TCKs

Though I don't have kids, living overseas the topic of third culture kids (TCKs) comes up frequently in conversation. TCKs are kids who move from one culture to another culture, and end up having a culture of their own because they don't really identify with either culture. They take things from both cultures and mix them together creating a new thing.

Unlike TCKs since moving to China I would say I identify even more strongly with my birth culture than when I lived there. The friends that we have met since being in this city are from Bulgaria, Australia, New Zealand, the Northwest (practically a different country from the South), Canadians, Chinese, and minorities from China. In my language class, I am the only American, though there are two Canadians. The rest of my classmates are from Korea, Thailand, Mexico, Columbia, Czech Republic, Finland, and Bhutan.

Regine, me, and Megan
(Hong Kong & Australia, The South & Mexico, the Northwest)

When hanging out with friends I tend reinforce my Southern culture by bringing sausage, biscuits, and sweet tea to gatherings (the Aussies and the Kiwis call my biscuits "scones" and my cookies "biscuits". It gets confusing quick). I make wish lists of pretty aprons for hosting and listen to "Song of the South" by Alabama walking to class, which then makes me want to make sweet potato pie immediately. In class, though, I try to break every American stereotype, by reinforcing that Aaron doesn't like to watch NBA and I don't like to go shopping all the time with credit cards.

Living here I also feel the need to bring out my Mexican heritage and so will spend $5 on avocados to make half a cup of guacamole, and bring masa harina and my molcajete to China to make corn tortillas and salsas. I listen to spanish music when I run and speak Spanish in my mind constantly.

Having an Irish last name, I also have a draw to learn more about that, especially since my husband loves that he's Irish. So I make shepherd's pie and learn how to make guinness beef stew and champ.

When I come back to the states I am going to be the most Southern Proper Latina reciting limericks.

my biggest pet peeve

traffic. this is the intersection i walk through every day on my way to class. this was filmed during a less busy part of day, so it's not quite as bad as rush hour. watch the guy carrying some yellow thing. at one point you see him dodging traffic, and in the same shot you can see the green for pedestrians to cross. what you can't see is that those cars also have a green light. the trick to crossing this street, go with the pack. luckily every morning when i go, there is a huge pack to use as protection. so don't worry, mom. and aamee.

where we shop part 2 - chinese Sam's club

Fruits and vegetables are bought in the markets nearby the house, but for imported goods and dairy we have to go elsewhere.

There are a few options in our city for where to buy things like olive oil, pasta, cheese, bacon, cereals, hot chocolate, canned goods, tortilla chips, whipping cream, cream cheese....I could keep going on. Luckily we live close to one of the best options in the city.

It's called Metro, and it is the Chinese version (although I think it's actually German) of a Sam's club. You have to have a membership card to get in, and they sell everything in bulk.

imported pasta

Speaking of, my membership card is from the last Chinese city I lived in 4 years ago and on my card where it states my job description, it simply says that I am an "out of country native" or a "foreign nationality person." That sounds like the best job ever. I wish I could paid just for being a foreigner.


When isolated the last word means scholar, but could also mean warrior or a knight. So maybe my card is really trying to say that my job is to be a foreign knight, foreign scholar, or foreign warrior. I'll take any of those. The picture on the front of my card would indicate something other than a warrior though, since I am cheesin'. I was probably just really happy that I could even get a card at all that day, since I could hardly speak Chinese.

temptations lurking in the dairy section

At the register they scan your card, then scan your receipt to link your purchases with your card. The receipt always has your name printed on it. When they scan my card, even though on my card is my correct name, my receipt always says my name is Hamilton, Jr. and I work for the PetraEnergy Corporation. They never question it. I sometimes wonder if I should start introducing myself as "your friendly neighbor, Hamilton Jr., the foreign petroleum warrior. There were some pretty creative people working the day I filled out my Metro card application.

Metro is in between our house and our school, so pretty much everyday I walk by it, making it a constant temptation to go in and buy some imported product that I never or rarely bought in America, but sounds so good now - like millions of gummi bears or 15 pounds of Mozzarella cheese (I don't even really like cheese that much).

The budget definitely takes a hit when you make a unplanned purchase of a blender and $14 strawberry sorbet because all you want is a smoothie. This is the absolute worst place to go if you are hungry. If you're hungry, go to the meat section of the market. That'll cure your hunger, then go to Metro.

where we shop part 1 - market street

This is market street.

This street is a couple of blocks from the house which makes it convenient for when I need to pick up some last minute things for dinner.

The street is about 1/4 mile long and has about 30 vendors in stalls, all selling vegetables in season (vegetables always in season: chinese cabbage, spinach, another chinese cabbage, another green leafy vegetable, some more leafy vegetables). When I first went to Market st. it was pretty intimidating to try to figure out which stalls were the best quality and price, because they all look equally good to me. So, my decision on where to shop came down to whose Chinese I could understand the easiest, and who seemed the friendliest.

