The Bathrooms are Alive with the Sound of Music

The Bathrooms are Alive with the Sound of Music

I have decided to be a brain surgeon.

I have no relevant experience or formal training as a brain surgeon, but I do have some time on my hands and thought it might be challenging and fun.  I’ll probably kick off my new role as a brain surgeon this weekend with something manageable – nothing too demanding.

Wait a minute.  Did I say I wanted to be a “Brain Surgeon”?  I’m sorry…that’s just silly.  What I meant to say was “Karaoke Singer”.  There’s not really that much in common between the two.  First off, Karaoke singers don’t usually hold people’s lives in the palm of their hands.  Hearing? Possibly. But lives?  Probably not.

For those who don’t know, Karaoke (pronounced “Carry-Okey” in the West) is the popular phenomenon that began in Japan where patrons take turns singing lyrics to pre-recorded music.

I have participated in Karaoke both here and in Asia.  While the experience in the U.S. is fairly straightforward, out in Asia it is much more elaborate.  For those of you who might have an opportunity to Karaoke in Asia, I thought I might provide the following observations as a primer.

Karaoke Clubs are often located in posh hotels throughout Asia.  Once you enter the lobby of a club, you are greeted by a hostess dressed in formal attire who will escort you to a private and elegantly decorated Karaoke room.  You are somewhat surprised by all the pomp and circumstance surrounding an activity that is typically reserved for your daily shower.

You and your friends enter a small room lined with an “L” shaped sofa on one end facing a large screen on the other.  The more exclusive rooms also include an adjoining restroom in case nature calls or can be used as a makeshift “quiet room” for those who would rather miss the least talented member of the group straining to hit the high notes of “New York, New York” (? These little town blues are melting awaaaaay! ?).

Once seated on the sofa, a waiter will take drink and snack orders.  While the Karaoke room charges are very reasonable, you suspect that the club makes up the difference on what they charge for food and drinks.  Either that, or there must be a world wide potato and barley shortage forcing the club to charge eighteen dollars for a bag of potato chips and a beer.

The next order of business is to select songs for everyone to sing.  Seeing as how this is a Chinese Karaoke club, most of the songs are in Chinese, but a good number of them are from the west as well.

As far as I can tell, all Chinese Karaoke songs are about love.  There are songs about being in love, falling in love, falling out of love, looking for love, finding love, songs by singer Courtney Love, tennis matches with a score of 15-love, words that start with “L” that rhyme with “dove”…you definitely start to see a pattern.

As for me, I never have to worry about selecting a song.  Like it or not, in the course of the evening I will inevitably end up singing the Righteous Brother’s “Unchained Melody.”  For some reason, if you are from America and have been invited to a Karaoke party in Asia, you are required to sing that song.  I believe you have to agree to it before they’ll give you a visa.

On top of that, the person operating the Karaoke machine always raises the pitch of the song, so the only way I can reach the high notes is if I’m wearing some really tight pants. By the time I reach the climax of the song and reach that last high note, no one can hear me except for any stray dogs or dolphins that happen to be near by.

Although the written word can hardly do it justice, I thought I’d give you a sampling of my performance of that final verse:

? I-aye-aye-aye NEED your love!!! ?
? I-aye-aye-aye-aye need your luh-huv,?
? God speed your love, to-who-who-who-ooh, me-HEE-HEE-EEE!!! ?

The bathroom really gets hoppin’ when I get to that part.

Fortune Cookie

After exhaustive research at restaurants here and abroad I can confidently proclaim that the tradition of serving fortune cookies at the end of a Chinese meal is a custom found only in the United States and nowhere in Asia.

When traveling abroad, if you ask for a fortune cookie in an Asian restaurant, the servers don’t seem to comprehend the question, as if it’s a completely foreign topic to them (which, of course, it is). I may as well be asking the server, “Yes, and after the last dish, would you mind if I brought in my pet sheep so that we could play a few rounds of canasta?”

