Back to Beijing

I fly out today. My flight isn’t until 7 pm, so I left my bags with the hotel after checking out at 12 and have some more time to see the city.

I’m not gonna lie, my plan was to wake up early, leave my bags, and check off some of the attractions I researched before my flight. In fact, I made a two-page spread of museums, botanical gardens, restaurants and other hot spots to check out in Hong Kong. In the past four days, I’ve hardly done any of them, and I’m still sitting in a coffee shop typing this up instead.

It’s not that I don’t yield to Lonely Planet’s brilliance. When they suggested I take a tram up to the Peak and get lunch, I fully intended to do that. They made suggestions for a one, two, and three day trip. “Lucky me,” I thought, “I can do it all and more!”
Suffice to say, that hasn’t happened.

I did want to see this city and explore, but honestly, after three weeks I’m tourist-ed out.

Kelly and I did manage to take the subway and go to an art store, walking around a different area called Wan Chai. (I’m amazed at how every subway I go to is a piece of cake compared to NYC, even without English.) The art store was buried on the 11th floor in what looked like an office building, with working men moving large carpets and insulation in and out of the elevator. Using my frame of reference, I was pretty sure that this was not actually a store, seeing as there were no visible signs from the outside, and stores usually like to advertise. As we’ve learned from my time on this side of the world, my frame of reference means squat, and the elevators opened up right into the unmarked store.

Other than eating good food, going to nice NY-style bars, shopping on hilly city streets, and catching up on the News in our hotel room (always an out-of-Beijing-treat), I didn’t do much tourism while I was here.

That being said, I have no regrets.

Concern for Getting Back to Beijing: readjusting to non-British Roads

Both Hong Kong and Malaysia were owned by Britain, so they drive on the left side of the road. At first I was just looking both ways on every turn, unsure of where the cars would be coming from. Now, three weeks later, the traffic flow feels normal to me. I can just see myself getting back to Bejing and being immediately flattened by a giant cart piled high with Styrofoam because I’m looking the wrong way.

Mental note: look both ways.

Thanks, Asia!

Because Asia is prone to squat toilets, I’ve been calling anything with a seat a western toilet. Now that I really have one again, I am amazed at the difference, especially in the way that is flushes. It really does seem like an incredible waste of water, emptying the whole bowl and refilling it with new water every time. That probably doesn’t sound strange to you. You’re probably thinking, why is Bekki explaining to me how a toilet works from the other side of the world?

What’s strange to me is that in China, there are two buttons on the top instead of a handle. Pressing two on the top is a stronger flush than just one. I hadn’t realized how used to this I had become.

They also use much less paper here. If it is provided in public bathrooms, which is rare, there is one dispenser on the outside. They also often share sinks in a common space between the male and female bathrooms. In Malaysia there’s almost never toilet paper, and in lieu of a flush you run the hose down the squat toilet. Sometimes they gven charge you 20 cents RM just to use the bathrooms.

What’s interesting in both Beijing, KL and Penang is that there are a lot more public bathrooms than NYC. They don’t need to find the Starbucks on every corner like New Yorkers.

Slightly related is the awesome design of Malaysia’s electrical sockets. Each one has a switch, like a light switch, which turn the power on and off. We all know by now that plugging in our electrical appliances uses power even when the device is turned off, but it’s often difficult or just annoying to unplug everything from the wall when you leave the room. In Malaysia you can save energy just by flipping a switch. Genius!

Numbers Numbers Everywhere

Another thing that is really tricky about traveling to different countries is the exchange rate. Anyone who’s been to a group dinner with me knows my lack of mental math, and inability to figure out the tip/tax/ what I owe. Since I’ve been in Asia, I’ve been doing more mental math than when I had to pass the LAST.

Every day I have to practice subtracting 12 just to figure out what time it is in the afternoon, because they use what I consider military time. When I see price tags (or, more frequently, when I hear the price) I have to translate that into English and then convert it to US dollars. Chinese numbers do make more sense than ours, but it’s not a necessarily easy conversion. For example, 138 RMB would be said like this, “ee bai san tsir bah yuan” which means “1 hundred 3 ten 8 dollars.”

I’ve gotten used to the relative prices for things in RMB, and can decide quickly if I’m being given a good or outrageous price, which helps me to barter. In Malaysia, everything I saw was in Ringit or RM (Ringit Malaysian.) It doesn’t help that RM and RMB is so close that I always said the wrong one, confusing everyone, including myself.

