Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Man-Child Brownies

A not-very-good picture of a Man-Child brownie - I tried for a lovely sky blue icing and it ended up looking like toothpaste. Oh well!

As a follow-up to my previous post on baking, here's my recipe for insipidly sweet Man-Child Brownies (I call them Man-Child brownies because they're the sort of thing a five-year-old would go for in terms of sugary awesomeness, but a bit of whiskey thrown in there, and some wheat flour substituted for health, makes them a bit more grown-up).

Ingredients:

8oz baking chocolate - if it's unsweetened, add 1/8 to 1/4 cup confectioner's sugar
1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter
1 1/4 cup regular sugar
1 1/4 cup flour (can substitute up to 1/3 with wheat flour)
3 tbsp ground flaxseed (optional but reduce liquids if you skip)
3 eggs
1/2 shot of your favorite whiskey
2-3 tbsp cocoa powder
tiny pinch of salt
a few handfuls of mini-marshmallows
crushed walnuts
half a bag of chocolate chips
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp honey (optional)

Icing
Another stick of butter
1 1/2 cup confectioner's sugar
1-2 tbsp milk or whipping cream
food coloring if desired
1 capful vanilla extract
Sprinkles!

Pre-heat oven to 190C (giving directions in C because it's Taiwan). Grease 8 or 9 inch baking pan.

Heat water in a pot with a bowl over the top (or use the metal in-pot steamer stand as I do and put the bowl on that), in bowl put entire cut-up stick of butter and 8 oz broken up baker's chocolate. Heat and stir constantly until melted together, adding confectioner's sugar if the chocolate is unsweetened (this is technically not necessary if you want less sweet brownies).

Pour that mixture in larger bowl and beat in 3 eggs, one egg at a time. Add sugar and flour slowly and mix well. Add flavorings (vanilla extract, cocoa powder for extra chocolate punch, pinch of salt, honey for chewiness) and continue mixing - do not over-mix once flour is added.

Fold in marshmallows, walnuts and chocolate chips. Spread into baking pan. Try to keep marshmallows away from the top (but don't sweat it if some are at the top). Bake for 25-35 minutes or until it looks done at the sides and a fork stuck in the middle comes up clean.

Allow to cool completely.

In bowl, use fork or whisk to beat butter until fluffy. Slowly add confectioner's sugar, vanilla and a bit of milk. Soon it will turn into icing and it should be easy enough to figure out when. Add food coloring if desired. Don't over-refrigerate before use, but don't let it get all melty either. You want it room temp and spreadable.

Spread on cooled brownies and top with sprinkles.

Yum!

These brownies are gooey, heavy, chocolatey and will put you into diabetic shock if you eat too much at once. They're also delicious. Enjoy!

GET BAKED: Baking in Taiwan

Man-Child Brownies baked in my new-ish oven with my new baking dish from Nitori

Even after four and a half years, I get culture shock in some odd ways. Until recently, one of these was feeling irritated at my inability to bake.

Or maybe they're not that odd: in A Taste of Home (the second story in the book Expat: Women's True Tales of Life Abroad, which I thoroughly recommend), the writer has similar cravings, but for roast chicken, not Christmas cookies or truffle cake.

Back in the USA I was a baking dynamo: I made muffins every weekend - and banana bread when I didn't feel like muffins. I baked tons of cakes, from blueberry to pumpkin to black forest cherry to red velvet to chocolate truffle. I baked cookies every Christmas (and occasionally for the office) and while I didn't make them often, I was able and willing to make crepes, Levantine farina cake, Greek-style baklava and coffee cakes. I made some pretty mean pies, too.

So it was a bit of a shock to me to end up in Asia with a kitchen that had no oven. Like so much with culture shock, intellectually I knew that kitchens in Asia don't typically include ovens, but I never anticipated the feeling of loss that came with it. In India, I didn't stay long enough to try and bake (and it was too hot to bother, really), and in China, ingredients to bake and freestanding ovens were hard enough to come by, and if found, expensive enough, that I didn't try.

But I've been in Taiwan for far longer - I hadn't anticipated staying on this long when I first moved here but I'm happy I have - and the lack of baking was really getting to me. We were home for Christmas 2009 and I baked literally hundreds of cookies - sugar, gingerbread, chocolate melt, chocolate chip, "Swedish almond cookies with jam" (probably not really Swedish) and nutty oatmeal cookies. Even hosting a Christmas party of 14 people, including three kids, we couldn't finish them all.

So, after four years of feeling deprived, we went to Carrefour and bought an NT $2900 oven. Yay!

