Category Archives: Culture

Cantonese desserts, fresh steamed fish, and Huacheng Square

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Today is our last full day in Guangzhou. It’s crazy that our time here went by so quickly. We’re doing an early breakfast at the hotel tomorrow morning before heading to the railway station for our 10:30 train back to Hong Kong. It’s a bit bittersweet: I would love to have another few days to further explore Guangzhou, but I’m looking forward to going back to explore and eat Hong Kong for 1.5 days before heading back to New York. And frankly, neither Kaia nor I are going to miss these squat toilets in mainland China. I’m looking forward to being back in the land of super clean and pristine public toilets of the Fragrant Harbour City!

On our last full day here, we visited the historic Yong Qing Fang district, which is in the old town of Guangzhou. Once upon a time, Yong Qing Fang was a gathering place for the literati, martial arts actors, and Cantonese opera actors, including Bruce Lee’s father, Hoi-Chuen Lee, who was a famous Cantonese opera star. Hoi-Chuen Lee has a home that has been re-branded as “the ancestral home of Bruce Lee” and is a (free) tourist attraction in the area. We visited it today, and it’s a beautiful place that is like something out of historical Cantonese dramas I used to watch with my grandma as a child: lots of old wood and brick, along with delicately carved doors and walls, and carved glass screens. Though as Chris said, it was a bit of a stretch to call it the ancestral home of Bruce Lee; Bruce Lee seemed to have spent most of his life either in Hong Kong or San Francisco. The feel of the district is both old and new, traditional and modern. The original location of Tao Tao Ju is here; from the photos of the original Tao Tao Ju, they did a pretty good job keeping it looking like it did back in the day in 1880 when they first opened. Most of the old building here have been renovated, but they intentionally retained their original architectural style and historic value.

While here (and in Hong Kong), I wanted to maximize the Cantonese-style dessert eating as much as possible. Cantonese desserts are known for their “tang shui,” or their “sugar water,” or sweet soups, so we definitely maximized on these types of desserts while here. In a single day today, we visited two different Cantonese dessert shops in the area: Bai Hua and Nan Xin. We tried five different desserts: egg custard soup with white sesame tang yuan (filled glutinous rice balls), which was unique because I usually have only seen black sesame filling, not white; mango sago with coconut milk; ginger “double skin” milk custard, coffee milk custard, and mango, coconut, grapefruit sago with a mango puree. Chris found enjoyment in all the desserts other than the ginger double skin milk custard, which was far too spicy and gingery for him. For me, it was like a little bit of heaven: it was clear they freshly juiced this ginger — it was no joke! And to think that if you add 1 RMB to your order, you could even get EXTRA ginger! While he did like them, his immediate comment was, “This is good, but it’s no gulab (jamun)!”

For lunch, we ate at a seafood restaurant called Shenggangwan, which is located on a higher floor of a building in the Huangsha Aquatic Products Market. The market is exactly what it sounds like: a fresh wholesale seafood market with every possible sea creature you could imagine. We saw crabs bundled and knotted in ways I’d never witnessed; massive prawns, slimy looking sea cucumbers, and some very aggressive and antsy fish in all shapes and sizes. I wanted some fresh seafood, so I ordered the whole fish special of the day, which was a leopard coral grouper. It’s red and white on the outside with a white flesh. It was steamed and prepared the traditional Cantonese way, with ginger, scallion, and sweet soy. While it was tasty and perfectly moist and well cooked, to Chris’s point, the fish itself didn’t have much depth of flavor. And when we found out how much it was when we got our bill, we had a bit of a shock. “Market price” really should be checked before buying… We also ordered extremely garlicky gai lan and a plate of beef chow fun to appease Pookster, both of which were super cheap by any standard, especially compared to our fish! As a bit of comic relief, the servers were all completely besotted by Pookster. They loved watching her eat, and especially loved it when I was feeding her fish I deboned. They kept coming over to praise her and say how cute she was and what a good eater we had. I felt like they were likely watching us the whole time, giggling to themselves and commenting on not only Kaia, but our racially mixed family and how I get my brown husband to eat Cantonese food. Kaia also loved the little artificial ponds set up around the restaurant and kept watching the fish. When I told her it was time to leave, she insisted that she go and say bye to all of them. She kept saying “byebye!” and waving to all of them multiple times. It was really cute, and some of the servers on break watched and laughed.