My daily allowance in KL was 270 RM, including the hostel which was 90 RM. Street food was 5-10 RM per dish. 45 RM is about 100 RMB, so a little less than half. 100 RMB is about $15 USD. When I saw Ringit, I converted it to RMB and then to USD.
(Keep in mind, my phone in China is so budget that it doesn’t even have a calculator even if I had the time to take it out throughout the day.)I’m not saying this is easy, especially for me, but I could roughly get an idea if I was getting ripped off.

Then, I get to Hong Kong. The trickiest part is that they use the dollar sign like in the US. Regardless of what I know is going on, when I see a salad menu like this:

$112 Green Salad, $115 Cesar Salad, $128 Avocado Salad

my heart starts to race.

It’s also tricky mentally because my spending allowance in this city is $1,300 Hong Kong Dollars. For the past two weeks, I’ve been having milo and chicken curry for 10 RM, and now my morning coffee and bagel $65.

Malaysia also has a much cheaper cost of living, but seeing $65 on my morning receipt is still jarring for me.

Two Levels of HK

Hong Kong is certainly more like New York than any of the other cities I’ve been in since leaving, but one difference that I find the most interesting is the midlevel escalators. It’s almost as if there is another city, 2 floors above ground. In Central, there are many giant, high-class shopping centers, which are connected to each other and to other buildings in the city through elevated open-air hallways. These have escalators that go down to the street at certain major intersections.

This was a bit tricky when I first got to the city. The hotel was clearly walking distance from the “Airport Express Train” Central Stop, but how exactly to walk there was unclear. Kelly and I were on the street, which seemed the right thing to do, trying to read/find street signs to point us in the right direction. When we couldn’t even find a cross walk, and it seemed that there was no safe way to power through an intersection, even NY-style, car-by-car, I asked for directions. I was told to go back into the train station and use the escalators to get to the street I was looking for.

The hallways are much like the streets below in that they are lined by 7-11’s and stores selling shoes out of a basket. In one hallway, there is even a fake park, with benches and plants open to the public. I’ve really enjoyed the view from this city above the city.

The surprising part about the city below for me is the hilly terrain. I didn’t know that walking around HK would be like San Fran. I don’t know what’s more amazing, seeing the bustle of a big crowd walking briskly up a steep cement hill, or seeing women walk down these slopes in heels, after the rain, no less. I’m in sneakers, and it’s all I can do not to hold on to the hand rail.

I’m glad I got my practice in with the Great Wall.

Hong Kong

We arrived in Hong Kong around 7 at night on the 15th. The first thing that struck me when I got off the plane was the cold. I cringed as I realized that I hadn’t actually looked up the weather.

My friend Roxanne had come to HK in December and said the weather was in the 70’s. Then my brain did something that I didn’t realize until now, it decided that this meant it was only getting warmer from then. I thought, “ok, 70’s or higher” and packed accordingly.

As I looked around at the scarves, hats, boots, and winter coats of the people around me, I quickly realized my error.

How could this have happened? Why would I not think to look up the weather for a place I knew I was visiting?

The reason that I’m venturing, is that I had a lot to do. There’s a lot more research than I’d imagined for traveling. Usually when people travel, I’d imagine that they have loads of time in between their trips to research and explore. I had 4 weeks while teaching, with two countries to look up. Between flights, hotels, attractions, and exchange rates, I guess I was all too willing to let the piece of evidence that I had for the weather here be sufficient.

Luckily, it’s not nearly as cold as Beijing. I’ve had to resort to jeans and my North Face shell most days, but I’m definitely not suffering.

Also, I noticed that people in HK are overdressed for the cold, in my opinion. It must just be because I come from such cold weather, but the temperature here is in no need of gloves and hats. I think they just enjoy the change to add fashionable accessories. I will definitely give it to Hong Kong for being a cosmopolitan city, much more so than Beijing and KL. We are staying at the icehouse, right in Central Hong Kong on Hong Kong Island. It feels nice to be back in a real city, with people in business suits and rushing crowds of people who walk with determination. I was actually looking forward to getting pushed by a crowd, and have gotten my wish.

Is that You, America?

Granted, I’ve not only been out of America for months, but have been in China, a country not known for its accessibility, especially of foreign news or information. I’m grateful to my friends who send me snippets and news articles, keeping me somewhat posted on the outside world.

One way that I have seen parts of America while in Malaysia have been through TV and movies, and I must say, it’s embarrassing.

One waiter asked, “Where are you from?” I answered, “America.” (which still feels like a strange way to answer that question.) He replied, “You’re from America?? You watch Family Guy? I LOVE Stewie!”

Granted, I do watch Family Guy, or at least I did. And yes, Stewie is hilarious. But I found it strange to think that this man, who has never been to my country, is bonding with me over a show that is based on me laughing at…myself and my culture.