There is a lady that I go to for fruit most of the time, she seems friendly enough, but I cannot understand a word she says. So most times, I pick out the fruit that I want and watch the scale to see how much it is going to cost, since I won't be able to figure out whether she says it costs 4 rmb or 10 rmb. Then I smile, hand over what I think is right, nod, take the change, say "Xiexie" ("thank you"), and quickly walk away, fooling her into thinking I knew what was up. But I normally have no idea.

This is the stand that I have settled on for my vegetable stand. Their vegetables stand out in appearance, and the girl who works the stand is really sweet. She always greets me with a smile, and when other Chinese people walk up to her and ask her about the foreigner buying vegetables, she always tells them "She can understand Chinese." I'm not sure if she always speaks clearly, without the local slang or if she just does that for me, but I walk to the end of market street every time I go, to see her.

Meat for sale

Different stands sell different things. There are vegetable stands and fruit stands. You have meat stands, and you have stands that sell staples like spices, flour, nuts, and eggs. So most times I go to the market I stop at several stands along the way. I don't have a regular egg person or flour person yet, but I'm on the lookout for one. Normally I just go to the first one I come across.


Oh, one of the stands I forgot to mention is what I'll call the sea/river food/delicacies that sell items such as:

HUGE frogs

river turtles

you can make a delicious platter of eel, turtle, frog, and fish

Going to Market street is especially fun on Saturdays because that is the day when farmers from out of town come in on their bikes and line the street selling their fruits and vegetables, and you can often get a better price on fruit from the farmers.

Buying produce in China is a lot like going to a farmer's market in America, but way more fun because each time you go it is an adventure - complaining about the price of food so the locals know you're in the know about food prices, speaking the local dialect, dodging fish jumping out of buckets on suicide missions, chasing chickens around the street (because, hey, they're running around free and who doesn't like chasing chickens?), covering your nose when you walk past certain meat places, and seeing if you can actually understand what people are saying to you, after the sweet girl at the vegetable stand tells them that you can understand them.

Looks like I have a problem too

After Aaron's post about his stash, an unidentified concerned citizen wanted to know what my own stash looks like. So here it is:

I'm not going to lie. That was fun for me.

I had to gather everything into one place and take a picture, since my things aren't in one cabinet. We have here - maseca (for making corn tortillas and tostadas), dry black beans, coffee beans, chocolate chips, cocoa powder, vanilla extract, dried blueberries (for making bo-berry biscuits), sage (for making homemade sausage), craisins (because I love them), coffee beans (because i'm addicted..which is clearly true because I didn't even realize i had already posted coffee beans above), angel hair pasta (aaron's favorite), and barbecue sauce. Things not pictured: cereal, favorite salad dressings, and favorite peanut butter (we can get peanut butter here, I just really like a certain kind).

I have a problem...

(Stacy gave me a "snack cabinet" in the kitchen)

I am a hoarder.


No, not like the people with trash in their house.

Not like the people waiting for the collapse of America with their cans of green beans.


Living somewhere where things I love are in short supply (read: impossible to get), my wife has brought it to my attention that I *may* have a bit of a problem with hoarding the things that I have:

(Hidden in a drawer under the television)

Bring on the impending Choco-calypse, I'm ready!

tea time

Saturday a taxi driver who we've become friends with, invited us to a meal at a Japanese restaurant his friend has just opened. Aaron and I waited for him to pick us up at the tea shop down the road from us (the one mentioned in the previous post). Since the last time I took pictures a guy tried to wave me off, I was a little bit hesitant about trying to catch the busy scene at the tea house. So I took a picture of Aaron and tried to get the people in the background. Aaron was offered tea and a game of mah jong while we waited for our taxi driver.

where we live.

My Dad recently brought up the fact that he has no idea what the city is like where we live.  We were talking about sunshine or the lack thereof, birds, and pollen - I don't remember the details exactly, but it seems to have been a Spring themed conversation, and I mentioned never having seen a bird here.  I have heard a couple.  But I haven't ever seen any....other than caged up or dead and de-feathered birds for eating at the market.  And he said, "I have no idea what it's like where you live."


So, I left the house the other morning with camera in hand to take pictures to share with you.


These are picture of our complex.  The picture on the left shows our side of the complex.  The door to our stairwell is behind that car.

The middle picture shows the front gate of the complex.  Most apartment complexes here have gates at their entrance that a gate guard mans at all times.  Some places are large enough that they will have several shifts of workers for the gate.  Our place has around 5 buildings and is not very large at all.  So we only have two gate guards, who are always there, often at the same time.  We pay our gas and water bills to the gate guards.  The gate guards also give us our mail when it arrives.  And they shut the gates every night at midnight and reopen them in the mornings at 7.


The right picture is of the path we take to get to the gate from our building.  It's not as long as the picture makes it look.

