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Published: November 3rd 2018
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Field Mice Anyone?
The only non seafood item available at the seafood market. Al was joking with me that I’d have to eat this since I could have seafood. I asked if the field mice were farmed or caught in the wild. Not sure which answer to that question is better. Today I made quite the discovery. I am a descendant of Genghis Khan. Interestingly, my dad and my two aunts are not. So who is my father?
We began today with yet another battle with the breakfast bouncers not wanting to give us breakfast for three. Between my dad's Cantonese and my Mandarin, we managed to smuggle the three of us inside. Seems like it's going to be a daily battle for some watery coffee and stale toast.
Our first day of "rooting" began today. Each day, we go into someone's ancestral village, where we meet with the village elders and local government. If all goes well, they help find the ancestral house, as well as any relatives that may still be in the village. This morning, we started with Phil's (a fellow rooter) paternal grandfather's village. While Phil was inside the village's "community center" (I'm not sure what to call it, but it's a place that lists all the villagers and people that have donated to the village), my mom, dad, and I were out talking in front of the building when we heard someone yell, "Oh my goodness, Americans!" This 18 year old girl from New Jersey
bounced up with her grandmother, and long story short she's off to UC Berkeley in the fall and my parents have promised her a home cooked meal back in the Bay Area when she's missing home. And she's going to apply for the 30 and under Roots program next summer. By the way, Rachel and Olivia if you're reading this, Mom has started trying to convince me that the triplets should do the program this upcoming summer. Mom says Rachel will be easy to convince to come because all we really do is eat food and drink beer. Olivia will be the harder sell because she doesn't make decisions with her stomach.
After we had a new "root-cruit" (see what I did there), the village caretaker located Phil's ancestral house. It was beat down after years of neglect, but we did find evidence of squatters hiding out in the home. It was buried away off the road, and on the short 200 ft walk from the main road to the home, the local mosquitos had an Asian fusion feast. I'm covered in bites.
While helping me assess the damage, Karen (not my mom) from our group noticed a
line on my arm. Al, the group leader, had told us earlier in the morning about a line on your arm that descendants of Genghis Khan have. Apparently, Genghis Khan was famous for having this line on his forearm, and legend has it that his descendants have this line too. Karen's husband, Ray, and their son Scott, both have the line on their arm. I have it too, and it's pretty distinct. I've also never in my life noticed this line on my arm, but I have it on both arms. Excited to show Dad we are related to Genghis Khan, I ran over to see his line only to find...he has no line. So I ran over to Mamie to see if she has a line. No line. So I went to Gen, surely she'd have it. No line. The only remaining logical step was to march over to Mom to ask who my real father was, since he's clearly not on this trip. Out of the 20 people on our bus, only Ray, Scott, and I are related to Genghis Khan. Curious.
Once we wrapped up in Phil's village and I was covered in Deet and questioning
my entire life existence, it was time to eat again. This time, we walked into a seafood market, with everything from live fish to octopus to live eels to clams, oysters, mud fish, and who knows what else. You point at what you want, then they deliver it next door at a restaurant that cooks it all for you. I had eggplant and bok choy for lunch. This seafood allergy thing is not fun. I think my mom was in Heavan--seafood and eggplant prepared Chinese style, her two favorite foods in the whole world.
This goes without saying, but the bathrooms in China are not my favorite. The hotels we're staying at have Western toilets, but no where else does, and in the villages it is ROUGH. I've been in some absolutely disgusting ones both when I lived in China and when I've traveled through India for work, but today at the lunch restaurant was the first day I had to pour water into the hole myself from a separate bowl filled with toilet water to flush everything down into the ground. It was too gross and I couldn't do it without vomiting, so I had to call my
mommy in to do it for me. If I owned a house in the US, I would have pulled out my phone and Amazon Prime'd one of those super expensive fancy Japanese toilets to my front door that second just as a prize for getting through these toilets the next few weeks.
After lunch it was off to a new village to explore. Mom wasn't feeling well and was having a pretty rough time, so Dad and I stayed back with her near the village bathroom while the rest of the group explored the village. Often, the houses here still don't have indoor plumbing, so they share communal village toilets. Just rows of holes in the ground with walls that are 2 feet high in between. At that point, why even have a wall there? If she was already feeling bad, the sight of these village toilets cant have made her feel any better. The Roots leader told her she couldn't eat for 24 hours. Not to worry, I'm both an active Web MD expert and a walking pharmacy, equipped with pepto bismal, prescription strength diarrhea pills, Epipens, Advil, Claritin, sleeping pills, expired malaria pills, and more in my
Pedestrian Street
A shopping street behind our hotel. My parents keep saying “this isn’t the China we saw in 1988!” backpack at all times. I have her on a strict pepto and water diet at the moment.
The villages all have so many cute puppies running around. Mom was pretty sick but well enough to tell me I'm not allowed to get any more dogs because they have a habit of ending up living with her. Fair point.
Mom suffered through dinner (she watched us eat) but she didn't miss out on much. The food wasn't fantastic--Dad and I mostly had beer. She's doing better now but still was in bed by 8:30pm. After we put her to bed, Dad, Mamie, and I went to try and find a sim card so I can fly my drone in China. (you need a mainland Chinese number and for some reason China has now decided Hong Kong doesn't count as being part of China only when I need a sim card. Convenient for them.) I brought Mamie and Dad to try and use their Cantonese to translate, but they both went into the store and said in English, "sim card?" in a Chinese accent, which I could have done. Since I studied abroad in Shanghai, China has changed the laws
Don Tots
KFC’s finest! and you can only have a sim card if you have a Chinese passport now. I think this makes just as much sense as breakfast for 2 in a hotel you've reserved and paid for for 3.
Mamie, Dad, and I decided to eat our feelings (OK maybe I was the only one sad about the sim card) and headed over to KFC for their specialty--don tots. Don tots are probably my favorite Chinese food in the world. They're egg custard tarts in a pie crust, and my mom used to limit me to 6 as a child whenever we got dim sum. KFC makes them special here--they have a crème brulee like top, and some come with blueberries on top and inside. We got 6 to share and they were delicious---the blueberry one tasted like a mix between don tots and berry cobbler--the best of both dessert worlds!
On the way back from eating don tots, we stopped at a local bakery to order more don tots. We ended the night on a high note--lots of don tots and Mamie told me how impressed she was with my Mandarin. Fingers crossed Mom feels better soon!
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Andrea
Great blog! Your life observations are witty and ridiculous. I’ve laughed out loud a few times now. Thanks for sharing your adventures with the parentals.