August in Review

I threw together some of the videos I took from this past month to let you see what August looked like for us.  It includes footage from the biggest religious festival in our city, the picnic, traveling around the province, and baking class.

Enjoy :)

Jalapeño Chicken Burger. Sort Of.

Whenever you show up in a city/town in China, there is always an easy way to tell how developed the town and surrounded area is. I call it the "restaurant litmus test."

• Tier 1 Cities will have an abundance of Western restaurants, with so many options like Outback Steakhouse, Tony Roma's Ribs, non-chain Western establishments that are up to international standards, etc. that the though of going to Burger King or McDonald's wouldn't cross your mind.
• Tier 2 Cities have Dunkin Doughnuts, Baskin Robbins, Burger King, Papa John's Pizza and maybe 1 or 2 other chains, any of which you would be happy to partake in.
• Tier 3 Cities have McDonald's and Pizza Hut and KFC, but none of the above restaurants (though Tier 1 and 2 Cities have these and all the options soon to be listed below). McDonald's is your best option here, though Pizza Hut used to be the best option in this kind of city until they decided to take on a distinctly more "local" flavor in their menu (read: corn on pizza, strange seafood fare on pizza, etc.)
  
• Tier 4 Cities have a bunch of KFCs, maybe a Pizza Hut if you're lucky, but that's it.
• Tier 5 Towns (and let's be clear, this is where "town" begins) may have 1 KFC or none. However, they will have an abundance of the Taiwanese KFC knock-off called Dicos. Imagine a grosser version of KFC with lower standards. Well, at least try to imagine, if you can.

So recently, while our friends James and Laura were in town visiting us, we took a road trip across the beautiful countryside to a town about 4 hours away.

Now, the town we live in has a handful of Dicos, so it's flirting with a "Tier 5 Town" rating on the Aaron O'Hare Restaurant Litmus Test scale. The town we took the road trip to, on the other hand, only has 1 Dicos. It's that kind of small. 

Stacy describes it as a "cowboy ghost town with tumbleweed blowing down the streets." That's pretty accurate.

A pretty standard Dicos combo meal, with fries (because they think that's obligatory for fast food), some weird soup, a rice and stir fry dish (because even though it's fast food, we're still in Asia), and some chicken nuggets.

Anyway, in this small, small town, I dragged everyone to Dicos so that I could grab a greasy chicken snack. When we got their, I came face-to-face with Dicos' new offering - The Jalapeño Chicken Burger.

Only, it was the Chinese version of a Jalapeño Chicken Burger, so it went something like this: a stale bun, a fried chicken breast patty, lettuce, tons of mayonnaise (it's a Dicos thing, I'm not sure why they put so much),  and cucumbers covered in some sort of a spicy sauce.

It was then that I realized that no one in the Dicos organization knew what a jalapeño was. Cucumbers covered in hot sauce? Is that the best your R&D department could come up with?

My parting thought: cucumbers covered in hot sauce + a borderline racist ad of a Chinese guy wearing a Mexican poncho, sombrero, and a General Zapata mustache does not equal a jalapeño chicken sandwich.

But for now, I guess it'll have to do.

RC Cola and a Moon Pie

One snack I love more than most, especially in the summer, is an RC Cola and a Moon Pie. I have no idea why the two flavors go together so well, but they absolutely do.

Now, this may come as a surprise, but over here we can't get most of the snacks that I am so fond of back home in the US.

However, earlier this past week, our town just started importing a new drink (yes, we're aware of almost every foreign product that gets imported into town, usually within a week or two of it showing up) from Thailand, a drink called "Est."

I first tried Est when I was in Thailand in January because - and this is real - the marketing on Thai TV in the airport just as we were arriving grabbed my interest (that's pretty good marketing, if you ask me).

I grabbed a bottle and was immediately struck by how similar the flavor was to RC Cola. After asking around, I was told that the company who had bottled for Pepsi Cola in Thailand had not had their contract renewed, so they had created their own cola drink, mimicking Pepsi's colors and flavors.


Well, when I saw Est in our town this week, I grabbed 3 bottles with childlike delight, because we already have a snack in town called an "Orion Pie," which is remarkably similar (though not nearly as good) as a Moon Pie.

Putting the two together = as close to an RC Cola and Moon Pie as I can get. Pure (Asian) Bliss.

Class is in Session.

It's challenging to bake when you live at 12,000ft.

It's also challenging to bake when you grew up in a culture that largely does not eat bread.

But I've found, if you've ever traveled outside of this country or even just outside of this province, you'll love pizza and want to learn how to make it.

So that is why I am currently teaching some local businessmen how to bake.  They said they want to learn how to bake, but after our first meeting together, it sounds like they only want to learn to make pizza - which is just as easy here as it is at sea level.