It is not commonly known that all newly arrived immigrants from China interested in starting Chinese restaurants here in the States must first attend a fortune cookie orientation course covering topics including: 1) Fortunes addressing general topics like health and wealth are appropriate; more specific information related to cholesterol levels and alimony are not, and 2) Customers believe that the lottery numbers printed on the back side of the fortune have been personally vetted by a wise old man channeling his predictions from a lotto picking Buddha.

The practice of customers getting a free dessert seems unique to Chinese restaurants. I’ve tried the whole “free dessert” concept at other restaurants without much luck. I was once asked to leave an Italian restaurant when I insisted that they serve me a complimentary cannelloni for dessert.

It makes common sense that the fortune cookie was created in the U.S. Americans place a much higher emphasis on desserts than Asians do.

The easiest way to see this is in what foods are presented at various cuisines. Japanese restaurants have bright bars set up with hundreds of pictures of sushi that can be created at a moment’s notice. Spanish restaurants also have “bars”, serving a varied assortment of “tapas”, small dishes with a wide range of flavors, certain to please. Of course, Chinese restaurants serve “dim sum”, which are small appetizer-sized dishes served from a steamy cart pushed around the restaurant, with the sight and smell of the dishes guaranteed to find it’s owner in short time. These examples are for the most part, main entrees.

I can’t recall ever going to an American restaurant and having the server bring out a tray of main entrees for me to select from. You certainly won’t see him describing each entrée on the tray either (“As you can see, tonight we have a delectable meat loaf, served with brown gravy and mashed potatoes, or perhaps tonight you are more in the mood for our signature dish, we call it ‘pot roast’”.

Which brings me back to desserts. Restaurants in the west have “The Dessert Tray”. This is the tray the server will inevitably bring to your table to tempt you with the most outrageous concoctions known to man. My favorite is the “Flourless chocolate torte with chocolate chips covered with a chocolaty-chocolate sauce.”

The dessert tray won my family over long ago. Just last week, as the dessert tray arrived at our table, my son started gasping for air, looking weak. When I asked him what was wrong, he said, “Can’t breathe…don’t know if I’m going to make it…must…have…chocolate cake.”

A Duck for the Ages

What is that old saying?  Absence makes the heart grow fonder?

It’s a common saying that usually pertains to how you feel when a person you care about is gone for an extended period of time.  The longer they are away, the more you look forward to them coming home again.

I’ve discovered that this rule applies to any number of things that might be missing in your life.  For example, I’m growing more and more fond of pizza by the minute.

My ever-growing fondness for pizza notwithstanding, I think the perfect example of this axiom has to do with my dad.

Ever since I can remember, from the time that I was a little boy, I can remember times when Dad would reminisce about his past.  My dad does not have a very good memory, so when he does remember something, especially if it’s something good, it tends to stand out.

So what would be the one pleasant memory my dad will consistently bring up?  Coming to America to start a new life?  No. Getting married and watching the love of his life walk down the aisle?  No.  The birth of his children?  No.

He talks about the one time my mom made a roasted duck for dinner.

She made this duck before I was born and this was no ordinary duck dish.  This was a duck made with taro, and according to Dad, it was dee-licious.

You have to remember – the duck in question was roasted in the early sixties.  This duck was hatched during the Kennedy administration.  There have been twelve Olympic games held since that duck was served.  I was born shortly after the duck and while I’m sure he was very happy holding his first born son for the first time, I imagine he was thinking how much better the day would be if there was another roasted duck waiting for them on the way home from the hospital.

But it was not to be.  In fact, my mom to this day, despite my dad’s frequent requests, has never made that duck dish again.  And if she knows what’s good for her and him, she never will.

Oh sure, she’s roasted plenty of ducks since then. She made ducks during the Johnson administration, through Watergate, and during the cold war.  But not that particular duck recipe.

There was no taro in all the subsequent ducks.

I know how my dad feels.  Along with the celebrated duck, my mom once made sweet and sour pork.  Now, we all know how easy it is to find sweet and sour pork.  Every Chinese restaurant makes it every single day.  But my mom made it once and only once.  No repeat performances. I can understand someone trying out a recipe and never making it again if it turned out badly.  But in the case of dad’s duck and my pork, it turned out great.  It was good.  Very good.  It was drool worthy.