Towards the end of the day, we walked around and explored Huacheng Square, where we admired all the very tall and colorfully lit and flashing buildings surrounding us. My favorite building is one you can see when in the square and looking towards Canton Tower: it looks as though there are strung crystals dangling from the top of the building, sparkling in hues of blue, purple, and silver. It was also clear that the powers that be wanted to instill some sort of mood into visitors of the square: classical music was playing at just the right volume during our entire walk through discreet speakers. I loved how grand and sprawling this square was. It’s really the kind of place you could just sit and relax in.

We ended the day with Hong Kong style hot pot near our hotel. Kaia had a field day with the order of clams Chris ordered that we let her toss into the pot. It also felt like that night, she knew we were leaving and didn’t want our time in mainland China to end: she kept stalling sleep that night in her bed in a separate room. Whenever she heard Chris cough, she said she had to go check on him to make sure he was okay. She did this at least three times before Chris insisted she had to go back and sleep in her own bed.

“Daddy coughing. I need to go check on Daddy,” she insisted, as she’d get out of bed and run over to our bed.

That’s my concerned and loving Pookie.

Xinjiang cuisine, Bai Hua Mountain, the oldest standing dim sum house in Guangzhou, Beijing Road, and a mall Anpanman play house mishap

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Xinjiang, the Uygur Autonomous Region of China, is located in the northwestern part of China and is particularly interesting in its cuisine because it fuses together Chinese cuisine along with many different ethnic groups that represent Xinjiang, such as Uygur, Kazak, Tibetan, Mongal, Russian, and the list goes on. Xinjiang food has a lot of roast mutton and lamb, kebabs, bread made in round coal ovens. The spices used in this cuisine are also very different than anything Han Chinese: Islamic spices are the norm on meats you eat here. If you like meat, bread, and spices, Xinjiang cuisine will most definitely be your thing.

Chris was in a very meaty mood when we arrived in Guangzhou. After eating a smaller meal of chang fen (stuffed rice noodle rolls) and noodle soup with fish dumplings and fish balls, he annoyingly told me he was not satisfied and still wanted something more “substantial.” So we came across an area walking distance from our hotel where there were a number of Xinjiang restaurants. We popped into one on the second floor of a building that was beautifully decorated with multicolored glass lanterns and decided to sit down. There was a tea fee at this restaurant that was mandatory, so I chose a xue ju (I guess that translates as snow daisy or snow chrysanthemum?) tea that I’d never heard of before. It was a bright orange, almost red hued liquid, and the flavor was floral and almost smoky at the same time. We also ordered the roast lamb in a naan pit and a stir fried spicy noodle dish with vegetables for Kaia. When the lamb arrived at our table, it was served on massive metal skewers along with a tasty red and orange (but not hot) herb/spice mixture and slices of raw onion. It was absolutely delicious and cooked perfectly; even Kaia gnawed at the meat until it was just bones. We had so much meat that we ended up taking a decent chunk of it to go.

Today, after a delicious breakfast buffet at our hotel, we took a DiDi ride to Bai Hua (“One hundred flowers”) Mountain, then took the cable car up to the summit (or what we thought was the summit). From there, we could see the views of all of Guangzhou in all its cloudy, polluted haze. At the time we arrived that morning, you could just see Canton Tower through the haziness, but by the time we left, it was pretty much invisible to the naked eye. As we walked around the eating areas, I was shocked to see how extensive the menus were. If you were at a similar spot in the U.S. where you got a cable car ride up to a summit, you might have some really fancy (and overpriced) food options as well as fast food stuff (hello, burgers, fries, and chicken tenders), which would be more typical. But here, I was so impressed: for snacks, you could get made-to-order Hong Kong style egg waffles, also known as bubble waffles, which are super crisp on the outside and fluffy on the inside (and if you are lucky, filled with something delicious and gooey, like matcha cream, strawberry, or even durian!); fresh tofu pudding, a whole steamed fish (yes, really); and if that was not enough: AN ENTIRE BANQUET STYLE MEAL. I was floored looking at the spreads of food that people were casually eating outdoors on this semi-warm, cloudy day.

