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Published: November 24th 2010
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Once Mel had headed back to Australia and I was alone in the apartment, I tried to settle into more of a routine. Get up, go for a proper walk (not just a dawdle), and get a coffee on the way back. On the morning of the National Day Holiday (October 1), which marks the beginning of a week long holiday for office and government workers, I was devastated to find that Starbucks was closed. WHAT! Closed! Impossible!
I remembered seeing another coffee chain called BLENZ a little further away, so decided to head over there to check it out.
Yes, open. What relief. Turns out that their coffee was cheaper and better than Starbucks and the location was better. The shop faced out onto a large ‘square’ in front of a shopping complex. At that time of the morning it was in total shade, and there were dozens of tables to sit at. For a few mornings I headed down to Blenz and enjoyed the hint of a cool breeze, while drinking my coffee and reading one of the local magazines.
Grandparents seemed to find this spot a popular one for bringing their Grandchild out for a walk.
There were
Gingerbread Man
Nothing beats a German Gingerbread Man made by a Chinese Chef always at least a half dozen little ones tottering around, up and down the few steps, playing in the garden beds, while their grandparents sat at one of the tables.
I knew that I’d soon get sick of waiting for so long for my coffee in the morning, and had been searching for a small portable hotplate, so that I could make my own.
I had my Italian coffee percolator, my ground coffee beans and my milk powder, so I was all prepared.
Never in my wildest dreams did I think it was going to be difficult to buy a cheap (AUD $20) hotplate. After all, we had 2 at home and that’s all they cost. I’m sure as hell certain they were made in China, so they’d have to be even cheaper over here right? WRONG.
Every department store, supermarket and electrical store stock this item. They are much fancier than the ones we have at home. They are all induction for a start (so my coffee pot actually won’t work on it) and they have lots of fancy controls for temperature, time and heaven only knows what else. And none of them were under 200 RMB (AUD$
Tianhe Bei Lu by night
Taken from the Apartment Window 33)
I hunted around for days, at every opportunity, until at last I got sick of it and just decided to buy one.
So off to Jusco I go. Only a 10 minute walk from home, it’s a massive 4 levels of shops, department store, supermarket, electrical appliances, furniture, in fact everything you can imagine. And it’s all underground.
Heading past the park you’ll spot an open plaza, full of trees and the central attraction of a wall of water, cascading beautifully into a large open pool. As you walk though, there are groups of people just hanging around, sitting, talking, reading the paper, watching their child run around. It’s one of the local meeting places, and right underneath them is 4 floors of shopping.
As luck would have it, the cheapest hotplate (RMB 198) is on special at ‘Jio Zhe’ which is the equivalent of 10% discount that day. (Chinese have a strange method of advertising discount, it’s all to do with Zhe, which is a rate of discount. I think I’ll leave it to later in this story to explain Zhe).
It always pays to listen to the little voice in my head. Go and buy a hotplate today, it said to me. So I did.
I picked up a few other items and headed to the cashier. I have a habit of tallying up the cost in my head, so when I get to the cashier I know approximately how much it will be and have the appropriate money ready.
Surprise! Surprise! The cashier hadn’t taken off the 10% discount and demanded the full amount. Lucky for her I had my translator with me, who explained to her the error of her ways. I’m not quite sure how I was going to pantomime “10% discount”.
Now that I had my hotplate, I could heat up my own milk for my latte in the morning – the next step was to work out how to boil the coffee. Next morning I assembled the perculator and down the elevator I went (luckily it was smack in the middle of National Day / week Holiday so the elevator was all but empty.
I presented the kitchen boys my perculator and with much pantomime action, I managed to convey that it needs to sit on a hotplate, and wait until it boils and the coffee fills the top. Darling Wilson, who speaks the best English out of the kitchen hands seemed to get it, and thus, about 15 minutes later (takes a while for the hotplate to heat up sufficiently), my coffee was perked!! I had bought down some milk in a plastic water bottle, so into a coffee mug this went, and into the microwave.
Viola!!! A latte.
Bliss.
A full coffee perculator lasts me about 4 days, so whenever I am close to running out, I just bring it down with me in the morning, and now I don’t even have to tell them what to do. In fact, on the mornings I don’t bring it down, Wilson will come and ask me “No Coffee?”
My next frontier was toast.
For quite a few mornings I had been asking for Da Bao – which translates into big bread. When I ask for this I get one of the bread rolls that are used as a soup tureen. They heat this in the oven for me and I devour the entire thing.
But then I realized that they have sliced bread – which is used to make the steak sandwiches and New York Club Sandwich. Because my translator doesn’t arrive until about noon, I decided to google translate toast. Then I cut and paste the Chinese characters onto a word document so I could print it out and show it to the kitchen. My mate Wilson wasn’t there that day to help me out.
What magic, they bought out 3 bits of bread (they have them pre-packed in packets of 3, ready for use in the steak sandwich) and put them on the BBQ plate and next thing I knew – TOAST. So now I really am in heaven. Out comes the vegemite I’ve bought with me, and I now have a real breakfast. Life doesn’t get much better.
The kitchen boys very quickly taught me how to ask for toast – ‘Fung Bao, Kaw mien bao” – literally translates into sliced bread, cooked bread.
So now my morning routine was much easier. Awake early (usually 6am, but by the time I was ready to leave I’d managed to string this out to about 7.45am).
Make my latte, eat my home made muesli (oats mixed with extremely expensive sultanas, almonds and diced up dried mango) and read a few pages of River Town by Peter Hessler.
Nothing beats being a waigouren living in China and reading about another waigouren living in China!
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Deb Webb
non-member comment
Love your blog...
But - whzt the hell are you doing again in China??? For the love of baby jesus ---- I cant remember? You said " your boys ? are these your staff...what staff. Please explain xxxxxx