In KL I went to a movie in a real movie theater, a true over-seas treat thanks to the exchange rate: 14 Ringit/30 RMB/$5 USD. I saw the only English movie other than Yogi Bear, “No Strings Attached” with Ashton Kutcher and my girlfriend, Natalie Portman.

In a not-as-dimly-lit-as-I’d-have-liked theater where Kelly and I were the only Americans, it was another time of laughing when no one else was, and cringing from the portrayal of American girls. At dinner with Ashton’s father, Natalie states explicitly that they are “fuck buddies” who “just have sex sometimes.” One of Natalie’s friends at a frat party states, “It’s a frat party. All you have to do is be drunk and sexy,” as the camera pans out to her shorts with “WHORE” on the ass. Classy.

That being said, I laughed. I enjoyed it. I reveled, even, in the English on the screen and the Non-China setting. But when the movie finished, I ducked my head and tried not to be seen. I’ll admit that I toyed with the idea of talking in a British accent on my way out.

Actually, the first incident occurred in my Aunty Ann’s family living room where Kelly and I sat watching a movie with my cousins and aunts alike. It was called “Dance Flick”, a Wayans Bros. spoof of all the dance movies, especially focusing on Save the Last Dance. If you’ve seen it, you have too much time on your hands.

No really, if you’ve seen it, then you know just how embarrassed I was to watch it in front of this family on the other side of the world. If you haven’t seen it, let me try to explain the predicament I was in:

I was sitting with my Chinese family in a Muslim country, where most people have never met a black person and have never been to America. I couldn’t help but feel somewhat personally responsible for the American setting of the movie, and for the racism-made-funny-because-its-kind-of-true on the screen.

(I know that my family in Malaysia doesn’t have quite the view of diversity or understanding of black culture that I gained from my 7 years in New York. My cousin William, while driving me home at 2 am, asked, “Do black people and white people get along? Is everything equal in America?” I wasn’t sure how to respond. I thought of teaching and how I always make sure to tell the little ones that it’s not over just because we have black history month and are reading a book about Martin Luther King. But I also didn’t want to promote the view of America as racist, white-run segregation, or as I know his father says of it, “Goddamn blacks everywhere.”)

So there I was, watching a spoof where I couldn’t not laugh, but I also couldn’t help explaining (almost apologetically) why I was laughing. They’d never seen the original movies either, so it was difficult to explain how this “spoof” was funny, although extremely exaggerated. For example, the final romantic final kiss between the white girl and black boy who were to represent the Save the Last Dance couple, was interrupted by white guys walking by. The girl immediately took out her keys and pretended he was a valet. She stammered stereotypical proclamations like, “My car’s the one blasting COLD PLAY” and “Don’t steal anything.” In another scene one of the Wayans brothers came in, kissed his baby, before declaring “I’m out.” The mother said as he left, “He’s such a good daddy.”

I’ve never been so proud to be an American.

Return to Batu Caves and other Touristy Adventures

On Saturday we decided to take my Aunty Sui Laun up on her offer to take us around, and requested a visit to Batu Caves. These limestone caves are at the top of a 300 stair-climb, and are set behind a 43 meter high golden statue of a Hindu deity.

In the caves at the top are a number of Indian statues and altars. At the very back there is a giant wall of rocks and vegetation where wild monkeys swing and play. When I came in 2001, the monkeys were mostly found on this wall. Now, they were everywhere.

They stalked the grounds like hungry rodents, armed with opposable thumbs. They begged from the visitors, their palms up, reaching for their bags. The bolder ones grabbed them from unsuspecting tourists, who were busily taking photographs. This was the opposite of the snake temple, whose snakes, once free to slither here and there on the ground and roof, were now only in safely guarded trees and stands.

My aunt grabbed my arm, warning, “Be careful. They attack people.”

It was another reminder that I’m not in America anymore, land of lawsuits. Though I must say there is something I respect about a country where you’re responsible for yourself and your own idiotic decisions. Such was the choice of one man, who crawled down, eye-level with the hungry, wild animals he had just sugared up with convenience store treats, and barely kept both eyes after it swiped at his face.

Keeping my distance, of course, I did enjoy watching the monkeys. They had been brought many small bananas and coconuts by wiser tourists or locals who frequent the temples. I could spend hours watching them peel and crack the fruits with the pristine fine motor skills unavailable to most wildlife.

After Batu Caves we went to the National Art Gallery. It is a small and free art gallery, one of the only in Malaysia, and it holds mainly contemporary art. I enjoyed watching my Aunt and Uncle, who admittedly could not recall ever being in an art gallery before, holding hands as they walked through the rooms, pausing here and there and whispering to each other.