On the other hand, Mom attempts to make a Thanksgiving turkey every year and every year it comes out so dry it’s closer to beef jerky than a roast turkey.  It’s so dry that any gravy in the vicinity of the turkey turns to powder once the turkey sucks all the moisture out of it.  This we get every year.

I’m not sure I understand the logic of it.  I suppose if there were some way we could change the constitution so that ducks and sweet and sour pork replaced turkey and gravy during Thanksgiving, we’d be all set.

The problem is, it has been so long since Dad enjoyed that single, solitary duck, that his enjoyment of said duck has grown to mythic proportions.  The way he talks about that duck nowadays, you’d think this duck was manna from the heavens.

I don’t think any chef, much less my mom, could roast a duck in a way that could match the expectations my dad has created.  A duck that is served only once every forty years?

I’m afraid dad would pass out from the anticipation.  It might even coin a new saying.

Absence makes the heart have irregular palpitations.

The Kitchen God and His Missing Dumplings

The Kitchen God and His Missing Dumplings

Nian!  It’s all his fault.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with him, Nian is a monster and legend has it that on the eve of Chinese New Year, Nian materializes and devours unsuspecting families.

I know now that the custom of setting off firecrackers, lighting lanterns and hanging red couplets was designed to scare off Nian , who hates loud noises, fire, and the color red.  As a youngster, all of this was just an excuse for me to play with firecrackers.

I’m sure my parents did share some of the customs.  But when you’re an impressionable boy, it’s hard to separate fact from fiction.

Case in point: The mystery of the missing dumplings.

One custom practiced during Chinese New Year is to set aside an offering of food for the Kitchen God who visits every year to provide spiritual comfort.  I remember watching each year as my Aunt Lucy would set aside a plate of dumplings and other goodies at night on a table near the fireplace.

The strange thing was, several dumplings would always be missing in the morning.  Actual dumplings were gone, which even as a nine year old I realized was abnormal, for even the milk and cookies I put out on Christmas Eve for Santa Claus were always still there when I woke up in the morning.  The Kitchen God eats the dumpling in a spiritual sense, not a real one.

I decided to investigate and see who was swiping the dumplings from under the Kitchen God’s nose.  That night, with everyone asleep, I crept out of bed and crawled ever so quietly down the hallway so that I could catch the malcontent in the act.  At the end of the hall, I peered around the corner to the fireplace to wait.  And wait. And wait.

Then, in a flash, I identified the culprit, and I was devastated.  Who would have thought?

Nian had overcome and inhabited the body of Bubbles, our Cocker Spaniel.  I should have suspected it earlier that evening when I saw the dog run off every time I lit off a firecracker.

An Addendum

Those of you who are familiar with Chinese New Year know that the year is based on lunar cycles, as opposed to the traditional calendar.  Therefore, not only does the actual day of Chinese New Year fall on a different day each year (between late January and early February), but anyone who marks their birthday using the calendar (like my father) also have a different birthday each year, making it hard to track.  For example, I don’t know whether my father just turned 73 or whether he’s just now old enough to vote.

In honor of the New Year, and because the whole concept of changing birthdays completely escapes me, I would like to plan early and hopefully start a new Chinese New Year tradition.  So, without further ado:

The First Annual List of Wishes for my Hundredth Birthday

I wish for peace, good health, and for someone to invent calorie and cholesterol-free dim sum.
I wish for the wisdom to know my weaknesses, the judgment to know when I am wrong, and the understanding of those around me that when I am wrong, they should not blame a weak, old man.
I wish for a simple life filled with love and friendship.
I wish that if #3 doesn’t pan out, a beach house in La Jolla would be fine.
I wish that between now and my 101st birthday, the year will bring you and your family a life’s worth of happiness.  Gung Hay Fat Choy!