For lunch, we went to the famous Bejing Road, known for its endless foodie delights. And we went to a location of the the oldest standing dim sum house (since 1880) in Guangzhou: Tao Tao Ju. They have multiple locations now, and unfortunately, while I did not bring us to the original location, I was pleased to see that this new location retained all the charms of the original with its traditional Chinese architecture and decor. I knew this dim sum experience was going to be good as soon as the server confirmed that yes, they did have chrysanthemum tea (I’ve already had multiple places tell me that they either don’t have it, or they make you pay an up-charge for it); and when the tea pot came, the server placed it on a little warmer with a lit candle inside it.

The service was straightforward, and the ordering was easy because most dishes had photos with Chinese descriptions. They also won brownie points with me because they immediately gave Pookster a little kids’ (unbreakable) plate, plus a disposable bib with a little toy truck with ladder. The most notable dishes we had at this tea experience were also some of the most basic, but executed extremely well: the siu mai (shao mai) had delicious flavor and perfect texture between the crispness of the prawn against the chewiness of the minced mushrooms, and the softness and fattiness of the pork. The “cherry” on top, which I honestly could not appreciate but liked the presentation of, were the black caviar on top of each. Their Tao Tao Ju version of ha gao, or Tao Tao Ju “big prawn dumplings,” were perfect, with well executed and crisp prawns along with a thin and soft tapioca based dumpling skin. I also loved their version of nor mai gai (nuo mi ji), sticky glutinous rice with savory chicken, mushroom, and abalone (what a surprise! I went back and translated the Chinese character which I mistakenly thought was fish, but it actually said abalone), wrapped into a steaming lotus leaf. The “cute” dish I ordered were liu sha bao, or egg yolk lava custard buns, decorated on the outside to look like little piggies. This was the one thing Kaia actually ate in full at this meal.

Random other fun things we did along Beijing Road: we got already prepared fruit that we picked ourselves from a fruit vendor, with the main highlights being the fresh and sweet jackfruit and the cherries (Kaia ate ALL the cherries); even the free cantaloupe the vendor threw in were sweet! Chris found a shop called Han Xiao Liu that specializes in durian products. He picked up a durian-shaped ice cream stick for us to share; it had 30 percent durian in it! I also went hunting for a bathroom that actually had toilet seats for Kaia since she cannot deal with the squat toilets here, which led me back into the mall that Tao Tao Ju was in. That led us to stumble upon an Anpanman themed kids’ playhouse. Kaia ran into it and slid down the slide three times until an employee was checking who knows what and kicked her and another little friend out. She motioned toward the sign when another parent came to protest. I translated the sign with my translator app to discover that in order to allow Kaia to play here, while it would be free, I’d still need to register as a user on WeChat… which I obviously didn’t do. WeChat and Alipay rule here!

I was aware that China was on the road to becoming a cashless society based on what I read; I was not aware exactly how little cash I’d see while here… which is to say, NONE. Literally every vendor or shop only took payment via AliPay or WeChat; even homeless people begged with a WeChat or AliPay sign for you to transfer money directly to them. Chris had planned ahead and had downloaded both apps. I just didn’t realize that even a kids’ playhouse would require a WeChat registration. It sounded nuts to me, but I suppose that’s the goal of the Chinese government: to literally track every movement of its citizens as well as its visitors. Ouch.

Hong Kong public restrooms circa 2024; ordering dim sum while comparing the Chinese menu vs. English menu

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While exploring the Yau Ma Tei Wholesale Fruit Market this morning over on the Kowloon side of Hong Kong, I was intrigued by the fresh cherimoyas and ripe hachiya persimmons. I haggled my way into a small discount with two hachiyas. Unfortunately, I was unsure which of the cherimoyas were ripe and ready enough to eat, so I hesitated on those and ended up not buying any, which was a shame given that I cannot even remember the last time I got to enjoy that custardy, sweet fruit. Kaia said she had to go pee, and when I asked the workers where the closest restroom was since my daughter had to pee, a fruit manager took pity on us and offered their toilet in the back for her to use.