My aunt came to me, pointing at Kelly and asking, “She studied this?”
“Yes, she has a B.F.A. in Painting. Now she’s the art teacher at my school.”
“Oh, so she does painting with them?”
“Yes, painting, drawing, sculpting, all kids of art for grades 1-5.”
“Oh, that’s why she’s looking around.
I can’t understand all this.”

I laughed, but it’s not so secret that I know virtually nothing about art myself. I remember one of the first times I met Kelly and Kit and some other artistic friends at the Whitney and realized, with slight horror, that I had absolutely nothing to say. That aside, I love being in art galleries, looking and thinking.

But how exactly are my Uncle and Aunt supposed to make sense of a giant quilt-like painting with golden wine glasses in one corner and bejeweled jug-like semicircles protruding seemingly randomly throughout the left side?

My aunt proclaimed again, “I don’t understand this” while looking at a porcelain unicorn with what appeared to be giant Tonka-wheels. It was no surprise when they got to the second floor, found a bench, and waited for us to finish.

They have a very agreeable disposition, however, even insisting when we said we were ready to go, “Are you sure?? No second round?”

Overheard in KL

I noticed people eating roti (flat bread) with some curry on similar trays in the lobby. Considering that they were all the same, I assumed it was an unadvertised breakfast provided by the hostel. To confirm, I asked one older gentleman, “Is the breakfast complimentary?”

He replied, “This is the breakfast, I’m afraid.”

“Is it free?” I asked, tying another approach.

“I think it’s some kind of pancake.”

“Thank you,” I said, and walked upstairs.

New Year in KL

This week in KL has been just as I hoped. Kelly and I spend most of our days walking around, putting the map I bought to good use, writing for me, painting for her, and having the freedom to do as we please.
Taking this
as a trip out of China, feel no guilt in going to Whiskey bar two days in a row for whisky served right on a tray with a cup of ice, a cup of water, and the whisky separated for you to mix and sip as you please. I’ve also indulged twice in their cheese platter, which is a treasure I thought I would be missing for another six months.

I am understanding more how the lunar New Year lasts for 15 days. The lanterns and lights remain all around to signify the celebration, and there are spontaneous lion dances, fire works, and firecrackers on many different days. They were so loud one night that I didn’t dare leave the hotel room, but luckily had a view of the fireworks over the trees from my hostel. The booms and cracks were so earth-shaking that I had a better idea what it must be like to be in war before the 21th century.

By chance, when going to the Aquarium, they were setting up for a special acrobatic lion dance. The lions, each made up of two people, one controlling the head being the front legs, and another, back down, making up the body and rear legs, did the “dance” on top of 20 poles 10 feet high. The other lions also came through the crowd and tossed us oranges through their pen mouths. It was a spectacular sight watching them leap through the air, though I foun1d myself nervous for the boys, some of whom couldn’t have been more than 12, without the reassurance of knowing that it turned out as planned.

FYI – I applaud the aquarium in KL for making the feeding times for the different animals public shows. I’ve always walked through zoos and aquariums and thought it’d be much more entertaining to see the animals moving around and eating. The sea life in KL exhibits were exceptional lively, including an octopus that was swimming, suctioning, and climbing all about. (Until now, I’d never seen them do much of anything, and only spied the corner of octopus skin through a rock wedge.) They also encourage you to watch their feedings, so I saw them in the tank holding out fish chunks to the 5 foot long arapaima (Amazon River fish), sea turtles, manta rays, and even tiger sharks. Well done, KL!

PS… The newspaper, South China Morning Post, reported on 2/19 that in Beijing there have been 501 injuries, 2 deaths, 1 person blinded from fireworks since the year of the rabbit began on Feb 2nd.

Lesson #1: “z” for “s” is not to be Trusted

We booked Ocean Palmz Hostel through a miscommunication. Kelly had been researching hostels and found Traveler’s Palm had excellent reviews. In the booking, we were sent to its next door neighbor, Ocean Palmz, and I didn’t realize the change until it was too late. I’m going to go ahead and call not losing the $5 security deposit and booking another place instead mistake #1.

Traveler’s Palm has a locked front gate, brightly colored, freshly painted walls, and a front yard that is indeed lines with palm trees. Ocean Palmz is set back from 20 feet of cement and sponge-painted to make the fake concrete blocks look dungeon-esque in maroon and black. Nevertheless, I kept optimistic thinking that saying about books and covers might also apply to hostels…

Our room was a small, windowless room on the first floor, close enough to the lobby to hear the chatting of the owner’s family and crying of their albeit-adorable baby. The sliding bathroom door was broken in half, but it was possible to slide one side to the other so that it mostly closed. Now, when I pay $13 USD per person per night, I’m not expecting aesthetics. The problem came at night.