Chinese Timeline in San Diego

1870’s – Chinese begin arriving in San Diego, towards the end of Northern California’s Gold Rush.  Many who came to San Diego worked as contract laborers on the state’s railroad system and other infrastructure projects.  Others became fisherman along San Diego’s coast and south into Baja California, using skills they practiced in China’s Pearl River Delta.

1880’s – Out of a total population of 8,600, 200 were 200 Chinese, most all living in an area called Stingaree, which is now known as the Gaslamp Quarters.

1881 – Approximately 150 Chinese live in San Diego, many working on the construction of the California Southern Railroad between National City and San Bernardino.

It was also at this time that Ah Quin, moved from Northern California to San Diego, working from San Francisco and went on to have 12 children as well as become a prosperous business owner.  He became known as the “Mayor of Chinatown”. He died in 1914.

1882 – The U.S. enacts the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, specifically designed to end all immigration of Chinese citizens into the U.S. In the year before the legislation was passed, 39,579 Chinese entered the United States. One out of every 10 citizens in California was of Chinese descent.  In 1887, only 10 Chinese citizens immigrated legally.  The law was repealed in 1943.

1885 – The Chinese Mission School of San Diego was established by Lee Hong (local resident) on the corner of 13th & F Street.  With the support and help of Dr. William C. Pond of the American Home Missionary Association who worked with Chinese immigrants throughout California, the Mission taught the several hundred (mostly) male Chinese residents in San Diego to read and write English.

In late 1885, an anti-Chinese group was established to persuade local businesses to replace Chinese workers with Caucasians.

1887 – The Coronado Beach Company recruits Chinese workers from San Francisco to help in the construction of the Hotel del Coronado.

1888 – The Scott Act permanently banned the immigration or return of Chinese laborers to the United States and ended the cross border process. The bill received overwhelming support by both houses of congress and led to mass celebrations throughout California.  As a result of the Scott Act, the Chinese fishing industry effectively ended since Chinese fisherman in San Diego could no longer travel to Baja California and legally come back.  Many of these workers switched to farming jobs, many located in Mission Valley.

Early 1900’s – Mrs. Margaret Fanton, who was known to San Diego’s local Chinese as “Mother Fanton”, worked for over 40 years first as a teacher at the Chinese Mission of San Diego, but also as a superintendent.  She was the first social worker for San Diego’s Chinese population.

1935 – The Hall of China, located in Balboa Park, was officially opened on May 25, 1935. Now known as the House of China, it was the Chinese community’s effort to participate as a part of the 1935-1936 California Pacific International Exposition held at Balboa Park, San Diego.

1962 – Tom Hom, a native San Diegan was elected to the San Diego City, served as deputy mayor, and later won a seat in the California State Assembly, the first for a Chinese-American in San Diego.  He is currently the patriarch of one of San Diego’s oldest Chinese-American families and is a principal member of the Tom Hom Group, a development company in San Diego .

1996 – The San Diego Chinese Historical Society was dedicated in January, located in what was originally a Chinese mission designed by Irving Gill in the 1920s.

2000 – U.S. Census figures show that 22,762 Chinese live in the city of San Diego, making up 1.86% of the city’s population.

2003 – Archaeologists have uncovered thousands of items during excavation and construction of the new Downtown Ballpark that offer a glimpse into San Diego’s Chinese Community at the turn of the 20th century.  Some of the items include china dishes, old medicine bottles, and rice bowls.

Sources:

Murray K. Lee, A Short History of the Chinese in San Diego, California (1977)

Elizabeth MacPhail, San Diego’s Chinese Mission, (The Journal of San Diego History, 1977)

Charles J. McClain, In Search of Equality: The Chinese Struggle Against Discrimination in Nineteenth-Century America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994)

Shih-Shan Henry Tsai, The Chinese Experience in America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986)

Jonathan Heller, Artifacts point to San Diego’s unsung past (San Diego Union Tribune, 2003)

Learning the ABC’s of Chinese – Minus the ABC’s

I am in the midst of an identity crisis – or maybe it’s a panic attack.  Even worse, maybe it’s both.