With an oven, though, one needs supplies. That's where this post comes in - it's taken me months to assemble various things for baking, and I'm still not quite done. Jason's and City Super sell a lot of this stuff, but mostly for jacked-up prices. You can do better.

Here's a reference guide of the best places to buy baking goods for a reasonable price:

(the one off Heping Road is closed)

I go to this one: Roosevelt Rd. Section 5 Lane 218, Number 36 / (02)29320405.
MRT Wanlong Exit 4, turn right to Cosmed, turn right again and it's down the lane next to Family Mart.

Scattered about Taipei, these stores sell all the things that the big department store supermarkets don't, or that they sell too expensively. Some comparisons: sprinkles at Jason's are NT$200+ for some German brand, and it's all they stock. Sprinkles of varying kinds and in varying sizes cost a fraction of that. Candy molds at City Super - NT$300-NT$800. Plastic candy molds at the baking store - NT$30, or silicone molds for NT$350. Icing bags and tips at the supermarkets - hundreds of NT. At the baking store? NT$70. Baker's chocolate is far less, seasonings are far less (at least NT$100 in savings per bottle), vanilla extract is a fraction of the cost, and they stock mid-range baking supplies whereas the department store supermarkets only stock high-end, highly-priced goods. You won't feel guilty about throwing away an NT$50 whisk from the baking store - why pay NT$800 for a fancy European one that you'll now feel you either have to keep or sell, seeing as it cost so much? Cookie cutters: NT$75 at City Super with little selection, NT$20-$30 at DIY baking stores with a huge selection, including little Taiwan-shaped cookie cutters!

In short, don't shop for this stuff at Jason's or City Super - don't let the greedy idiots win.

The DIY tores also sell hard-to-find items such as food coloring, icing gel (I saw it in pots only, not tubes), certain ingredients otherwise hard to come by and for cooks, they sell things like capers and tomato paste for far less than the big supermarkets.

You can also buy items like flour and confectioner's sugar in bulk. These are sold at regular supermarkets but usually in smaller packets.

By the way, you'll have to make your own icing - you can buy gel icing, but if you want royal or buttercream, you're on your own. Nobody sells it. Fortunately, it's easy to make.

Other items you can get here: mascarpone, light sour cream, flour in bulk, candy melts and flavorings beyond vanilla and almond.

Sheng Li
Corner of Heping E. Road and Fuxing S. Road - it's the big green 'everything' store

The third floor of this catch-all discount store sells kitchen supplies - get inexpensive whisks and rolling pins here. I got my super-simple rolling pin for NT $30.

IKEA and Nitori
Asiaworld Shopping Center, Corner of Nanjing E. Road and Dunhua N. Road, basement

IKEA is the place to go for springform-style pans (the kind you use when you need to turn a cake upside down after baking it), coffee cake and bread pans and other baking items. Nitori sells glass and ceramic baking pans - including the old Corningware style baking and souffle dishes, perfect for a chocolate souffle if you think you can handle it. Both of these stores sell baking items at far less than the department stores.

If you need regular, not baking chocolate, the own-brand candy bars sold at IKEA are your cheapest bet for acceptable chocolate.


Great for coconut spread if you are too lazy to make icing (this does work, by the way - buy Indonesian coconut spread and add a bit of food coloring if you want, and use that instead of icing), colored and chocolate sprinkles and interesting ingredients you may find you need such as powdered ginger in good quantities at affordable prices. You can also get coconut flakes at a good price.

Zhongxiao E. Road, ahead of City Hall Exit 4, near Dante Coffee, 2nd floor of a bland unmarked building

Great for coconut flakes, dates, tamarind pulp, almond and rose flavorings, occasionally saffron/safflower (better for color than flavor), jaggery and other elements for Asian baking. You can also get stick cinnamon, whole nutmeg, cardamom and other useful spices for interesting cookies and muffins.

Jason's and City Super
all major department stores

Really only recommended for chocolate chips (often whitened and old, but if you use them to bake they become good again once heated up), mini marshmallows, baker's chocolate. Jason's sells "Almond Dew" which is basically almond extract, and if you're in a pinch they do sell vanilla extract at exorbitant prices. Otherwise don't bother with their crappy baking aisles.

Wellcome
all over Taipei

Believe it or not, Wellcome does stock decent supplies of spices, kinds of flour, egg white powder (蛋白雙), molasses, confectioner's sugar, unsalted butter, cream cheese and other kinds of sugar. You can get a lot of what you need here.