Getting our game faces on

Teaching him how to roll out the dough

And how to hand toss

Look at that beautiful hand tossed crust.  My oven is only big enough to make personal pan pizzas, so we made a lot of those.

Another pizza going into the oven, this time accompanied by a calzone

One of the guys was so excited he invited his kids and wife to come try the pizza he made.

All done.  Leaving the clean up for someone else....

Thank God I'm A Country Boy

My wife will quickly point out that I'm not really a country boy. Be that as it may, I do love getting out, working with my hands, and learning rural ways - so when the chance to learn how to make canola oil came along, I jumped on it.

(Full disclosure: they use a machine to press the oil, so it's not like I was squeezing seeds all day or anything, but it was still fun)

Picnic, the real post

So Aaron said I would post about our picnic....so here it goes:

The local people where we live love to picnic.  It's one of their favorite past times.  I can (and did) get behind that.  So when a friend from out of town came to visit, we decided to treat her to an authentic experience.

Aaron already included a few of the pictures from our picnic, so here are a few more you didn't get to see.

this is what a picnic looks like y'all.

guy in the front is filming a hip hop video.  guy on the left is doing the classic "girl at a ____" pose.
See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDpX1X4uBO0 for the reference

Pretty much our local friends don't like pictures where everyone is smiling -  so this picture and the picture in an earlier post where Aaron is looking awfully girly, are what happened.  Also, Aaron's pose is a classic Chinese pose.

Hiking with Bak

A few days ago, I had a chance to go hiking with Justin again and he brought one of his students named Bak. We climbed a 17,700 foot peak called Zemala Mountain and the views were incredible.

Me and Bak

A panorama at a little waterfall, about an hour into our hike.

Incredible.

Waterfall as the sun rises.

It took us about 3 hours to summit, but we all felt surprisingly good (for having climbed to over 3 miles above sea level).

Smiles at the summit.

Summit panorama.

Justin on the summit.

Clouds literally close enough to touch.

After we summited, we hiked down to an alpine lake at 17,000 feet and Justin and I went for a little dip. And it was cold.

Panorama with the lake below

Beginning the hike down

After swimming roughly 200 meters across the pond and back (just to see if we could), we finished out descent and made it back to town in time to have chicken and waffles with Stacy. Made by Stacy.

On the far side of the lake and cold.

Ready for the final hike down.

Pretty much the perfect day.

Picnic with Friends (not the real post)

As I mentioned in the title, a) we went on a picnic with friends, and b) this is not the real post - Stacy will most certainly post a much more thorough post. This is something more akin to the funny trailer to get you interested in the movie.

Yeah, I posted this picture before, but in case you didn't notice, it was BEAUTIFUL

Speaking of beautiful: my lady

Dangerously delicious

Being a little fancy

Charcoal Chimney Follow-Up: A Happy Report

So, I tried the charcoal chimney again on a picnic with some friends. And whaddya know - it worked. All it took was patience and constant attention. Preparation for having kids one day, I suppose...

Setting everything up. Oh, did I mention the picnic spot was GORGEOUS?

Work it for papi, charcoal chimney...

How about them apples!

The Climb Up Mt. Fuji

Aaron had never even thought about climbing Mt. Fuji until I surprised him saying that on our way back to China, we were going to stop in Japan to climb it.

Most tourists start the climb up Mt. Fuji more than half way to the top.  There are 10 stations on Mt. Fuji (each station has resting areas and hostels to stay in), and most people start from station 5.

I should have known what I was getting into when I told Aaron we were hiking Fuji....Aaron doesn't consider starting halfway up actually climbing Mt. Fuji. So we started from before station 1, in the town closest to Mt. Fuji.

A non-snow capped Mt. Fuji from the nearest town

The start of the trail for us began at a Buddhist temple

He's ready to go.

We left the town around 10:15, and made it to station 8 where we spent the night (just a few hours) by 7:30pm.  Then we got up at 2:30 to make the last little hike up to the very top to watch the sunrise.

We got to the top around 3:30am and the sun was starting to rise.  We still had about an hour left from this picture.

The line of people hiking up Fuji
all of those lights are the head lamps of the people climbing the volcano

They play the Japanese National Anthem when the sunrises

trying to get a picture with the sunrise in the background

the crater of the volcano behind us

It was a hard hike for me.  We climbed from around 2,000ft to 12,388ft at the summit.  But it was worth it in the end.  And now I completely understand the popular saying about Mt. Fuji: 

"He who climbs Mout Fuji once is a wise man; he who climbs it twice is a fool."

Whoever said that must have started from where we started.