“The closest public one is too far away!” the fruit worker insisted. “She’s too young to wait!” I always love how Asian ladies dote on littles so much.

Unfortunately, their toilet was…. not particularly the cleanest one we’d ever encountered. It smelled as though it hadn’t been properly cleaned in years. There wasn’t any soap in the bathroom, so I had to use hand sanitizer on both of us. Within a few blocks, Kaia said she had to pee yet again, and so I begrudgingly took her to the public restroom right there, completely not expecting the experience we would have.

As soon as I entered, I saw a worker wiping down surfaces with sanitizing spray. Beside her was a mop, which she was using to clean the floors. The entire bathroom smelled like jasmine flowers. Each of the stalls had a clean toilet, a clean seat down with a lid, as well as ample toilet paper. Next to the toilet paper dispenser was a little motion-activated machine to allow you to use some toilet paper to spray a disinfectant spray onto the toilet seat before using. In English and Chinese on the inside of each stall, a sign explained that to ensure the highest levels of hygiene to please close the toilet lid before flushing. I was so surprised and excited to see this; the toilet lids being closed while flushing has been noted in lots of hygiene-related studies and news articles as the number one way to increase cleanliness in bathrooms and to prevent the (airborne) spread of fecal matter, which tends to be all over your bathroom whether you are aware of it or not (unfortunately, this is impossible in U.S. public restrooms, as virtually NO public toilets will have a lid. It’s actually disturbing to me how prevalent that is and how no one seems to [know to] care about it). The sinks were wiped clean of even the smallest water drops. The soap dispensers were all motion activated and filled to the brim. There was the option of a hand dryer or paper towels (much to Kaia’s excitement since she’s completely terrified of hand dryers).

I just couldn’t believe how clean this public restroom was — literally every single part of it. And there was an attendant parked there to clean every centimeter of that place. And that restroom was not the exception here — this was how every public restroom we entered was. Contrary to how I feel when using public restrooms in the U.S., I actually never dreaded using a public toilet here in Hong Kong and instead, found it quite fun to see exactly how sanitized and clean all of them were. Hong Kong’s public toilets should be a model for the rest of the world!

Later on, we chose a slightly upscale dim sum house for lunch. I was excited for the opportunity to enjoy a proper yum cha experience in Hong Kong… and was quickly confused when I was handed the (Chinese) dim sum ordering menu to check off which items I wanted and realized I couldn’t read or recognize most of the dishes listed. I know how to read pretty much every semi-common, popular dim sum dish, in both Cantonese and Mandarin. I didn’t understand why things read so differently on this menu. I started using Google Lens to help me translate some of the dishes, but frankly, it wasn’t much help. The biggest issue when reading Chinese menus, as I’ve tried to explain to Chris and multiple others who don’t read or speak any Chinese, is that a lot of food dishes in China have very idiomatic naming conventions and have no real meaning within themselves at all. The dishes are very rarely as straight forward as Western menus are with their descriptions or names. So unless you are familiar with old Chinese texts that make these historical references or “nicknames”/shortened names for foods, you will have no idea what dish you are actually looking at.

Here’s an example of language/cultural nuances from my childhood of a common dish we had on our table at restaurants, especially for the kids, also a dish I crave every now and then: gan chao niu he 干炒牛河 (beef chow fun). The characters literally say “dry fry beef river.” But if you know the language and what’s being shortened, you’ll know right away that what it’s really saying is 干炒牛河 [粉] or gan chao niu he fen –– dry fried beef with flat rice noodles (NOT saucy or with gravy is the meaning of “dry.” 河粉 Or “he fen” / “ho fun” is the name of the long, flat, wide, rice noodles. And if you don’t know the language or food, you’ll just sit there feeling puzzled, not understanding what the heck a “beef river” is.