Kelly and I were weary of the bed sheets. We slept on top of everything at first, completely disregarding the shabby blanket that looked like it was far too unfamiliar with the inside of a washing machine. After a while when we couldn’t sleep, Kelly proposed that we get into her sleep sack, a sleeping bag-shaped silk sack used for just this purpose. We covered the pillows with a towel and got into the silk, but I could not shake the feeling that I was being eaten alive.

To the credit of the hostel, much of my anxiety came from the left-over nightmares that I had when I slept in a NY apartment with bed bugs. I had dreams that I woke up with giant, swollen bites. By 8 am, when my Aunty Sui Faun called, I felt that I had just fallen asleep and asked politely to call her back later.

When I did get up, I only had two bites, but one on my left arm was a swollen oval about 2 inches long. And we still had another night to go.

Kelly and I attacked the second night with discipline. We made sure that we were exhausted, relaxed, and ready for bed before we went back to Ocean Palmz (armed with a small bottle of merlot, just in case.) Inside our room, we killed two small bugs and a cockroach, which I used as the excuse to get an extra sheet for the night. The owner, who I’ll say is extremely friendly and accommodating, assured me that it was “impossible” to see a cockroach here, as he obliged the extra sheet and took back the offending blanket.

Over the extra sheet, inside the sleep sack, with the towels as extra protection, I was able to get some good, nightmare-less sleep. In the morning I was putting our trash near another trash can and saw a giant cockroach. It was time to go.

Silver Lining: What I love about this is that it fits my theory of starting low and working your way up. This was my first hostel, and things can only go up from here!

(The new hostel, on the same street, is so new, clean, and reasonably priced that we booked it for the rest of our trip.)

Kuala Lumpur

I arrived in KL last night, and was promptly escorted by Aunty Sui Laun, Uncle Hak Ngee and Yee Hu, the whole bunch. Although I was appreciative of saving a potentially expensive cab ride, I was worried about their driving all the way into the city just to drop us 20 min. later at our hotel. I needn’t have worried.

Not only did they bring us to our hotel, but up to our room. (No, we don’t mind sharing a bed.) They gave us a bag of waters and crackers, and then took us out to dinner. It was great to see Yee Hu again, who was the first cousin I met when he came to the states back in 2001 when I was in high school. He still remembers how I took him out to the cranberry bogs in Rochester to visit my friend James, where he asked, “This place…no electricity?” due to the scarcity of street lights.

It was great to see them. They are lovely and warm and friendly, and some of my favorite family on this side of the world. But the joy of having this day to wake up and do as I please is immeasurable.

I suppose that a country with lots of family isn’t the best match for my first attempt at backpacking.

Penang

Being in Penang, I feel that I am finally getting to learn about Chinese history/family traditions, from my actual family. It is wonderful to be here without my father, not because I don’t miss him terribly, but because now I am a cousin or a niece, not just Siew Mun’s daughter.
Also, with Kelly here, I am finally not the whitest, most foreign person at our family gatherings. It’s just beautiful.

I’m finally getting to know the island, after seeing the same clock tower, temples, and historical streets for the third time (sometimes fourth time, as we were taken multiple times this journey by different family members.) I can find King Street, where my father grew up, for myself in little India. I joked that by my fifth trip, I will tour my cousins around.

My week in Penang was filled with exciting, if exhausting, days filled with mostly food. Kelly and I were fed big family meals by day and evening, and then were taken out by one cousin or another at night.
Highlights: Seeing the Temple of 1000 Buddhas brilliantly lit up for Chinese New Year, watching the sunset at the beach, and having a German beer at a bar that felt more like NY than I have since August.

The strangest thing is that in Malaysia, a place that once felt every bit the opposite of the world, now, compared to China, has the comfortable feel of going home. English is everywhere, and the food is now familiar to me. I’m seeking for myself the char kuay teow, roti chanai, prawn and curry mee (noodles) that I’ve been missing these past years.

I’m also realizing how silly to be in China to learn about my family. Barely any of my family has been to China, and their slight interest to go is not one of root discovery. My whole life I’ve been explaining, “No, I’m not Malaysian. My father was born there, but we’re Chinese.” In ways, that is true. My family is not Malay, like the Muslim country. But being part of Malaysia’s large Chinese population is not the same as being raised China, especially in the past 50 years. Coming here from China, I realize that my father’s history has as much to do with heat and sweat and being a minority as it does with Chinese traditions and culture. I’m sure that I wouldn’t have been able to put my finger on this had I not been in China, and I’m grateful for what I have left to learn in my time in Beijing.

Like a Chicken talking to a Duck

That’s how my grandmother describes our interactions, as I was told by my translating father through skype. She’s not wrong, of course.