Health Food Stores
I recommend the one on Roosevelt Road between Gongguan and Taipower Building. Get off at the Taipower Building bus stop (after Gongguan) and walk south - you'll see it.

This is a good place to get flaxseed, instant grains/oats as well as whole, non-instant oats that you can use in oatmeal or multi-grain cookies. Also good for flavored oils, healthful flours, organic raisins etc..

Monday, April 4, 2011

Links: Women in Taiwan

Two recent Taipei Times articles worth reading:

Exhibition focuses on the changing roles of women - I haven't seen this exhibit yet but I intend to, and will write about it when I do. I can only assume that there will be no English signage.

Empowering women in the world - an interesting editorial. Shame on the DPP politician who said what he did about women in power, but I still hold that the more progressive DPP is friendlier towards women's rights causes than the socially conservative KMT.

The Low Birthrate in Taiwan

Yeah, I know I've been faffing about recently with talks of caramels and pineapple cakes, but it was a busy week, I didn't get nearly enough sleep until the weekend and I had a headache that just wouldn't quit. So anyway.

I think the main reason why I've been putting off writing this post is because, honestly, a lot of the reasons why Taiwan has such a low birth rate are, as I see it, similar to why the marriage rate is declining. It's hard to talk about it without sounding a little repetitive. I do think, however, that there are some really obvious factors that the government, in its zeal to promote having children, is forgetting.

I should start out by saying that as far as I'm concerned, the declining birth rate is a good thing for Taiwan (as it would be for the world if it were a global phenomenon) - at least in the long run. Yes, in the next few decades it presents a problem as fewer and fewer young workers are around to support the elderly, but I feel like that's a jagged little pill we simply have to swallow to lower the population across the board, and not in a bat shit crazy Chinese "you can only have one baby!" way. The Earth can't handle many more people, we can't feed many more people, the skies can't handle the emissions from the power usage and transportation for many more people...if anything we need fewer people. In total. Globally. Taiwan is in an especially sensitive situation as it is truly running out of arable land, settleable land and resources (including clean water and the ability to develop new land in an ecologically safe way). The government is so guns-blazing pro-baby that it's not accounting for these issues, or for the fact that more children now means even more children to support them later, and eventually Taiwan is simply going to run out of space. The entire world is. (In other words, David Reid said it well).

All that aside, I thought I'd take a look at some of the reasons why the Taiwanese are not having babies - it's not because they're worried about the environment or overcrowding (although these are things that as citizens, they should be thinking about).

Aside from reasons that could also apply to the low marriage rate, there is one glaringly obvious point that needs to be made: most Taiwanese don't think they have enough money to comfortably raise a child or multiple children.

This is a developed-world phenomenon, not just a Taiwanese one, but it seems to be more pronounced in Taiwan, despite the fact that in terms of purchasing power and living standards, Taiwan now outranks Japan.

I'm not sure where to draw the line on how much this is an assertion driven by a culture that values humility and savings vs. how much it really is not financially feasible to have a lot of children, or any children, if you are Taiwanese.

In some cases, I think it really is an issue of thinking you don't have enough money when really, you'd make do just fine if you were to have a kid. Some sacrifices would be necessary, sure, but you wouldn't grow bankrupt. You see this a lot in the USA: we'll have a kid when we have a house big enough for a nursery, and can afford day care, and we're at good points in our careers and in a position to start a college fund.

It is absolutely true that if you really want to have a child, but you want to wait until conditions are "perfect", you never will. If you truly want it, you wait until you can reasonably pay for things like food, clothing, care and medical bills but not until you can afford a fancy crib in a dedicated nursery.

Of course, if you don't want a child, no amount of being ready will push you towards it, and that's fine too.

There is also the fact, though, that square footage in which to raise a kid is an expensive proposition in Taipei - I can see why a Taipei family would put off having children or have fewer children because they simply can't afford an apartment big enough to house them. My husband and I make a pretty good wage and yet I'd balk at the amount of money we'd have to pump into a mortgage if we were ever to buy property in Taipei, and that's for a modest one-bedroom.

On the other hand, it's much cheaper to have a baby in Taiwan than in the USA. Taiwan actually has a healthcare system that basically works, unlike the broken, unaffordable mess we have back home - prenatal, delivery, post-natal and pediatric care are all covered, though you'll have to pay more for electives (such as specialized birthing centers and 'mothers' hotels' in which to take your month of traditional maternity rest). Day care/kindy/nannies are cheaper than the US, but not exactly cheap. Baby-sitting is unheard of, but often you still pay little or nothing for the equivalent: having your in-laws watch your kids, which is far more common here.

