Renmenbi
Chinese Queasine
The Chinese immigrants of America made their cuisine famous throughout the world, but the real deal is a world apart from your Friday night egg fried rice, kung-po chicken and chop suey.
Yes, living in China is a real culinary experience; the Eight Great Traditions of Chinese cooking covers a multitude of regional ingredients, spices and cooking styles. But for all the glitz surrounding this giant of international cuisine there are a few things that they try to keep quiet, but we who stumble upon such oddities in the culinary world of China’s canteens and alleyways feel compelled to share with you some of the more popular ones.
The Salar
There are about 100,000 Salar people in China. Most of them live in Qinghai and Gansu provinces.
The Salar people call themselves Salarer. Their ancestors are the Samarkand people who migrated from Central Asia to China during the Yuan Dynasty (1271AD-1368AD). They integrated to some degree with the peoples they found there, including Tibetans, Hui, Han, and Mongolians, though they remain a distinct ethnic and cultural group.
The language of the Salar people belongs to the Turkic branch of the Altaic language family. It has no written form. Today many Salar people speak either Tibetan or Mandarin rather than Salar.
The Salar people practice Islam.
Mt. Huashan
Huashan (Hua Mountain) stands120 kilometers from Xi’an. This mountain is one of the five sacred mountains in China. It’s famous for its Taoist monasteries. The climb to the top is not for the faint of heart. In some places the slope is nearly vertical, and despite the iron chains sunk into the path as handholds, the climb is strenuous and tricky. For those who aren’t up to it, there’s a cable car to the top.
Huang Long Valley
The Yellow Dragon Valley gets its name from its most prominent feature – large deposits of calcium carbonate, a yellow substance, wind through the valley in the shape of a dragon. According to ancient legend, this dragon helped the emperor of Xia rid his kingdom of floods by creating the Minjiang River to direct excess water into the sea.
The valley lies in the Huanglong area of Songpan County, Sichuan Province. This 3.6 kilometer valley is a lovely combination of white snow clad mountains, thick green forests and luscious blue lakes. The scenery has earned the valley names like “World Wonder’ and ‘Fairy Land on Earth’. The valley was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1992.
Holding Hands
A young couple holding hands, perhaps blushing at the contact, is the very image of young love, still shy and innocent. We in the West look at this gesture of affection as romantic in nature, something people do in the glow of a new relationship. With this image fixed in mind, if you get plonked down in a Chinese city of a sudden, you will look around you at all of the young couples holding hands and come to the conclusion that some 90% of young Chinese men and women are gay.
Fortune Cookie
Fortune cookies - crisp wafers folded around a bit of paper with some Chinglish wisdom or a vague fortune printed on one side and lottery numbers on the other – are a ubiquitous feature in Chinese restaurants in America or Europe, so much so that people often get the mistaken impression that these cookies are part of Chinese cuisine. Nothing could be further from the case. In fact, fortune cookies were invented in California.
You're a Pig - The Chinese Zodiac
“Are you a monkey?”
“What?”
“I think you’re a pig.”
“Excuse me?”
“You look like a horse.”
“How dare you! Now look here….”
These questions may seem insulting in the West, but here in China this inquisitive individual is merely trying to understand what kind of person you are. You see in China, one’s personality is not judged by their Western star sign (Sagittarius, Aquarius etc), but by one of the 12 animal signs that represent the 12 types of personality and make up the 12 year cycle of the Chinese zodiac. Each year is assigned its own animal and you are designated an animal by your year of birth. But it doesn’t stop there; the Chinese zodiac is a lot more complex.
Tea Culture
Tea is such a popular drink all over the world that it's easy to forget, or never even think about, where it comes from. Before tea drinking developed into a British stereotype and before the green tea loving Japanese invented green tea ice cream, tea was essentially Chinese. It's believed that tea-shrubs have been growing in China for some five or six thousand years, though people have only been cultivating them for two thousand (1). Export of the drink was first made to Japan in the 6th century, and by the 17th and 18th centuries tea had made its way all the way to Europe. But despite its worldwide popularity, the largest variety of tea and the highest quality can still only be found in China. Today it's cultivated all over southeast Asia, inside and outside of China.
Eating Is As Important As The Sky
Chinese food has a real international presence. Not many other countries boast restaurants with their national food across every continent, from Aberdeen to Ulan Bator. All the same, a trip to a Chinese restaurant that is actually in China has quite a unique etiquette, which even those who have been to several Chinese restaurants in their home country might not be familiar with.
Of course, some differences are well known. The custom of ordering lots of dishes to place in the middle of the table and share between the whole group seems to have spread across the globe in Chinese restaurants. Besides, the Chinese are world famous for their use of chopsticks.
