Lingbo Li
The perils of being Chinese in China
My China experience was often frustrating. Though I imagined myself to be extremely flexible and open-minded, living for 3 months in a foreign country, despite speaking the language, proved to be a challenge.
I am, for all intents and purposes, an American girl. If China taught me nothing else, it’s that my “Chineseness” doesn’t extend all that far below my skin tone, even if my Mandarin isn’t too shabby for a girl with her feet planted firmly on US soil since the tender age of two. When I was out with white friends, I was surprised at how the level of service was consistently higher. They were never seemed to bear the brunt of bored, dismissive glances or suffer through outright hostility. Chinese people, according to them, were so sweet and nice! Are you kidding me? I’d always reply, deeply jealous that I couldn’t slip a well-oiled path through my summer, coddled and swaddled in my foreignness.
“I think it helps that I don’t understand Chinese,” one friend admitted to me. “If I knew what they were saying, I’d just get angry.”
And I definitely had hair-pulling, teeth-gnashing moments of anger. There was the shoe repairman who ripped me off, did a shoddy job, then ignored me as I stood literally over his shoulder as if I were a statue. It was hard to explain at first why I found this so infuriating, but I eventually realized it wasn’t because of his crooked pricing scheme. I’m in the fortunate position where I can afford to get a little bit ripped off – what I wanted was better treatment in return. I suddenly hated hovering in cultural limbo and realizing at the same time how arrogant and self-serving my dissatisfaction was.
If only, I mused, I looked as white as I felt.
Let’s compare two situations: interactions with Chinese service people by myself, and when I was with foreign friends. If I was by myself, service could range anywhere from abominable to decent. It was a dice throw on however they felt that day – one time, I tried to buy a skirt and the shop girl gave me nothing but attitude, marked up the price for no apparent reason, and seemed angry my arrival forced her to get up from her chair. (It was so ridiculous that I didn’t buy the skirt.) An editor at City Weekend one time had me call up a shop in English, even though I could speak Chinese, just since by virtue of sounding like a foreign customer they’d make the effort to actually answer her inquiry.
Of course this isn’t ALL service in China. I’ve also had my share of truly friendly, professional, and memorable service experiences, particularly with good taxi drivers. But the best way to ensure prompt, respectful service is just to be obviously, blatantly foreign. People are far more helpful and forgiving, in part because the “laowai” represent the moneyed expat class. It’s a double edged sword, and one I wished I were on the opposite side of for convenience’s sake. Why see the “real China” when it’s one that’s even more unpleasant and humiliating than for Chinese locals who know the ground rules? Why would I want to sign up for a summer of waiters copping attitude when I genuinely wanted to like the culture and people?
People most of the time sensed I wasn’t really Chinese. 90% of the time, they’d guess I was Korean. One time I even just told a DVD salesman I was, only to be called out on it by another customer who asked for a Korean TV series recommendation. (Sorry, I told her, I’m a Korean girl who only watches English films.)
There’s a part of me that’s bitter about the summer I could have had. I imagine some of the more traumatic experiences might have been erased – like that time a shop girl pointed to a Chinese sign and bitchily asked me to read it, just to humiliate me with proof of my semi-illiteracy. It’d be pretty unlikely she’d try to pull that on a blonde customer with accented Mandarin. I may have seen a more authentic China, but sometimes, I found it exhausting and painful in a remorselessly personal kind of way. It’s probably why I fell in love with Starbucks while I was there, taking comfort in American drinks and Western-style service. It was a relief not to have to worry about whether they’d take credit cards, make change for me, or get my order correct. Sometimes, you just want coffee. And pizza. And burgers…
Lingbo eats bull balls: THE VIDEO.
So in celebration of my homecoming to the magical, wonderful country that is the United States of America (sing it, sister!), I post this video. I edited it while sitting next to a smelly, discontented woman on a 12 hour flight.
This flight also involved me being convinced I had boarded the wrong plane, since I got on and woke up in Shanghai rather than Los Angeles. Oh no, I cried, then went in panic to the flight attendant (who was tall, pale, slender, and pretty, like all Chinese flight attendants are). I got on the wrong plane! I’m in the wrong city!!!
Turns out I just had to transfer twice in my quest to make it back to the east coast of America.
Anyway, I’m delighted to be home… i’m delighted to find clean bathrooms, and English-speaking staff, and politeness to strangers, and TWITTER, and FACEBOOK, and oh my god… You have no idea how great it is to be home. How great it is to know the names of things, and be able to communicate with people, and yes, feel a little skinnier in comparison.
This is my first video that I have ever edited beginning to end, so be kind… the musical selection is the Arctic Monkeys’ “Mardy Baum,” in case you are interested.
So here’s my video of when I ate balls with my BFF Marianna at KO Prime in Boston. This was back in May/June or so, but didn’t get around to editing it until now. Enjoy! Expect more stuff like this to come.
Many thanks
Shanghai’s Swedish Chef at T8
For City Weekend, I had a great meal at Xintiandi restaurant T8, billed as one of the world’s top 50 by Conde Nast in 2003, which is now headed by Swedish Chef Roger Johnsson. We ended up chatting after the meal for quite awhile and talked about the food industry, crazy eats, Anthony Bourdain, and preparations of crayfish, among other things. He’s very likable without being over the top, and is turning out a menu of T8’s signature East-meets-West cooking with a strong Scandinavian slant. It’s the kind of food that rewards a bit of thinking and slow chewing to pick up on some of the witty touches, like a sprig of dill that hints at his culinary birthright.