But something has happened to better our interactions. I had hoped, of course, to learn to communicate with my grandmother. One of my goals for learning Chinese while in China was to be able to bridge that gab between us. When I realized that she speaks only Cantonese, and therefore wouldn’t have understood me had I learned Mandarin, my ever-wavering interest all but evaporated. (Not to mention watching the struggles of my friends who had been formally studying the language for years.)

There was no shortage of teasing (read: encouragement) from my family about my lack of language, which, after nearly 6 months includes only the numbers and these phrases: “thank you”, “check”, “this” ”how much?” and “I want a beer.” I don’t think the last lane, while my only real sentence, would have greatly improved my communication with Grandma.

That’s why I was so surprised when, after a skype session with my sister, she noted my ability to understand Grandma this time around. The difference, I now realize, is not built on my increased language but my surely sharpened skills in mime and what I’ll call “situation intuition.” If I have practiced anything for the past half-year, it’s the ability to communicate without language, and to understand what is being asked of me without words.

For example, while I was skyping with rah* and the kids, Grandma looked at me, pointed to the screen and asked a string of things that included, “Siew Mun?” I realized that she must be looking for my father (Siew Mun). I then did my best to explain, “Sarah, Virginia) finger pointing low. “Siew Mun, Massachusetts” other finger up high. This may seem like a small feat, but it’s something that I may have passed over in my previous trip.

My favorite interactions with Grandma, however, are those with no words at all. I loved how she brought out the card and Buddha pendant that I had given to her and showed it to the family. She insisted on sitting next to me at dinners, even when other tried to put my Uncle Siew Seng in between us. She told my father that every morning at 5 am she made two coffees, one for me and one for her, but I slept so late (until 8) that she always drank them both. She fussed over Kelly and I, bringing us more pound cake, milo (chocolate drink), and coffee than we thought we could consume. She did our laundry, and hung it in the yard to dry, folding it neatly before giving it back to us. When we were out late with cousins, she asked uncle on the hour, “They’re out so late. Why are they not back yet?” And when we left, I took a picture with her, sitting next to her on a chair so that I would not have to disrespect her by leaning down so far. She laid her arm on mine and pressed down. Later, as I was leaving, she had uncle ask me to send her the picture.

I love the idea of us both having that picture, her in Malaysia, and me wherever it is that I currently am.

New Year’s Eve Night

The beer had barely worn off by 6:30 when we went with my Aunt Ann’s family to have dinner. My Aunt is also one in a large family, so the scene was similar, but without the beer, lies, and teasing reserved for my immediate family gatherings. The food was mostly the same but in the style of Ann’s family, and included a questionable soup and delicious homemade “sping rolls” which are not deep friend and have meat and crab inside. So delicious! The dessert was a very sweet drink with lychee and pineapples inside.

Kelly is such a good sport and a champion. She ate more of the sea cucumber and stomach lining soup than I could manage.

Immediately after this meal my cousin William came to bring us to dinner II. I learned only at the gate that we were going to the apartment of his “best friend” and “business partner.” (No, it’s not a guy, but a divorced woman with two kids, 13 and 9). I’d been hearing about her for years, but never from him directly, and I never thought I’d get the honor of a first-hand meeting. There we were, chatting over steam boat, a couple of pseudo-couples/colleagues.

(Steam boat is a tradition where there is a boiling pot of water in the middle of the table, along with raw meats and vegetables that you cook as you eat. At the end, the water has turned to a broth, and is usually eaten with rice noodles as a soup to conclude the meal. This being my second dinner in a long day of eating, I merely did my best to eat what I could.)

After dinner Kelly and I watched movie that had Jet Lee’s teacher. The English subtitles were all but useless, either flashing too quickly to read because of the rapidity of the Chinese, or because the translations were too literal and filled with Chinese proverbs that don’t quite translate.
For example, one conversation said: “That be to kick restaurant.”
“Advise.”
What??

As I’m getting better at passing over language, however, I was still able enjoy the film. (As an unrelated note, while we watched the 9 year-old girl went on Facebook. What is this world coming to?)

The mother ran around cleaning until midnight, when the New Year officially begins, as she’s not allowed to clean for the first few days, or else she may sweep away good fortune for the coming year. At midnight we watched the fireworks from her balcony, which had a spectacular view of the city. The fireworks were the same as in the US, but the display was not like I’ve seen on the 4th of July, where there is one big show put on by a corporation. Instead, all of the fireworks are technically illegal (but as police-able as MJ in a Bob Marley concert.) Because of this, there are several different types of explosions in the sky coming from all different parts of the city, starting and stopping at different intervals. The year of the rabbit had begun.