Picking Up the Bill
We call it "going Dutch" but it doesn’t just apply on dates. Westerners split the bill at a restaurant when we go out in large groups too. Six people to dinner means six people paying for their fair shares of the food, however you want to define fair share. As with so much else, things are different at restaurants in China. While six foreigners calculate how to split the bill and scramble for correct change, the Chinese waitress will stand there with a strange look on her face. "What on Earth are these people doing?" her look says.
Do the Asian Squat!
Westerners confronted with an Asian style toilet have a single universal reaction: How the hell do I use this thing? For men the answer isn’t so difficult, but for women the sense of dismay when confronted with an Asian toilet is acute. At the risk of being vulgar, how does one keep from getting urine all over one’s pants and or shoes? Just what are the logistics of this particular toilet design?
Yonghegong Lama Temple
Yonghegong Lama Temple, located in central Beijing, is the largest lamasery in China. The building, with its unique blend of Chinese and Tibetan architecture, was originally constructed in 1694 as a home for court eunuchs. Once completed, however, it served as a court for Prince Yong, who later became Emperor Yongzheng. In 1744 the palace was converted into a lamasery and quickly became the national center of Lama administration.
Jokhang Temple
Located in the heart of Lhasa is the Jokhang Temple which is considered to be one of the most holy and sacred places of worship by the Tibetans. The temple has also been declared a world heritage site by UNESCO. It covers an area of almost 6 acres and is known for the famous statue of Buddha that it houses. It also marks the advent of Buddhism in to Tibet. It was only after the temple was built that Buddhism grew to its present position in Tibet.
Playing the Lute to a Cow – Chinese Idioms (Chengyu)
For those studying the Chinese language, after mastering the grammar, intonation, and good amount of vocabulary there remains one final test: The ‘Chengyu’ 成语 (literally ‘set phrase’ – but better translated as ‘proverbs’ or ‘idioms’).
Jiuzhaigou
The dreamland of Jiuzhaigou lies about 450 kilometers north of Chengdu. The valley takes its name from the nine Tibetan villages there. The valley is 50 kilometers long and has 108 lakes, each one unique, as well as a number of waterfalls and streams.
Legend has it that the god of mountains was so taken in by the goddess Semo that he presented her with a mirror made of winds and clouds. She treasured it immensely for a time, but then the devil managed to gain some influence over her and caused her to shatter the mirror. As it broke, it fell to the earth in 108 pieces, and so the lakes were formed.
White Haired Wonders
Who would you expect to bump into on an early morning stroll in a park? A couple of ultra keen joggers perhaps, or another early riser out for some fresh air before their day begins. But at seven o’ clock in the morning, one would expect, most parks would be fairly tranquil.
The Dai
The 1.15 million Dai live in compact communities in Yunnan Province.
The Dai call themselves Dai Le, Dai Ya or Dai Na. They have a long history, much of which was recorded in Chinese historical accounts from the first century AD.
The Dai language belongs to the Tai-Kadai language family. It’s written using an alphabet based on Sanskrit.
Most of the Dai are Buddhist.
The Dai are mostly farmers, growing paddy using their own particular intensive ploughing techniques.
No Foreigners Here
In China’s biggest modern cities, the pace of change over the past twenty years has been so rapid that it’s sometimes hard to even imagine what China was like before it opened its doors to the West. The cities are forests of glass buildings. Shops are everywhere, selling everything you could possibly want to buy and plenty more that you don’t. You can practically smell the entrepreneurial spirit. Foreigners are everywhere too in the cities. Some are here for business, but some have simply chosen to make China their home. China’s major cities are quickly becoming international and cosmopolitan, though they aren’t there yet.
The Chinese Kite
When I was 12 years old, the father of a friend of mine went to China on a business trip. When he came back to the UK he gave his son a kite. It was a huge, clean cut diamond with a fierce dragon painted in red and gold; its tail hung down in long fiery ribbons. From then on, for me, China became synonymous with kite. The kite was invented and popularised in China around 2800 years ago using the readily available silk for sails and bamboo for the frames and has been a cultural icon for China ever since. Said to have been invented by 5th Century BC philosophers Mozi 墨子and Lu Ban鲁班, the kites’ earliest usage included testing the wind, lifting men, and for signalling and communication during rescue operations.
Back to School
As always, September brings the beginning of a new academic year. Millions of fresh faced teenagers across the world leave home for the first time to start university. The nerves and excitement at the dawn of this new life stage are remembered for a lifetime. It is only natural that the university journey in the Far East has its own distinctions from other parts of the world – but some of these differences are pretty surprising for a Westerner.
The obvious question when you start at university usually is: what will you choose to study? In my own home country, for the most part people have the freedom to choose to major in the subject they have interest or talent in, or simply enjoy.