Furthermore, the least economically advantaged people in Taiwan still seem to be having babies - rather like in the USA, it's the middle-to-upper classes who seem to be slowing down (no, I don't have any stats to back that up, just my own subjective observations)...so it may be more a case of "we don't have enough money to raise a child without making significant sacrifices" rather than "we simply don't have enough money to raise a child".

Which, hey, I'm not criticizing. You hear a lot of criticism of that view, with the assumption that you should be happy to sacrifice certain things to have a child. I'm not willing to sacrifice travel, and a relatively free lifestyle to have a child - at least not right now - so those folks'll get no judgment from me!

Yes, people with far less money had children just a few generations ago, but let's look at some of the differences that made that possible:

1.) Daughters were married off, not educated, and the expense of school and university for girls was not an issue;
2.) Property was not nearly as expensive and settlements not as densely packed;
3.) It wasn't considered a "given" that your kids would attend university or would need to get into the best high school;
4.) An agricultural-turning-to-industrial society still meant plenty of people in the countryside with space to raise their children;
5.) Kids simply had less than parents today feel are necessary: from learning English to computers to cram school;
6.) If you couldn't afford all your kids you'd often give your daughters away to be raised by others (seriously, that's what they did - "you can't have kids? Need a farm hand? I can't feed her - here ya go!") - my neighbor Old Fang complains bitterly about how this was done to her - "they didn't care about me because I was a girl. They just threw me away, gave me to someone else like I was nothing".
7.) Mothers generally did not work and if they did, they lived with the husband's family who would raise the children;
8.) If both spouses worked and didn't live near in-laws, the children would go live with their parents (this is still fairly common).

The government's financial bonuses for having children is aimed at this issue: I believe the bonus is NT $20,000 (which is in the hundreds, not thousands, US, but is not a shabby amount either). Many women's rights groups don't care for that initiative, however: "We're not vending machines into which you throw some coins in return for a baby" said one activist. "What women really want is a high-quality public day care system."

Which brings me to other points that are similar to the reasons why Taiwanese women are marrying in such low numbers.

When you marry in Taiwan, there are a whole heap of gender expectations pushed on you - if not from your husband than from society and especially in-laws, although it's considered acceptable for your husband to have those expectations, too. You do find yourself in the position that many married women in the USA had to deal with decades ago: working either because you wanted to or needed to, but not expected to be a breadwinner, and yet still expected to keep the house clean and the kids, if you had them yet, reared. Taiwanese women do have mothers and mothers-in-law to help with those things, but that's not always a good solution (I adore my in-laws but this is a sentiment that not many people seem to share with me in Taiwan). It means having to deal with your in-laws ideas about child-rearing, their expectations of your home and who should clean it, and if you don't care for them, having to live in the same apartment or neighborhood.

Is it any wonder that Taiwanese women, faced with the choices of "let mom-in-law watch the kids" (assuming she doesn't like her mother-in-law, which is quite sadly common here), "or take on most of the child-rearing because my husband isn't going to help, while either working or taking a hit to my career", would choose to have no children, or as few as possible?

I've heard that the average salary in Taiwan is NT$30,000 per month, but let's say this is a more middle-class couple and they each make NT $60,000/month (for which you have to be at least in middle management in this country and work punishing hours that are really out of proportion for what amounts to $2000 US). A good kindy/day care or nanny is going to cost NT $20,000-$30,000/month, which is 25% of the couple's combined pay. That is, honestly, way too much - whether in Taiwan or in the USA where the percentages are similar.

So I see where women are coming from when they say that they want good public day care. Either they're faced with a quarter of their income gone (assuming each spouse makes $60K, which is twice the average) or with one of them taking a hit to their career...and let's be honest, that's usually the wife, not the husband. How is that in any way fair - in America or Taiwan? Can you blame a couple for not wanting to deal with that?

Speaking of work and having children -

Taiwan has a more mother-friendly working world, at least in larger companies - there is mandated maternity leave (no such thing in the USA), taking a month off (坐月子) is common and expected, stronger family ties make it possible for most families with babies to have someone care for their child - usually but not always a mother-in-law - while the mothers go back to work, and in terms of purchasing power parity, getting a day nanny or sending your kid to nursery school is more affordable here than in the USA.

On the other hand, in smaller companies it is fairly common for prospective female job candidates to be grilled about - or not hired because - you may be taking time off to have children. Horribly long hours at work - hours that no Westerner would ever find acceptable - make it harder to spend time with children, and if you work in Taipei and your family lives somewhere else in Taiwan, you may be faced with having your child live with his/her grandparents until (s)he is ready to start school at age 7: something not every parent wants. Under those circumstances, would you really be keen to have children?