I sat there, as Chris says, looking like I was studying for an exam while going over that freaking Chinese menu. It took me a while to make my selections. He was getting antsy with me because he was quite hungry, and he could see the dishes were clearly being made to order and were taking a while to come out to other tables. Here’s one dish we ordered which I took a chance on and ended up really enjoying, but it literally meant nothing to me other than three characters (dou miao and egg) when I ordered it: 金銀蛋浸豆苗 jin yin dan jin dou miao or literally, “gold silver egg dipped dou miao/pea shoots.” I didn’t know what all those characters meant together, but I did know that there would be dou miao/pea shoots in it, as well as egg, so I just checked it off. If you read that translated word for word, what would you think it meant? And what came to our table but a large bowl of clear soup with floating egg drop wisps, a generous pile of pea shoots, and thick slices of pi dan/century egg. It was a deeply flavorful, savory broth that we all enjoyed (and Kaia devoured), but it was confusing because I genuinely wasn’t sure how gold silver egg dipped pea shoots translated into a SOUP? I would love for someone to explain this to very Americanized/Westernized me.

So we got a bit of a hodge podge of dim sum because a lot of these things just are not typically on standard dim sum menus in Chinese yum cha houses in the U.S.: the pea shoot and century egg/egg drop soup; fried sesame balls with a light mung bean filling; chee cheong fen (HK style, no fillings other than sauce); fried silken tofu with a slightly peppery coating; shui jiao (fried glutinous rice dumplings with pork, mushrooms, and jicama; mango pudding. Chris wasn’t super satisfied, so I figured now was the time to relent and ask for the English menu. I took the English menu and compared it against the Chinese menu, and there were maybe only two or three things that had crossover; the English menu had all the standard things you’d expect, like ha gao, siu mai, nor mai fan, etc., yet NONE WERE ON THE CHINESE MENU. I was even more confused at this point (and I asked the server if we could add black bean sauce steamed spare ribs, off the English/Chinese menu, to “complete” our meal and make sure Chris didn’t feel jipped of his first Hong Kong yum cha experience this trip). This led me to believe one of two things:

  1. Locals who just know will order the dishes that we in the West consider “standard dim sum” dishes off menu, so there’s nothing for them to check off on the ordering card; it’s simply understood by the server and by the kitchen that they will churn out these dishes, or
  2. The restaurant doesn’t make what we consider “standard dim sum” dishes for locals and makes them only for overseas Chinese/Asians who have come to expect certain dishes to be “authentic” Chinese yum cha dishes.
  3. Or, maybe a combination of 1 and 2…?!

I don’t know. This kind of felt like discrimination or gas-lighting to me!

Kerala (Mallu) food: a party for all senses

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Today, we went over to Chris’s mom’s cousin’s building a few blocks away for a family gathering, with relatives coming together from New York, Philadelphia, Australia, and India. Given our group was a bit larger, they rented the common space lounge of their condo building for the lunch. As soon as we arrived, it was clear the dinner table was laid out for a feast, with bright green, yellow, and orange table settings, plates, and napkins. Place mats were also laid out on three other tables where the eventual food would be placed for buffet-style serving. Although we showed up close to 1 when the event was meant to start at 12:30, they told us that the Kerala (Mallu) Indian caterers in New Jersey were supposed to deliver the food by 11am. So, needless to say, they were running quite a bit late.

But when the food eventually did arrive, it was clear it was all worth the wait (Chris’s uncle and aunt told us, “Their service is horrendous. They are always, always late and it’s nearly impossible to even place the order. It all has to be paid in cash. But we put up with them because the food is so, so good!”). I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the sheer variety of the foods delivered, but also how intoxicating it all smelled. This is what was served, with my rudimentary knowledge of the names of these actual dishes in Malayalam – 13 in total (!), in addition to the freshly fried pappadams, which were so fragrant that any time someone bit into one near me, I could smell the delicious spiced scent wafting towards me:

Nadan meen curry – Kerala style red fish curry

Kappa Puzhukku – Kerala-style mashed tapioca/cassava (to be eaten with the fish curry)

Kerala style beef cutlets with a side of raw red onions and chilis

Kerala / Malabar style parathas – “rounded” flakiness – the best!