Last week I took my six-year-old son to Chinese School.  For those who may have read some of my earlier columns, you should already know about my Chinese language competency.  For those of you that haven’t, let me describe it this way:  My Chinese is like a soufflé – it starts out big and beautiful, but once you dig into it you find that there’s not much substance and filled with hot air.

People have told me that the intonation and phrasing of my Chinese is very good.  The problem is that my vocabulary would put a four year old to shame.

I am the first to admit my limitations when it comes to the Chinese language, which is one of the reasons why we decided to send my son to Chinese school so that he could get a head start.  But I’m not about to admit my weaknesses to my own son.

When my wife signed him up for the class, I made it perfectly clear what my responsibilities would be – I would take him to and from class. I would sit with him during class to make sure he paid attention.  But I made it perfectly clear – I was not about to teach him myself or be a teacher’s aid.  We had an agreement.  We had a pact.

I knew there was a problem the minute we sat down to class.  The teacher immediately started directing the parents on what she wanted us to do to help while we were in session.  Every word the teacher said was in Chinese.  Every utterance.  Even what she wrote on the chalkboard…all Chinese.  I’m sure people could tell that we were father and son by the same distant expression we had on our faces.

Oh sure, I understood a few things.  She started out by introducing herself, told us she was excited to be here, and then asked us to open our workbooks.  After that, yada, yada, yada.  She could have been telling us to run for our lives to escape a marauding pack of killer cocker spaniels, but you’d never know it by the way that I was frantically flipping through the work book trying to get some inkling as to what she was talking about.

What is a father to do when his six-year-old son asks him, “Daddy, what is she saying?  What does she want me to do?”  As I was as clueless as he, the only thing I could come up with was, “Look, if you’re not going to pay attention, I’m certainly not going to tell you!”

They say that in order to overcome a traumatic experience, the average person must go through the five stages of resolution:  (1) denial, (2) bargaining, (3) anger, (4) despair, and (5) acceptance.  You could certainly see me going through each of these stages whenever I responded to the teacher’s questions.

Denial – “Yes, I’d be happy to answer that question, but my ears are still ringing after going to a heavy metal concert last night and I can’t hear you.  It was so totally rad.”

Bargaining – “I’d be happy to answer that question if you’d first answer my question:  Why is there air?”

Anger – “Why are you asking me this question?!?  I’m only the driver!  Please call my wife.  We had a pact.”

Despair – “I’m sorry.  I can’t answer your question.  It brings up painful memories from my childhood.”

Acceptance – “Excuse me?  This is Chinese class?  I’m sorry, wrong class.  C’mon son, let’s go.”

Hmm…that last one seems like I skipped over acceptance and went back around to denial.  Well, four out of five’s not bad.

Then There’s the One About the Herd of Meatballs

Don’t believe everything you read.  If there’s anything you might take away after reading this column, I hope you believe that simple fact.

Hmm…I think there’s something wrong with my point, but I just can’t put my finger on it.

Anyways, the point I was trying to make is about how in this day and age, the internet allows anyone who has a keyboard to write just about anything they’d like for public consumption, which makes it tougher for everyone to discern fact from fiction.

Case in point:  The mystery of the genetic robo super-chicken.

My father is a very educated and wise man.  He came to this country from China nearly penniless, and yet he’s gone on to become a respected university professor, written a text book, and owned several businesses.  He and my mother managed to raise my brother and I, support us through college and send us on our way to make our own lives.

Yet for most of his life, as with most people of his generation, when they read something in a newspaper, book, or magazine, they could usually trust that the information they were reading had been thoroughly vetted by an editor or publisher.

So you can understand how an errant e-mail might distort my dad’s “reality field”.

Let me just say, before I begin, that I did not make the following up.

Not so long ago, a friend of the family forwarded an e-mail to my dad with a disturbing report.  The e-mail, written entirely in Chinese, claimed that Kentucky Fried Chicken (now known as KFC), in an effort to cut costs and boost profit margins, had managed to genetically alter the DNA of a chicken so that these new chickens no longer had feathers, bones, a beak, wings, legs, or heads.