I still think it comes down to three things:

1.) the expense of living space and child care (if family watching kids is not an option) is too high for most couples: I can't count how many of my students have said that they don't take high speed rail because tickets for them and their children are too high, and how lucky I am that we can still take it as we're only paying for two. Or how many have said that they only have one child because they can't afford kindy or a larger apartment in which to raise two...or who have said that they have made so many sacrifices to raise one or two kids that another one is out of the question.


2.) Women sick of the gendered expectations heaped on them as wives and mothers - we've come a long way in terms of gender equality in Taiwan, but it's still the wife who is expected to bear the burden of household duties and child-rearing. It's the wife who is expected to quit her job if necessary, the wife who is expected to take hits to her career, and generally the wife who shoulders all of the burden. She has more support (family nearby) and more legal back-up (mandated maternity leave, a month-of-rest culture) but more expectations, too. I'm lucky to have a great husband who would do his share if we were to have a child and who is great at helping around the house - he's almost certainly better at housework than I am! Not many Taiwanese women can say the same, though.

3.) Taiwanese people, happy at their newfound, just-in-our-parents-lifetime prosperity, are enjoying life as citizens of a developed country and don't want to go back to the financial sacrifices necessary as a developing one: sacrifices that they'd have to make for children. This is similar to the USA, although we've been developed and "prosperous" for longer: now that all these young Taiwanese can afford to shop at Shinkong Mitsukoshi, go to spas and take four-day trips to Bali, Guam or Hong Kong, they don't want to give it up to pay for day care and school fees. I can honestly say that while I don't shop at Mitsukoshi and I get my massages at local 按摩 shops, that traveling is a heap of fun and I don't blame anyone for hesitating about giving it up. Many Taiwanese still remember how hard their parents worked to send them to college, and how their grandparents lived in drafty brick houses and either farmed or worked in factories. Do you blame them for wanting to enjoy a better life for awhile?

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Oh, Ma Ying-jiu.

Posted by Michael Turton posting from the Taipei Times about Ma's poorly-thought-out judicial nomination:

In Which President Ma Once Again Is Incompetent

In my time in Taiwan, I've occasionally met women who have tried to make the case that the KMT is pro-feminism and pro-women's rights (and pro gay rights, and pro-children's rights etc. etc.) and it's the DPP that is out of touch with modern progressive values.

Well, those women are wrong.

I think the article above sums it up. Do I believe that Ma knowingly and purposely nominated Judge Shao with full awareness of her controversial ruling on the sexual assault of a three-year-old girl? No, I think he honestly wasn't thinking, didn't order proper research and background checks, and really just wasn't paying attention and doesn't care. He's not actively anti-women, he's passively so...and so is the entire KMT.

This basically sums up the KMT's entire stance on women: we don't actively hate you or want to keep you oppressed, we just can't bring our navy-suited selves to give a damn about you. We're all men here so you just scuttle back home, start marrying earlier and popping out babies like we want you to.

Yes, many of the progressive women's rights laws in Taiwan were passed just before the DPP took power under Chen Shui-bian, but honestly I think that many of those were passed just then in an attempt to court female voters, not out of a true caring for women's rights. Otherwise, they would have been passed far earlier as they should have been. The fact remains that the KMT has never been a bastion of women's rights, and probably never will be.

While I support the attempt to appoint more women to high-level offices, this is not the way to do it. Appointing competent, qualified women (or better yet, electing them) is to be lauded. Appointing women who are, in fact, anti-woman themselves and are willing to pass down verdicts such as Shao's is, like putting Sarah Palin in power, exactly the opposite of the right way to do it.

Home Is Where the Lao Jia Is


Photo of colorful yarn from here

"I should let you know," I said recently on the first day of a new class, "that I'll be leaving for a few months in August. I'll come back around mid-October."

"Really?" my new students exclaimed. "Why...how did you get such a long vacation and where are you going?"

"One of the advantages of my job is that I can take all the leave I want, as long as I let the company know well in advance. I don't get paid for it, but that's OK. I'd rather get more unpaid leave than less paid leave. As for why and where, I'm going to Turkey for two months and then home to visit my parents and in-laws."

"Why Turkey?" came the obvious question.

"Because my mother's family is Armenian from Turkey," I said, writing out Armenian (亞美尼亞人) in Chinese on the board as I said it - nobody in Taiwan knows it automatically in English. "Many Armenians used to live there, but in 1915 the Turks started to kill them and force them out, and many died and others ran away. My family came to America. So you could say that southern Turkey is my ancestral home," I replied as I wrote "ancestral home" on the board and invited students to guess what it meant.