Kerala beef fry Ularthiyathu – with big chunks of meaty coconut strips

Kerala-style chicken curry

Ghee rice with cashews and caramelized onions

Moru curry (Buttermilk/yogurt curry)

Yellow dal

Savory mango yogurt curry

Savory banana curry

Black-eyed pea and green bean thoran

Kerala red rice (AHHH, what a treat outside of Kerala!!)

I thought I had died and gone to food heaven. Every bite was beyond delicious. But because there was so much variety, it was hard to eat more than 2-3 bites of any one dish. It was truly such a treat to have this food in the middle of Manhattan, of all places — and delivered from the Northeast Capital of Indian Food: New Jersey!! But I did leave extra space for the kappa since we don’t ever see it on menus. The beef fry, with its thick, crunchy chunks of coconut, is truly one of my favorite Indian dishes, along with the fish curry — they are very unique flavors and textures. My brain wanted to eat more, but my stomach had to put the savory eating to a stop, especially since for dessert, we had my orange olive oil cake and some semiya payasam, as well, and I needed space for these.

While I was eating this sumptuous meal in the midst of all of Chris’s Mallu relatives, I thought back to the time when I was in Singapore in 2012 for my friend’s wedding. Her husband used to say that South Indian food wasn’t as prevalent in the U.S. “for a reason,” as in, it didn’t taste as good as North Indian food (but anyone knowing history and the demographics of India would know that on average, people from Delhi/the surrounds are far lesser educated than the people of Kerala, the state of India that has the highest literacy rate. So while North Indians were on average poorer and immigrating to western countries to open restaurants and pursue lower level service jobs, Keralites were moving for “knowledge work” careers and on average, not opening restaurants). So when I said I wanted to explore the Indian area of Singapore to try the South Indian food, he had rolled his eyes and said, “All South Indian food is is dosa and idli, which aren’t even that good.”

As I enjoyed every bite of my beef fry, fish curry, and Malabar-style parathas, all I could think was… how could anyone be so wrong and ignorant about how good this food is?!

Chinese cuisine: a cuisine that deeply appreciates textures and “delights”

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Back in high school, I remember a friend that I made in journalism who was a third-generation Italian American. Her mom used to make the most incredible Italian-American feasts, many of which I was invited over to enjoy for their annual Christmas celebration each year. Although she loved food, she mostly really loved Western European food and found a lot of things about Cantonese Chinese food so puzzling. At that time, most of the Chinese people in our high school were Cantonese, and most of the Chinese restaurants in the city were also Cantonese. One day, she went on a rant against bean sprouts, also known as mung bean sprouts, especially in “Chinese chicken salad.” She was debating the idea of them to several of us in the room, most of us being Chinese.

“I just don’t understand bean sprouts!” she exclaimed, annoyed, picking them out of the salad she had purchased from the food court at Stonestown Galleria, the mall next to our high school. “They have absolutely NO flavor and add nothing to this salad at all!”

I looked at her, a bit amused. “They don’t have much flavor, yes, but they add a really nice crunch to the salad.”

“Who cares?” she retorted, clearly not liking my response. “It has no flavor, so it serves NO purpose in this or anything!”

What I didn’t realize then, but I realize now, is that to many non-Chinese or non-Asians, the concept of something being “delicious” is directly related only to a flavor. So if something does not have an actual distinct taste, there is no way that something can be delicious. Adding texture doesn’t add “flavor,” and therefore isn’t valued in western food. But to the average Chinese chef or Chinese person who appreciates food, texture is actually extremely important and part of what makes something “delicious.” The root of the word “delicious” is actually “delight,” as Fuchsia Dunlop so eloquently explains in her latest book, Invitation to a Banquet. So for something to be delicious, it doesn’t necessarily have to have a “taste,” but instead, it just needs to bring delight — if you stick with the definition of the word. Chinese people appreciate all textures, whether it’s a crispiness from a just deep-fried prawn, the crackle of a roast chicken skin, or the creamy wobble of a custard. Those are textures that Westerners generally appreciate. However, what Chinese people appreciate that the average Westerner will not are textures like the sliminess of taro (I LOVE THIS), or the crispiness of silver ear fungus (a clear fungus/mushroom that is oftentimes in Chinese tonic or dessert soups that I grew up with, but has virtually no flavor whatsoever; I had an addiction to this stuff as a teenager).