<-----Another shot of our complex, I think there are only 7 floors in each building.  No elevator.

This is our street when you go left from our gate-------->

sitting and chatting outside of
our front gate

Our street has a lot of trees on it, but they are all dusty. The leaves are constantly a gray color.  There is so much potential for a Myers Park type of atmosphere (except with small, dinky trees, instead of huge, beautiful oaks).  Actually, it's hard to tell whether or not the trees are dusty or if because the sky is always gray, everything looks gray.

After about 9:00 every night, the street gets really quiet, as there are no bars or restaurants on our part of the street.  Aaron and I enjoy the peace of the night.  Then about 8:30 every morning, the street starts to come alive as people open up their shops and start to gather around the sides of the streets.


Tea shops open up and put tables out and elderly people gather all day long to play chinese chess, mah jong  (a Chinese dominos like game), and card games.  They start out easy in the mornings with just tea and talking to friends, but by the end of the afternoon they are slamming cards down and yelling at each other.  And crowds gather around tables to see how games of chess are going to end.

Morning tea. I'm not sure whether
that guy was waving at me, or was
trying to tell me not to take his picture

Our apartment is the one above the black sign

The morning group we can see from
our window.

This is the street directly across
from our apartment.  See how there
are tables lining the side of the street.

To the left of our complex, further
down the street is a larger open
area with a lot of tables that fill
with people playing during the day

selling cabbage

Another one of the above place

Multiple times throughout the day vendors on bikes, like the lady above, will ride up and down our street calling out what they are selling.  It's like having an ice cream truck driving through your neighborhood 50 times a day.  Only, there is no ice cream.  There is bamboo, or cabbage, or shoe repairing, or something that I still haven't figured out but involves clanking two pieces of metal together to announce it's presence.

Marking the territory of this newly impassioned soul

Since last summer, Aaron and I have been practically obsessed with the band Mumford and Sons. We've worked our way through their cd playing one song on repeat, until we fall in love with another one, then playing that one.

My current obsession is the song, Roll Away Your Stone. It makes me wish I was running in an open field with my arms spread wide. And if could do cartwheels, I would do those too (I think I'm the only girl who never learned how to do them as child). I love the words. They make me reflect on the most significant rolling away of a stone in history. I often wish I could post on our blog the music that Aaron and I love right now to share with others, and this morning I thought, hey I can post a video of this song from Youtube. So here it is.

Enjoy!

Support local business (kind of a catch phrase around our neighborhood in America)

In America, Aaron and I were pretty big restaurant snobs, desiring only to eat at local restaurants instead of chains - especially if we were going to a city we had never been before. We love Chick-Fil-A and Bojangles (apparently only fast food chains win our hearts over), but restaurants that are unique to an area will get my vote every time.

Luckily, here in China, we're surrounded by local restaurants here. Chain restaurants for us now have been reserved for fancy, once in a while meals -  like when you're having a bad day and are in need of a treat. We look forward to going to Thailand and going to Outback, Burger King, Swensen's, Tony Roma's, etc., for long awaited treats.

It's nice having many local restaurants, I guess.  But my snobbish ways are quickly dying, as Aaron and I have tried local restaurant after local restaurant to be disappointed, then end up one desperate night at Pizza Hut (the first two months I wasn't able to cook anything at home, because our kitchen wasn't set up.  So there were quite a few days that qualified as "a bad day in need of a treat" after eating the same food for weeks at at time). We haven't found any gems close to our home yet (gems - as in - "I'm tired and don't feel like cooking.  Let's just run right out to _____" type of gems).  BUT we have found a few restaurants that we are willing to walk a mile to get to, and one in particular that we hypothetically would  eat three meals in a row there.....hypothetically, of course:)

This is our friend, Mr. Joe (His last name sounds like Joe in English, so we'll call him Mr. Joe for the ease of remembering).  We stumbled upon his Japanese (he's not Japanese) restaurant one day, ordered his "beef rice" (which we refer to as teriyaki beef), only to fall in love and continuously come back 3 meals in a row (that's 6 miles of walking for that beef rice).  This is by far Aaron's favorite restaurant. 

delighting in the beef teriyaki

Señor Joe makes potato salad that tastes like american potato salad, fried mashed potato cakes (croquettes), asparagus wrapped in bacon, a stir fry beef and onion dish, chicken nuggets, and french fries. This guy is amazing! He also makes sushi, but we don't sully our palettes with that :)

the new creation
yeah, he cut the carrots to look like flowers

Last week, we convinced him to make us a chicken teriyaki - with broccoli and carrots, instead of his usual mushrooms and onions that he uses in the beef. At first he was hesitant, but he tried it for us. Aaron was a big fan. This item is not on his menu, but he told us he will make it for us anytime we like.

Random blog, I know. But I wanted to offer a little glimpse into our lives of the things we're really starting to enjoy about our city.