Essentially, KFC had created a living, breathing, full-sized chicken nugget.

Upon further investigation, I was astonished to learn that when these boneless blobs of chicken roll around vigorously in their chicken coops, they sweat honey mustard sauce.

OK, OK, I just made up that last part.  But, it’s not like after reading about this robo-chicken that someone’s going to read my little fib and say, “OK Wayne, now you’re just being silly!”

Seeing as how my father has always loved eating at Kentucky Fried Chicken (as does all of the Chan family, which probably has something to do with his DNA being passed along to all of us), he was immediately taken aback and aghast.

In fact, he was so repulsed by what he had read that it prompted him to write a letter to the president of KFC to seek out the truth.

In his letter to the president of KFC, my Dad wrote:

Dear Sir,

I have enjoyed eating KFC products for many years.  However, I am writing to you today because of an e-mail I recently received that deeply troubles me.  The claim I’ve read is that the reason Kentucky Fried Chicken has changed it’s name to KFC is because KFC no longer serves real chickens.

I would appreciate it if you would respond to these allegations so that I might be able to continue enjoying your products.

Thank you.

Surprisingly enough, KFC did manage to reply to my dad’s thoughtful letter.  In it, they assert that this rumor was an urban legend and that KFC serves the same type of chickens that we all might buy at our local markets.

Fair enough.  The only problem I have with their explanation is that it doesn’t exactly give me a vote of confidence when the last time I visited the supermarket I bought a big tube of boneless ground chicken.

Coming Soon…Casa de Vietnam

By any measure, the United States represents the perfect notion of living in a “melting pot”.  Where I live, the idea of living in a region where cultures co-exist and even coalesce becomes almost an afterthought at times.  I have always been a believer that diversity enriches people.  When it comes to food, I can’t think of an easier way to experience the delights of a different culture.

I live in a city where you can try a different cuisine every night of the year and not run out of new adventures.  Portuguese one night, Persian the next.  How about Italian?  But do you want Northern Italian or Southern, or how about getting even more specific with Sicilian?  Twenty-five years ago, going out for Chinese meant a choice of perhaps three restaurants, one of them was purely for Chop Suey and the other two were basic variations of Cantonese food.  Now, you have Szechwan, Hakka, Hong Kong seafood style, Vietnamese-Chinese, those specializing in hot pots, and many, many more.

But even the best intentions can sometimes go too far.  Or maybe I’m more conservative than I thought I was.

I’m referring to a relatively “new” cuisine called Fusion.  It may also sometimes be called Pan Asian or California cuisine.

My best guess as to the origins of this cuisine is that it started when a restaurateur was brainstorming new ideas for a restaurant, but was hard pressed to come up with a truly innovative idea that had not been done before.  At some point, he must have thought, “Sure, you can have Japanese food one night, Cajun food the next, and Italian the night after that, but what if you could sample seven or eight cuisines, all from the same entrée?”

All of a sudden, entrée ideas come out from nowhere, nouveau chefs sprout flamboyant new creations and the world is full of possibilities.  Excuse me, make that the balsamic vinegar infused-world is full of possibilities.

Here are a few entrees I pulled off from a local fusion restaurant I visited recently:

Ancho-sesame BBQ Free Range Chicken – Anchovy barbeque sauce, wild rice with currants, apples & walnuts topped off with a wild watermelon-jicama-lime salsa.

Shaved Grana Salad – Sardine filets over romaine lettuce with lime pepita dressing, sesame bread sticks, and red tortilla strips & roasted pepitas along with chile-fennel mahi, prawns or chicken.

Air-dried Roasted Duck – roasted air-dried Virginia wild duck served with a ginger-cherry sauce and a mixture of wild and basmati rice

Good Things Growing – Eggplant & roasted bell roulades, garam masala butternut squash ravioli & tempura yams with nut crusted tofu.

The last entrée stated that “A portion of the profit from this dish will go to benefit the Humane Society.”

I wonder why they reserve so much compassion for the animals yet spare no mercy when it comes their meals?