Fuchsia Dunlop asserts that one is unable to fully begin appreciating Chinese cuisine if one is not able to appreciate mouth feel, or what Chinese refer to as 口感, or kǒugǎn. You must be able to appreciate the pleasure of texture, otherwise Chinese food in its purest, most authentic forms will be incomprehensible to you. As someone who studied 3.5 years of Mandarin Chinese in college and grew up knowing how to speak Toisan and understand some Cantonese, I will never be fully fluent or literate in the language. But even if I were, I found out that even the most fluent, literate Chinese person may not even know how rich their language is, as there is an endless lexicon of Chinese words not just for “mouth feel” but also for different ways of cutting and cooking foods that are unique by REGION or town of China; a Sichuanese chef may have specific words for julienning vegetables that just do not translate up north in Beijing! I was just blown away by this part of the book.

One of the great interpreters of Chinese culture for western readers Lin Yutang wrote in his book My Country and My People: “If there is anything we are serious about, it is neither religion nor learning, but food. We openly acclaim eating as one of the few joys in this human life.” So I thought back to my high school friend’s diatribe against mung bean sprouts while reading the section about mouth feel. I hope she has moved on from her narrow view of bean sprouts and embraced the texture; who knows, maybe since then, she’s actually eaten more varieties of Chinese food and gets why that “crunch” is important in the context of that salad. But if she hasn’t, I suppose she will just be one of the many westerners who is never able to fully embrace Chinese food due to her own mental block the way Fuchsia subtly warns against.

Chinese public immersion preschools in Manhattan

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This morning, we did a couple tours of 3-4K schools in the Manhattan Chinatown area, one of which is a Mandarin Chinese immersion program that is also part of the Universal Pre-K program in New York City. The class is taught in English and in Mandarin, with emphasis on verbal Chinese communication (listening and speaking). In the afterschool component of the program if you opt in, the teachers support and teach children how to write in beginner-level Mandarin Chinese. I loved looking at the walls and seeing all the activities and art projects these young kids did in Chinese. Given the season, they made Valentines for their mothers and fathers in Chinese, did some painting and paper craft projects to depict spring (春 chun) in Chinese, and also decorated dragons for the Lunar New Year / Year of the Dragon. From the book shelf, it also looks like they get story time in both English and Chinese, as well, and sing Chinese nursery rhymes and songs. I will say that I was a little surprised there was far more English than Chinese on the walls, but it sounds like given this is all public/DOE run, they had to comply by those standards.

In an ideal world, Kaia would be fully bilingual; hell, I would be fully bilingual, too. Looking back, I always wish that I was put in an immersion program like this one where I was exposed to both culture and language from a young age. I got plenty of exposure to culture given I grew up with my grandma and followed all her traditions, plus our schools were very progressive and proactively taught us about Lunar New Year, along with other cultural traditions of other countries. I was exposed to Toisan and Cantonese through my grandma and my relatives, but I didn’t learn Mandarin until I was in college, and that learning was fully my choice. In some ways, it does make me a bit sad that Kaia will be very unlikely to know or understand any Cantonese or Toisan at all; those are actually my father tongue languages, not Mandarin. Though language does evolve, understanding a language is not just simply understanding a language: knowing a second language also exposes you to cultural nuances that you cannot simply know just by exposure to cultural traditions. Chinese is notorious (and famous) for its endless idioms and word plays, and understanding them brings you closer to understanding the culture itself better.

The 3K applications are due on March 1. Who knows if Kaia will place anywhere at all, much less a Mandarin immersion program. But I do know that the ideal situation would be if she had consistent Chinese language exposure outside of my barely-basic Mandarin skills.