this is a 煎饼 （jian1 bing3)
right, i don't quite know what 煎饼 translates into, so for now you can just think of it as a "pancake- thing". it's another cheap local delight sold on the streets, and is made on the spot with batter spooned onto a hot griddle. an egg is then cracked onto the batter, followed by chopped spring onions, and lastly a large piece of fried beancurd skin is crushed on top of everything and the entire thing is folded together and placed, steaming, in a plastic bag for you to burn your tongue on. well, for me to burn my tongue on anyway.
but there are no photos of it, because this post isn't actually about them. the title of this post actually refers to a joke jinni, xiaoyun and i made during our weekend trip to 承德 （cheng2 de2), where emperor kang xi (康熙皇帝) built a summer palace (避暑山庄 bi4 shu3 shan1 zhuang1). unfortunately, the details of the joke cannot be divulged here because they are potentially libellous.
***
so, i spent most of holy saturday crammed into a seat, knees almost to my chest, in a Very Dodgy bus with Very Furry, dirt encrusted seats, praying that the oncoming cars and massive trucks laden with things like donkeys and swivel chairs would be able to swerve in time, because our bus driver cut corners at high speeds and sometimes undertook to overtake other vehicles at road bends. there was an old man next to me who started smoking, and i pointedly opened the window about half-way but he didn't seem to get the point. his cigarette butt ended up on the floor of the bus along with hundreds of melon seed shells and eventually his water bottle, but that wasn't before my cheeks were almost frozen from the wind-rush coming in through the half-opened window. because the bus was, of course, going at a speed above the speed limit. even with its rickety suspension and the going-to-fall-apart sounds it was making, which the driver seemed totally oblivious to.
imagine me, then, in three layers, bundled up in my dad's blue goose down windbreaker which is 5 sizes too big for me, crammed into aforementioned seat, sticking my head ever so slightly out the window to the godforsaken country road.
i spent the time before dinner on holy saturday looking at huge representations of gods which i thought looked like fat old men who'd had too much to drink and decided to dress up for a lark, then became angry when others laughed at how ridiculous they looked, faces set in a permanent scowl. or maybe they were scowling because a number of joss sticks being offered to them were stuck in little paper cups of ashes bearing the words 超市发 (chao1 shi4 fa1), china's answer to giant, on them.
and i ushered in resurrection sunday with a scaldingly hot shower - the tap at the hotel didn't seem to be able to register an in-between temperature, so you had to choose between scaldingly hot and icy cold - and that was followed by a walk, during which i blew out smokey breath to my hearts' content, to breakfast at the local sunday morning market; chalky white soya bean milk, poured from huge thermos flasks into bowls, eaten at tables set up by the road next to a shop where a man was sawing window parts. it was bland but had a sweet, burnt aftertaste and a grittiness when your tongue met undissolved bits of sugar. that was accompanied by the lightest, crispest 油条 (you2 tiao2) i've ever eaten, fresh from a pot of hot, bubbling oil seated on the back of a wheelbarrow, cooked by a man with cheeks chapped and red from the cold.
and, as i had a spoonful of beancurd with soya sauce and bits of spring onion, i turned to jinni and xiaoyun and told them that i was happy.
***
it was probably the happiest resurrection sunday i've ever had in my entire life, and i mean that. the time during the service in 2007 when we sang because He lives was probably the only other time in all my 21 years that i even came close to feeling that perfectly happy.
because it dawned on me, along with the cold morning in an industrial town a few hundred kilometres off beijing, that this was what Jesus died on the cross for. these moments of the Everyday kind of happiness, only made possible by His perfect peace in our hearts.
later in the day, we went to a temple and i wandered off on my own feeling a little sad because our tour guide had gotten a little Too Insistent about offering incense to kuanyin, as a mark of respect, regardless of your religion and beliefs, she kept saying. a lot of westerners do.
i wanted to cry.
imagine, then, me standing on the steps leading to the temple, looking out at the glorious hills and rock formations in the distance, singing because He lives softly to myself, holding my water bottle tightly in my hands and feeling less alone.
but greater still, the calm assurance
this child can face uncertain days because He lives
paul said he thought the fat old men gods had to look fierce to chase away evil spirits. i think they were scowling because they knew, deep in their hearts, that there was a God far greater than them all, that they were ultimately worth nothing and would fade into obscurity once people forgot about them and moved on to other gods.