As for what I ordered that night, I looked long and hard for an entrée with ingredients that I could actually identify.  I settled for duck-filled dumplings in some sort of broth.  I like duck.  I like dumplings.  Who doesn’t like broth?

What I ended up getting was a dish covered with deep fried green onions and some other vegetation I couldn’t identify that covered the entire bowl like a marsh from the Florida everglades.  Once I hacked through the brush, I came upon the dumpling soup I ordered.  Although I was somewhat put off by the fact that there were only three dumplings in the broth (which comes out to be about four dollars a dumpling), after my first bite I realized that the scarcity of dumplings was more of a blessing in disguise.

Of course, tasting the dumpling becomes a challenge when it is drenched in the soup itself.

It was like drinking a bowl of boiled honey.  It was tooth achingly sweet.   I didn’t know whether to drink it or pour it over some ice cream.

It took hundreds, if not thousands of years for some cultures to establish the unique flavors and ingredients of their cuisine.  All of this tradition and custom is now vulnerable to the “Hey, let’s try this!” philosophy of Fusion cuisine.

I reject mango rumulade on my steak.  “Infusion” is a medical term, not a culinary one.  I don’t know what ingredient “garam” is, and I don’t want to find out.  Tofu should not be on a pizza.

This is culinary creativity run amuck.  Something must be done before someone starts making Portuguese sausage flavored gelato or fudge brownie clam chowder – with balsamic vinegar, of course.

One Man’s Medicine is the Same Man’s Embarassment

I just came back from a business trip in Beijing and all I got was a lousy T-shirt.

Actually, I didn’t bring back any T-shirts.  Instead, what I came back with was a sense of amazement.

Sky-high skyscrapers.  Locals dressed in the latest couture.  Mercedes Benz cars parked next to trendy microbreweries.

Even factory workers would drink Starbucks during their coffee breaks.

OK, a little creative license there, but you see where I’m going with this.

This wasn’t the Beijing that I remembered.  The last time I visited Beijing, it was 1980.  Beijing was so much different.  But then again, so was I.

In the summer of 1980, I was 16 years old and I joined a group of students from all over the country to attend a Chinese language program at Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University.

My parents thought this trip would be a good opportunity for me to learn about my roots.  They thought this trip would give me a chance to expand my Chinese language skills.  They thought I would come back with a greater appreciation of my heritage and the richness of my culture.

I thought it would be a good chance to meet girls.  After all, I and every other student who attended the program were fully aware that this program was informally known as “The Love Boat.”

Unfortunately, I didn’t really hook up with any girls during the trip.  But as a consolation, I did manage to pick up a severe case of food poisoning.

I shared a dorm room with two of my cousins.  Seeing as how they were both younger than me and with even less experience with the fairer sex, this was not the best environment I could have hoped for.  The room had a concrete floor, and each bed was covered completely with mosquito netting.  I quickly discovered that the mosquitoes were in abundance, and unless you wanted to unwillingly donate a pint of blood each night via a hundred mosquito bites, you stayed under the netting.

However, this being the summer, it was also hot and muggy, with nary an air conditioner in sight.  Coupled with the fact that the mosquito netting effectively blocked out any breeze from the windows, you soon came to realize that you had inadvertently duplicated the conditions of a Thanksgiving turkey basting in the oven.

Under these sweltering conditions, a cool, tall glass of water would have really hit the spot.  Unfortunately, the best we could do was a bracing cup of hot tea, or boiled hot water kept in a large thermos, which contained so much excess grit and minerals that you felt like you were drinking a cup of watery sand.

Towards the end of my journey in China, I came down with a severe case of food poisoning.  High temperature, extreme queasiness, a genuine feeling of hopelessness.  No, that’s not what the food poisoning did to me, that’s how I felt as a number of friends helped me make my way to the University’s medical clinic and looked inside.

I felt like I was on the set of M*A*S*H.

Still, how bad could it be?  I immediately felt more at ease when the doctor told me I just needed some penicillin.  However, I soon realized that what might be good for my health might not be so good for my image.