When my coolly elegant waitress brought over this dish and pronounced it “lobster ravioli,” I wasn’t sure what to expect. It took the most bare concepts of ravioli – filling in between two flat pieces of pasta – and used that as a springboard into some other foodstuff altogether. The toasted nut salad on top served as a spicy entree into a refreshing offering below, which married the lobster filling with a crisp bed of green mango and jicama slaw. In between bites, I sampled the sweet rice wine froth piped on the edges. It’s a lot of flavors, but if you eat it patiently, you appreciate the highwire balance between each of the components: just enough of that, just the right sweetness of this, all anchored with a cool crunch at the bottom.
Cured salmon roulade stuffed with goat cheese, sweet corn soup on the side. Those are spicy cornflakes dotting the surface of the soup!
Seafood lasagna, prawn-lobster, salmon-abalone, ginger okra, saffron sauce
Bacon wrapped scallops and crispy prawn, green curry braised leeks, purple potato pancake, orange beurre blanc. I’ve had quite a few bacon wrapped scallops in my day, and while this is a dish that is always delicious on principle (as literally anything involving fresh bacon is), I loved the golden sear on the scallop – too bad I was pretty full by this point already.
And a lighter note to end on: Peach Martini – white peach sorbet, raspberry cream, candied popcorn.
A big bite of Sin
Pick up a copy of the next City Weekend for my “I’ll regret this in a few months, but this is still pretty hilarious” appearance in the cover story. The genetically-blessed male specimen on the left is the boyfriend of the editor’s friend, who appears as one of my wingwomen (if wingwomen to short Asian girls are always so Amazonian) in the photos.
I had no part in writing the story and merely lent a pair of high heels and a permanently quizzical facial expression to ham up various portions of the sad, sorry tale of the mating dance. The kind that begins with 43 year old married bankers to whom gravity has not been kind and ends in the male being eaten alive. Oh wait, that’s in the animal kingdom. Or is it? Stay away from that serpent, Adam.
A continent of food porn
First, let’s begin this food porn journey with a blast from the past – my Bostonian past. Remember that time I ate bull testicles? (There will be a video of me saying, “Mmm! Tastes like chicken!” when I head back to school and into the arms of that devious den mother, The Harvard Crimson) I also got a cool shot of our complimentary little peanut butter fudge dessert. Thought it was worth throwing up on here when I was browsing through my 304034 shots of fried rice and cartilage on skewers.
How I ended up at a Teppanyaki place in Puxi, Shanghai one Saturday to take this phot of the grill being set on fire by a long-suffering female chef with yellowing teeth and red lipstick is another story. Often, I stop and ask myself, self, how is it that I am sitting here, outeating a group of rowdy Aussie men I do not know? Oh well, keep picking at that fried banana. Life is strange.
Eggplant is probably one of the most underappreciated vegetables. It can soak up flavors so nicely, especially in a dish like this one, or seasoned on skewers. Better than meat, I say. Found near Century Park in Pudong, Shanghai.
I adore congee. I love it like men love Megan Fox’s bathwater. This was a particularly good pot found in Shanghai’s Dingxi Lu, a wonderful food street. We had prawns and eel in it, not such a fan of the eel which seems grainy, flat, and underwhelming compared to its fatty, barbecued Japanese preparation.
Fried mantou (steamed bun) with a sweet sauce made with condensed milk. Donuts? What are those?
On 1025 Nanjing Xi Lu, find a shikumen (traditional Shanghainese townhouse) lane where there are random cafes and stores hidden amidst the residential housing. One was behind the most unassuming of wooden doors, with nothing more than a plain, lettered sign on the door. A slender girl asked me if I was hungry, so I wandered into the tiniest, dirtiest, and most cramped of kitchens.
A young man was hurriedly stir frying a handful of cabbage with giant cartons of brown eggs at his feet, fish halves, vegetables, oil, and other materials littering the counter around him, all the cutting services still smeared whatever it was before. It made me worry about food safety, so I decided to have dinner there. The waitress recommended this dish.
It was something special. Since it’s Hunanese food, it’s very spicy, but a deeply aromatic, peppery kind of spice, reminding me a bit of Sichuan peppercorn in initial flavoring but without any of the numbing effect. The heat is more insistent and persistent, but not painful. For a humble dish made of cabbage and fatty bits of pork, pretty damn good.
The remains of an epic Japanese meal. My review will be out in the next City Weekend.
Children are most adorable when they’re small, dirty, and have their Crocs on wrong.
Crocs are really, really popular in China. I especially love it when I see couples unironically wearing matching, schoolbus-yellow Crocs with little cartoon character pins in the holes. Or when people wear them as gym shoes – no joke.
Remember my Henanese restaurant friends? I caught them cutting up lamb bones one night, which have a deeply unappetizing scent when raw. These will make the bone soup I love so much. This freaked me out a lot for some reason. Especially the flying bits of debris.
Lana Lingbo Li
I'm a world traveler / enthusiastic eater who's now blogging and producing videos over at HelloLana.com. Visit me there!
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