***
on the way home i saw snow for the first time: sad, thinning patches of it on a brown barren land as yet untouched by spring. whose appearance, it must be said, would have been greatly improved by several layers of snow. there's something very clean about cold air and newly fallen snow as it's described in storybooks that would have gone a long way towards hiding the poverty, the dilapidated industrial buildings and houses, the rubbish scattered all about the fields and trees. and it would have made the fact that there were children bundled up in brightly coloured clothes running around seem less sad. we also stopped at a functioning petrol station for a toilet break, and the toilet was little more than three drains set about a foot apart in concrete behind an unfinished brick wall. all three drains were choked with tissue paper, soiled sanitary pads and faeces.
i decided i could wait.
we took a bus which was Definitely Very Much Less Dodgy back to beijing, and by the end of the journey we wished we'd taken the Very Dodgy bus of the journey to 承德. the windows couldn't open, so whenever someone smoked we'd feel like we were slowly suffocating as the smoke diffused towards us. and to top it all off, during the last third of the journey one of the bus staff decided to put on a chinese techno ktv dvd, complete with girls dressed like Complete Skanks singing nonsense in chinese on the tiny tv screen at the front of the bus.
we got off the bus with Awful Headaches.
but a taxi ride, washing machine cycle and shower later, i thankfully made a cup of 3 in 1 milo - which is one of the most comforting things in the world, late at night. the wind shrieked and howled outside (like it's doing now) but inside my apartment i was draining the last of my milo, the pounding techno beats leaving my head, a brown sludge remaining at the bottom of my mug which would harden by the next morning because i'm too lazy to wash things immediately here.
right, i don't quite know what 煎饼 translates into, so for now you can just think of it as a "pancake- thing". it's another cheap local delight sold on the streets, and is made on the spot with batter spooned onto a hot griddle. an egg is then cracked onto the batter, followed by chopped spring onions, and lastly a large piece of fried beancurd skin is crushed on top of everything and the entire thing is folded together and placed, steaming, in a plastic bag for you to burn your tongue on. well, for me to burn my tongue on anyway.
but there are no photos of it, because this post isn't actually about them. the title of this post actually refers to a joke jinni, xiaoyun and i made during our weekend trip to 承德 （cheng2 de2), where emperor kang xi (康熙皇帝) built a summer palace (避暑山庄 bi4 shu3 shan1 zhuang1). unfortunately, the details of the joke cannot be divulged here because they are potentially libellous.
***
so, i spent most of holy saturday crammed into a seat, knees almost to my chest, in a Very Dodgy bus with Very Furry, dirt encrusted seats, praying that the oncoming cars and massive trucks laden with things like donkeys and swivel chairs would be able to swerve in time, because our bus driver cut corners at high speeds and sometimes undertook to overtake other vehicles at road bends. there was an old man next to me who started smoking, and i pointedly opened the window about half-way but he didn't seem to get the point. his cigarette butt ended up on the floor of the bus along with hundreds of melon seed shells and eventually his water bottle, but that wasn't before my cheeks were almost frozen from the wind-rush coming in through the half-opened window. because the bus was, of course, going at a speed above the speed limit. even with its rickety suspension and the going-to-fall-apart sounds it was making, which the driver seemed totally oblivious to.
imagine me, then, in three layers, bundled up in my dad's blue goose down windbreaker which is 5 sizes too big for me, crammed into aforementioned seat, sticking my head ever so slightly out the window to the godforsaken country road.