In front of all my friends, including a few girls I was trying to impress, I nonchalantly asked the doctor where I could pick up the penicillin pills.

The doctor replied, “We don’t have penicillin pills.”

Figuring he meant a penicillin shot, I bravely rolled up my sleeve and said, “OK, no problem.  I have had lots of shots before.”

The doctor, seeming a little perplexed, looked at me and quietly said, “Umm…we don’t give you the shot in your arm.”

After a few moments, I quickly grasped the situation and asked,  “You don’t mean to tell me you’re going to give me a shot in my…”

When it comes right down to it, buying flowers, writing a romantic poem, seeing a romantic movie…there are a lot of things a young man can do to win a young woman’s heart.  Bending over and pulling your pants down in front of your friends for a penicillin shot is not one of them.

Then again, the experience certainly wasn’t a complete loss.  I did manage to learn the Chinese words to ask, “Could somebody please cover me up with a blanket?”

Anniversary – Part II

Anniversary – Part II

As someone who has now been married for 13 years, I am getting used to friends telling me that we have now officially joined the “Old married couple’s club.”

We don’t invite those people to our house anymore.

Every year, my anniversary reminds me of how my marriage came to be.  It started with a proposal and asking her parents for their blessing.  But my proposal was no ordinary proposal.  If I recall, the circumstances around my proposal were that: a) I was proposing to a woman who was born and raised in Taiwan, 2) Her parents were still in Taiwan and did not speak a word of English, 3) They did not know I had proposed or even that I existed until my phone call to them, 4) Up until my call they had been insisting that their daughter come back home and not waste any more time in the U.S.

The objective of my phone call was to introduce myself, ask for their blessing, allow her daughter to “waste” more time and never come back to Taiwan to live, and most importantly, make the entire call in Chinese.

It sounds like the challenge in an international episode of “Fear Factor.”  At least I didn’t have to eat any bugs.

I prepared for hours for that call.  My fiancé Maya had coached me on what to say and how to say it.  Since I was using a number of Chinese phrases I had never used or heard of, I memorized every word phonetically.  The first line was the most important and I practiced over and over again the night before until I felt I had gotten it right.

Maya picked up the phone and dialed the number.  All I remember hearing was Maya saying, “Dad, I’m getting married.  Here’s my fiancé, Wayne.”  She handed me the phone.

The moment of truth.  “You can do this!” I thought to myself.  I tried to pump myself up – “Eye of the tiger!  Eye of the tiger!”  Whenever I get nervous I start remembering old lines from Rocky movies.

“Mr. and Mrs. Hu, my name is Wayne Chan and I would be honored if you would be a part of our wedding.”, I asked proudly.

There was a moment of silence on the other end.  It seemed like an eternity.  Then, all of a sudden, her mother says, “DO…YOU…SPEAK…CHINESE???”

I had two issues with this.  First, did she hear what I just said?  I just asked her if she would be a part of our wedding – in Chinese!  Doesn’t my asking her a question in Chinese imply that I speak it?  Or could it be that since I had to memorize most of the line phonetically, I may have made a mistake and instead of asking her to come to our wedding, it sounded like gibberish, or even worse, that it came out as some bizarre question?  Instead of asking them to our wedding, could I have inadvertently asked them whether they preferred to spread cream cheese or laundry detergent on their pet frog?

The second issue I had didn’t have much to do with the question itself – “Do you speak Chinese?” as much as the way she said it.  The way she asked me the question – slow, deliberate, with long pauses in between each word for emphasis, seemed more suited to the way you might ask your pet dog a question:  “Who…wants…a…doggie bone?!?”

In the end, everything turned out fine.  They liked me, and I thought they were terrific too.  For some reason, I’ve always been able to make a good impression with the parents of women I have dated. I still get Christmas cards from the parents of a woman whose name I have long since forgotten.  I’m not sure it’s supposed to work like that.

Still, I wasn’t completely sure that we were going to hit it off when I picked up Maya’s parents at the airport and met for the first time.  One of the first things her father said to me was, “You look better than I expected.”

That’s a good thing…right?

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