After this day, I couldn’t believe that we had to wake up at 8 am to do it all over again, plus a family breakfast with Aunty Ann’s family!
(I should have packed an extra stomach….)

Happy New Year! (Again)

From my reference point, Chinese or Lunar New Year is celebrated as a combination of Fourth of july, Christmas, and Western New Year. It combines fire works, presents, traveling home to be with family, big meals, and traditions for starting over again.

I’ll admit, my whole China-through-illiterate-osmosis theory isn’t quite living up to expectations. . I feel that I’ve learned more about Chinese culture from them this past week than I’ve been able to pick up in China over the past 6 months. It has been such a joy to be a part of Chinese New Year with my family

On New Year’s Eve, (Feb. 2nd) my Aunt Ann had me helping like a family member, doing dishes, wrapping fruit in red and gold sticker ribbons for good luck offerings to the altars, and tying knots in dried golden mushrooms. The bag had probably 500, and each needed to be tied, and then the hard ends had to be cut off individually with scissors. I felt like an old housewife, one who would sit around churning butter by hand while the men sit at your same table drinking beer without offering to help. (cough, uncles cough) Of course, I was grateful for my part in the process, and I did less than nothing compared to the feast-making of my Aunts and grandmother.

Aunty also gave me a lighted incense stick and told me to hold it up to the altar and pray to my ancestors, and to make a wish for the coming year before putting it inside. The next day the families put large incense “sticks” on the front lawn, that are about 16 inches in circumference. They also put a big metal can in the middle of the driveway, lit with flames.

New Year’s Eve dinner with my family is really lunch, beginning at 12. We had mushrooms with chicken, fried pork, rice, dried sausages, steamed vegetables, whole fish with chives and ginger, and a warm turnip-pork-fish dish that you wrap in a lettuce leaf to eat.

There are also a lot of traditional cookies and chips that are made from scratch at this time. “Love letters” taste like coconut crepes that have been folded into quarters and deep fried. There are cookies that taste mostly of flour or sometimes have a bit of coffee to it. My favorite treat was the hand-made chips made of a thick root that tastes like the mixed-child of a potato and plantain.

I ate my fill, and then sat around with my uncles continuing to drink beer. I’ll spare you the long-winded details of lying and teasing, with this summary:

Most inappropriate long-running topic: tiger show (i.e. Thai-girl show), a “married couple” having sex, and a repeated offer to take Kelly and I that night.

Trip to the Countryside

Uncle Siew Kai is my second eldest Uncle on my father’s side. He is the only one of his siblings who never married, and in fact lives one of the most solidary lives I’ve ever known. His house is in what they call the “countryside”, (and what he told me was “amish country”) in the state past the Mainland of Penang. When he moved there it had little in the town but jungle and palm oil tree plantations. Even now the small sections of stores and food stalls do not creep too near to his street. He has been retired for decades and for the life of me I can not quite figure out how he spends his days, apart from tending to his many hand-planted fruit trees. He loves his home and his area, though, and remarked that all he ever wanted was “peace and quiet.” Luckily, in a little over an hour’s drive and a 3 mile bridge, he can join his family on the Island of Penang.

He came to take Kelly and I out to lunch, and walked in mid-sentence, pummeling for the table and summoning us as if we were late for his class. We took the seats beside him as he laid out two decade-old reader’s digests on the table, instructing that they were for us to read, then to pass on to others in Beijing, but never to be thrown out. Then he laid a tourist guide pamphlet for Thailand, ours to keep, and a map of Penang, which he must have back no later than Thursday. As we nodded in understanding and agreement, he stood up and declared it was time to go, but would we mind putting on jeans as the temples won’t allow it.
(This is only partially true. I’ve seen many shoulders and knees in Malsysian temples, but I recall a Church in the Philippines that provided scarves for coverage. Nevertheless, I compromised by putting leggings under my shorts and went out into the blistering heat.)

Instead of the promised lunch we were taken on a mini-tour of Penang. We hit the snake temple (which does still have real snakes, but has been largely commercialized since my first visit and now they rest in trees rather than crawling on the roofs and floor like my first visit.) We went to the heritage museum, a few more temples, and visited King Street, where my father was raised. After a walking tour of the heritage area and a stop into the tourist center to find another map of Penang (so that he could take his other back sooner), I was no longer letting my many subtle indications and requests for lunch go unnoticed. When he asked, “Do you need anything else?” I replied, “just food.”

Finally we went to an outdoor food stall for spicy, thick, chicken curry, whose deliciousness more than made up for the wait. My uncle proposed to take us back to his house in the countryside for two nights to show us an archeological dig site. I was…hesitant to expose Kelly to so many consecutive hours of my Uncle SK, but as we had no plans, and would be on the island the rest of the week, I felt it was the right choice to take him up on his offer.