"Is it like 老家?" one student surmised.
"Yes, exactly. I'm returning to my lao jia for a visit."

There was a pause.

"Man, I sound Chinese," I said as they laughed.

Since then, two thoughtful blog posts I've read recently - Home is the Lint in My Pocket fromOffbeat Home and Home and Books by Kathmeista have gotten me thinking about home. (Both are definitely worth your reading time). Home as a person who has a lao jia - most Americans do, but few ever think to visit it, and many have no idea where it might be - home as a person currently dealing with a family illness (fortunately all signs point to it being something we'll get through with a happy ending), and home as both a traveler and expat.

A lot of people write about where they fit in (or how they fit in to a new community), where they're from or how they define "home". I see it a little differently - I feel as though I have many homes, with different connections to all of them. Instead of viewing these connections as a web, I view them as different skeins of yarn with varying thicknesses, textures and colors. I'm connected to all of them, just in different ways and with different feelings attached to each. I'm closer to some than to others, but no matter how pale or thin the thread, there's still some slender attachment.

As many Americans do, I technically have more than one lao jia - I can count Armenia via Turkey, Poland, Switzerland and the UK/Ireland among them, as well as a trickle of Iroquois blood. The reason I tend to be the most attached to my Armenian heritage is not out of any feeling of superiority: simply that it's the one with the closest generational association. My grandfather still speaks Armenian, after a fashion. I have no other living relatives whose native language is Polish, or Swiss, or Iroquois or Gaelic (although on one side, many speak some Polish as a result of growing up in a community of Polish immigrants). We still set out hummus, babaghanoush, lahmajoun, tabbouleh, shish kebab, pilaf, bowls of olives, string cheese and cheorog at family functions. While kielbasa, pierogies and galumpkies have made an appearance on the other side, it's far more rare.

That said, I'm also proud to be Polish (kielbasa! yay! If I ever do go vegetarian, kielbasa along with lamb kebab and lahmajoun may be the last painful threads to cut) and do fully intend to visit Poland one day, in the not-too-distant future.

I've never been to Armenia, Mousa Dagh (where my Armenian ancestors are really from), Poland or Switzerland, but I feel connected to these ancestral homes with slender but vibrantly-colored thread, a connection that seems tenuous but, like a dark dye, has seeped into me in ways that I'm still discovering. The yarn seems thin, but the importance of the tie presents in its brilliant hues. I'm sure that when we do make the journey to Mousa Dagh later this year - this year! We already have tickets to Istanbul! - that I'll discover even more ways in which I'm tied to this place I'd never laid eyes on before.

I've found that many Taiwanese and Chinese people feel similarly: they may have never been to their ancestral home, but making a trip there, if done, is not something to be done lightly. Their family may have lived in Taiwan or a province of China that they're not originally from for hundreds of years and even tens of generations, but they can still tell you, if not the village of their origin, then the region or province. Even Taiwanese who in every other respect do not think themselves Chinese are often able to say "Well, I'm Taiwanese and this is my country, but my great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents came from Quanzhou (in Fujian)."

I have two hometowns - Saugerties, NY and Highland, NY. My thin, white connection to Saugerties is really just in childhood memories: picking all of mom's tiger lilies to make a bouquet. Roller skating in the kitchen. Playing with my friend Peter up the street. Picking some sort of azalea and finding an earwig inside. Listening to Richard Marx (hey, it was the '80s) with friends from school. Winning a school award for art. The time my sister found the little cup of hydrogen peroxide that Mom was soaking earrings in, and drank it (they called poison control. She was fine). The time I filled the house with smoke trying to bake Jiffy Mix cornbread without permission. Mom's screaming and Dad's snapping to action when the cat brought home a still-living black snake.

A slightly stronger, but murkier, connection to Highland: my family still lives there in a lovely old farmhouse with all sorts of annoying quirks. I go home once a year or so to spend a week with them, and I enjoy several aspects of that time: crickets in the evening instead of traffic and neighbors shuffling about. Cooler, less humid weather. Waking up to American morning shows (totally vapid, but I have this thing where I like to watch them when I'm home). Trees and grass right outside.

My parents' beautiful rural backyard at our day-after-wedding brunch.