i spent the time before dinner on holy saturday looking at huge representations of gods which i thought looked like fat old men who'd had too much to drink and decided to dress up for a lark, then became angry when others laughed at how ridiculous they looked, faces set in a permanent scowl. or maybe they were scowling because a number of joss sticks being offered to them were stuck in little paper cups of ashes bearing the words 超市发 (chao1 shi4 fa1), china's answer to giant, on them.
and i ushered in resurrection sunday with a scaldingly hot shower - the tap at the hotel didn't seem to be able to register an in-between temperature, so you had to choose between scaldingly hot and icy cold - and that was followed by a walk, during which i blew out smokey breath to my hearts' content, to breakfast at the local sunday morning market; chalky white soya bean milk, poured from huge thermos flasks into bowls, eaten at tables set up by the road next to a shop where a man was sawing window parts. it was bland but had a sweet, burnt aftertaste and a grittiness when your tongue met undissolved bits of sugar. that was accompanied by the lightest, crispest 油条 (you2 tiao2) i've ever eaten, fresh from a pot of hot, bubbling oil seated on the back of a wheelbarrow, cooked by a man with cheeks chapped and red from the cold.
and, as i had a spoonful of beancurd with soya sauce and bits of spring onion, i turned to jinni and xiaoyun and told them that i was happy.
***
it was probably the happiest resurrection sunday i've ever had in my entire life, and i mean that. the time during the service in 2007 when we sang because He lives was probably the only other time in all my 21 years that i even came close to feeling that perfectly happy.
because it dawned on me, along with the cold morning in an industrial town a few hundred kilometres off beijing, that this was what Jesus died on the cross for. these moments of the Everyday kind of happiness, only made possible by His perfect peace in our hearts.
later in the day, we went to a temple and i wandered off on my own feeling a little sad because our tour guide had gotten a little Too Insistent about offering incense to kuanyin, as a mark of respect, regardless of your religion and beliefs, she kept saying. a lot of westerners do.
i wanted to cry.
imagine, then, me standing on the steps leading to the temple, looking out at the glorious hills and rock formations in the distance, singing because He lives softly to myself, holding my water bottle tightly in my hands and feeling less alone.
but greater still, the calm assurance
this child can face uncertain days because He lives
paul said he thought the fat old men gods had to look fierce to chase away evil spirits. i think they were scowling because they knew, deep in their hearts, that there was a God far greater than them all, that they were ultimately worth nothing and would fade into obscurity once people forgot about them and moved on to other gods.
***
on the way home i saw snow for the first time: sad, thinning patches of it on a brown barren land as yet untouched by spring. whose appearance, it must be said, would have been greatly improved by several layers of snow. there's something very clean about cold air and newly fallen snow as it's described in storybooks that would have gone a long way towards hiding the poverty, the dilapidated industrial buildings and houses, the rubbish scattered all about the fields and trees. and it would have made the fact that there were children bundled up in brightly coloured clothes running around seem less sad. we also stopped at a functioning petrol station for a toilet break, and the toilet was little more than three drains set about a foot apart in concrete behind an unfinished brick wall. all three drains were choked with tissue paper, soiled sanitary pads and faeces.
i decided i could wait.
we took a bus which was Definitely Very Much Less Dodgy back to beijing, and by the end of the journey we wished we'd taken the Very Dodgy bus of the journey to 承德. the windows couldn't open, so whenever someone smoked we'd feel like we were slowly suffocating as the smoke diffused towards us. and to top it all off, during the last third of the journey one of the bus staff decided to put on a chinese techno ktv dvd, complete with girls dressed like Complete Skanks singing nonsense in chinese on the tiny tv screen at the front of the bus.
we got off the bus with Awful Headaches.
but a taxi ride, washing machine cycle and shower later, i thankfully made a cup of 3 in 1 milo - which is one of the most comforting things in the world, late at night. the wind shrieked and howled outside (like it's doing now) but inside my apartment i was draining the last of my milo, the pounding techno beats leaving my head, a brown sludge remaining at the bottom of my mug which would harden by the next morning because i'm too lazy to wash things immediately here.
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