abroad in Switzerland and Australia. They have worked very hard to educate themselves and have successfully achieved affluent positions in life. To have the readily disposable income to take a 3 or 4-day vacation across the country is a luxury for me in Canada, and I assume the same for a Chinese national. I wonder how it feels to have worked so hard and achieved so much, yet be faced with the reality of how far this nation still has to go before it can reach international economic standards, assuming that is where China is headed.

Either by decay or destruction, little red brick buildings have crumbled everywhere. Will they be rebuilt a little stronger next time?

As you can tell, I am excited by this. I don’t know why. I have no idea. I am more than likely inventing theory where there is none to invent. And thinking a little too much? But there is something, a definite something in this fertile Chinese ground that is growing and shaking up the rest of our planet. It’s there. Whatever it is. I don’t know what or where but it’s out there to be discovered, unless it just decides to hit us unexpectedly one day instead while we sit over our omelettes and syrupy French toast looking stunned at the news.

But, for an impressionable white girl from a safe and secure island off the coast of one of the world’s most beautiful geographical locations, a girl who has never had to worry about where her next meal is going to come from, a girl with a family and an education to return to after her “vacation” in China, this is thrilling.

Gaming Tycoon

Oh, I almost forgot… he looks pretty damn happy. And I was pretty happy to take away his empty glass of bubbly champagne on the rooftop of his half-constructed hotel while a marching band played below and golden shovels were plunged by stick thin models into bowls of cement during the MCR groundbreaking and roof-topping ceremony last week.

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