Uncle SK’s humor is as subtle as a slap in the face. I had warned Kelly of his teasing, which he did relentlessly, but I was unprepared for his smothering. The next morning he brought us to the train station to buy our tickets, insisted on talking for us in Malay to the bi-lingual teller, and then had us purchase first class tickets that he assured us were economy. Then he walked us to the end of the ferry and made us wait for 15 minutes to watch the ferry dock and actually see with our own eyes the passengers as they walked on the clearly railed off path from the ferry back to the station. I am not unaccustomed to over-protection, but the Patience Award goes to Kelly, who has not only traveled the world without adult help, but also lived on an island and has surely taken more ferries than Uncle has seen in his life.

This over-parenting I can not pretend was only Uncle SK. The whole of my family in Penang was constantly calling, checking, arranging, and looking out for us. In fact, we were not left minute alone for the whole week. While we were out my Aunty Ann called to say she was arranging for my family in KL to pick us up from the station and drive us to our hotel (which is an hour drive for them) rather than having us take a 25 min taxi. It was so strange to go from Beijing, where I literally am helpless at times, lost on streets where I can’t read the signs and with no way of asking for assistance or directions, to being bombarded with assistance in this country where I could help myself in so many ways.

What I love about it, though, is that when I am here I am always better able to understand my father and his worrying ways. Here the family has a culture of worry and check, of looking after to the last detail. All of the families and all of the cousins except one, who 36 and in Australia, are in Penang or KL. I can only imagine how much greater my father feels he has to worry when he is the only one in a country doing so.

Best Part of Countyside with Uncle SK: drinking beers in his garden under the stars.

I Came Close to Saying But Did Not Say: There are about 50 ways to wake up a person more carefully than banging like a police sergant 2 hours before you told them we’d leave.

Biggest Adjustment in Countryside House: squat toilet bathroom with hose/bucket for shower.

You do strange things for comfort in foreign places. I used the kitchen sink to get ready in the morning, which I know was strange to Uncloe. After all, the water must be identical, but I’m just not used to brushing my teeth from a garden hose.

Third Time’s a Charm

It’s 2011 and I’m back for my third trip; this time without my father. This time with a computer small enough to carry around instead of journal after journal I never got around to typing up.

My Uncle Siew Seng and Aunty Leag Ann picked us up in the middle of the night and we arrived at their house by 2 am. I expected to crawl into a sleeping house, but everyone, Kian Ming, Teng Teng (pronounced Ting), Kian Loong, even Grandma was up and about. I could not believe how big my cousins had gotten, which I told them until Kelly corrected me, how “grown” they are. It’s true now that the oldest is in college and the youngest, high school. They were far from our first meeting in 2005, when, thinking they did not know much English, I had let my youngest cousin, Kion Loong listen to Eminem on repeat.

Kelly and I are sharing the room that I had last time in 2007. It’s a strange feeling to return to the same place, but not feel like the same person. In the morning I lost some face having to admit that I couldn’t remember how to use the shower. I got as far as turning the switch outside of the bathroom, pressing the fat button on the bottom of the machine, but fell short of turning a metal lever off to left to release the water.

In the morning my Grandma, as usual, made a big fuss over us. She brought us chicken and bread and curry puffs. We sat eating our fill and drinking milo (hot-chocolate-like drink) and chatting with Teng. After breakfast, Kelly went out to draw and my cousin translated for my grandma and me. Grandma said that she wanted to talk to me but didn’t know how. Luckily, Teng Teng translated for us.

I finally found out that she has never been to China and was born right in Penang. After a while she brought me some pictures, laying them one by one on the table in front of me. The first was a picture of my Ayee, her sister who had recently passed away, in a wheel chair. I remembered that when I met her last time, I was astonished at how she’d made my grandmother, who has lived a long life under the Malaysian sun, look so youthful and healthy. The next photo was a close up of her face hooked up to machines, presumably on the white background of a hospital bed. The third was taken from nearly the same angle, but clearly of her dead, lying on perhaps a table.

How does one respond to one’s grandmother when shown this, without, of course, the magic of language? I did my best nod and sympathetic mouth-twist, saying that I’d heard she had passed away. I asked (through Teng) if she had been to a service, and told that my uncle hadn’t told anyone until a month after she passed away, so it had been too late. I suppose, maybe, that these pictures were a compensation for the late announcement?

It was 3 hours into my 3rd visit to Penang, and I knew I had to be ready for anything. But nothing could have prepared me for my Uncle Siew Kai.