When I was going through adolescence, though, I can't say I held any warm feelings for the town. I didn't share the town's community values (conservative) or outlook (not inclined to celebrate learning, focused more on sports). School was very much a "why do kids needs all these 'arts' and 'multicultural studies'? When I was young we learned the three R's and if that was good enough for me then it's good enough for my kid!" I had friends, but we were more of a little group apart from others than among them: I just wasn't interested in the things that interested the town. You should have been there to see the shining of my eyes the day I was set to leave for college. I would miss my family but not the town. Highland taught me a lot about who I was by showing me what I didn't want to be, and while I visit home, I really restrict it to visiting my parents and the much cooler town of New Paltz down the road - I don't bother much with Highland. You can say I've never really looked back. I do like some small towns - New Paltz is great, and I find Bangor, ME to be really charming - just not Highland.

In contrast to the itchy woolen yarn in forgettable colors that connects me to Highland, I'm tied in several ways to my home during college - Washington DC and its surrounding area. I didn't like everything about GWU, but I did get a good education there, not to mention the chance to study abroad, live on my own and be exposed to an urban awakening that has kept me a happy monkey in concrete jungles ever since. Could I have gotten a similar education for less than GWU's exorbitant price tag (though I was on a Presidential scholarship so I paid a lot less than many students there)? Yeah, but I met Brendan at GWU which is why I affectionately call him my "very expensive sweetheart"! Gee-dub wasn't perfect by any stretch, but it was cool and urban and without it I wouldn't have such a fantastic husband.

After a year in China, I returned and lived in nearby and just-as-urban Arlington, VA. For most of that time I rented a townhouse with others on Columbia Pike, and the safe-yet-multicultural, not-yet-gentrified, slightly gritty feel of the neighborhood weaseled its way into my heart with its downmarket charm, Ethiopian and Salvadorean restaurants, independent coffee shops and second run theater that serves alcohol. I made a lot of friends in that time and while I didn't care for my job in those years, I do look back on my social life in Arlington with a warm heart.

More distinctive threads connect me to India and China. In her story "The Long Conversation", Deryn P. Verity says, "...but the cliche is true: your first foreign country speaks to you as no subsequent one can. Although you may come to prefer life in other places, first patterns persist, providing insistent, if faded, touchstones for everything to come."

India was like that for me - I can't say whether I do or don't prefer life in other places, because my experience in India was so life-changingly different that "preference" doesn't really come into it. Simply put, India is the touchstone by which I measure everything that has come after. It's not a matter of preference. It's a matter of what is. I got my first taste of children on dusty side streets shouting questions at me just for being foreign: Sister, Sister! Are you liking our idli-dosa? I lived a vegetarian life in which I was woken up by chickens cawing and put to bed by goats bleating. I cooled off on the hottest days by sitting on the floor. I learned to use a squat toilet and got my first taste of true bargaining in a riotous market. You may think you bargain in flea markets in the states - you don't. I learned to enjoy Saturday nights that consisted of watching TV with Amma and Shiva and going to bed at 10, before the current would go out. Do I "prefer" life in Taiwan? I can't honestly say. India was a home to me when I was so desperate to see something of the world, a home to me in that I lived in a family home and, for all intents and purposes, had a family there.

A taste of a different kind of urban life in Madurai, India

China was not as much of a life-changing experience. If India is the touchstone for all future experiences abroad, China is anti-matter. Brown and gray, the frayed threads that connect me to China bring back memories of a Miao wedding in the hills, the best Sichuanese food of my life (although Tianfu in Dingxi comes close), friendly locals, fiery haw-berry brandy, seeing a giant roach while playing canasta with my roommate, watching horrendous state-sponsored TV, and memorable trips to Xinjiang and Xi'an. Drinking beer by the paved-over riverside and hiking in Phoenix Park and taking the bus to Guiyang just to eat pizza and have tea in the pagoda on the river. It reminds me of walking up the hill behind the department store, through the market and to Fragrant Mountain Temple, one of the few truly preserved temples in the country (covering over a temple in bathroom tile and calling it 'restored' does not count), and studying Chinese in the Guanyin shrine while drinking tea with Old Zhang.

Old Zhang at Fragrant Mountain Temple - Zunyi, China

But it also brings back memories of twice-contracted pneumonia, gray chicken feet in viscous soup, picking up my gloves warming on the charcoal heater only to find that they'd melted (I thought they were made of wool!), towels that moved water around but didn't absorb it, being put in a SARS quarantine and not being able to access news easily: I didn't learn that the USS Cole was bombed until I left the country months later. It reminds me of smoggy skies (if India is a touchstone, China is murky quartz) and box-shaped concrete behemoths lurking in the distance. It reminds me of buying jewel boxes topped with shards of priceless porcelain smashed during the Cultural Revolution. It reminds me of people who would overcharge me even after vigorous bargaining and of a blatant disregard for women's rights or respect for women's equality - more so than India. It reminds me of a scarred and saddened country with the worst air and water quality I've ever experienced - a country that I hope, for the sake of its 1.6 billion people, will throw off its sad 20th century inheritance and usher in a new government.

I can't say I loved China, or even particularly liked it, but I do have a lot of stories to tell (like the time I pooped on a pig, or the time I puked on a bus driver, or saw a Muslim cemetery upturned with a new housing development about to be plopped on top) and I can't say it didn't impact me. Was it "home"? Not by a long shot, but it was a kinda-sorta home for the time I was there and for the memories it brought me.

Which brings me to Taiwan. I've stayed here for nearly five years, and so, really, Taiwan is now my home. It will still be my home if we choose to leave, and I can't imagine leaving with no plans to return. I said the same thing about India, and I've been back four times, so I don't take those proclamations lightly. Taxi drivers who have an opinion on everything and ask me questions that would be rude by Western standards, the kids in my neighborhood who practice violin or piano (some are pretty good, others should honestly quit and find something they're more talented at), the pedestrian-unfriendly larger streets with their unrelenting scooter swervings and exhaust fumes and the quieter lanes where a sense of peace rises from the asphalt as I ride my bike through. The great seafood and etiquette-free but friendly demeanor of the people. Four and a half years of friends and experiences. The breathtaking views from the road up Hehuan Mountain and the slower pace of Pingdong life.

Taiwan is my home, in a way that no place has been since India and Washington, DC, and considering the portion of my adult life spent here, now approaching critical "I feel more at home when I get off the plane in Taoyuan than I do when I get off the plane in New York" mass, I feel like there's more than one thread connecting me. A blue-green thread of friends, a bright red thread of daily life and colorful festivals, a heathered thread of friendliness mixed with occasionally rude behavior (OK, not rude, just not polite by Western standards) and a pink fried pork colored thread of food. There are all sorts of tiny but unbreakable bits of fishing line hooking into me from living for years in Jingmei and watching the old folks who sit outside gossiping get older, the kids pushed around by grandmas, housewives or Indonesian nannies get older, stores opening and closing, being on a first-name basis with the 7-11 clerks, and being used to speaking Chinese outside home and work. If I ever moved back to an English-speaking country I swear I'd get jolted back to reality the first time I were to get in a taxi and try to give directions in Mandarin!

I do wish I could say "yes, this is my home". In her post, Kath talked about how Cornwall, New Zealand and Taiwan were all homes to her. In her "lint in my pocket" piece, the writer's home was clearly Guildford, England. My friend Emily talks of England and Australia as her twin homes (although after her latest stint in England she may be more inclined towards Australia).

I feel like I have multiple homes: Mousa Dagh; Poland; Saugerties; Highland; Washington, DC; Arlington, VA; Madurai, India; Zunyi, China; Taipei, Taiwan. I can't name a single one as my true home, and I can't say exactly how to prioritize one over the other. It's like they're all a giant knobby scarf, and I'm woven right in there. Or that they're all ropes for hanging trapezes as well as the colorful net below and I am the acrobat, swinging around to newer places and yet knowing that I am supported and in part defined by the places I've been.

They're all home, and where many people feel the need to be grounded, to have a place of origin or somewhere to come from and go back to, I feel better hurtling through mid-air, far from grounded, knowing that my multiple homes are swinging above me and knitted below me, and that with the experiences and knowledge they've provided I can safely swing to ever newer destinations.

Friday, April 1, 2011

Pineapple Cakes!

I don't know if I'm the only one who feels this way, but I have a sort of love-hate relationship with pineapple cakes (the square ones with the crumbly outside and pineapple jam inside). I love them, but so often I find them lacking: the outside crumbly cake has no taste or tastes just of lard, and the pineapple preserve inside is sweet and ooky and sometimes tastes nothing of pineapple.

So if you're like me and you like the idea of pineapple cakes but not necessarily the execution, I urge you to try Sunny Hills pineapple cakes made from all natural ingredients, no chemicals.

These guys come in heftier rectangle blocks, almost certainly cost more than typical pineapple cakes, but use only natural ingredients.

That means that the outside has its own flavor, and the inside has a strong hit of that sweet-sour pineapple taste that I love. No more sugary goo whose only connection to real "pineapple" is its bilious yellow color: these cakes are all KAPOW! with the citrusy pineapple flavor.

Definitely get your hands on some if you like pineapple and pineapple cakes as much as I do!