Food Chat
Today I leave the comfortable bosom of Shenzhen and hop across to Hong Kong, doing my first ever proper visa run. Barring any unforeseen circumstances, I'll be flying back to Kunming tomorrow night after nine days in the overcast, muggy Pearl River Delta.
A week is far too long for Shenzhen, readers. The city itself isn't too bad, but once you get over the modernity and prosperity its appeal begins to run dry. The closest analogy I can find for the city is "Los Angeles with rain". All of my Bay Area readers just shuddered.
However, when one lives in the Chinese hinterland as I do, Shenzhen's bland internationalism actually feels refreshing. For instance, there are Starbucks' everywhere. I drank a pint of Carlsberg at a real Irish pub. I've eaten a different type of food each night, only once eating Chinese. My guiding principle, so to speak, is to take advantage of opportunities that don't exist in Kunming.
On a related note, I realized just the other day that I've eaten Chinese food on this trip no more frequently than I would have back in the US. I'm sure Shenzhen, with its Chinese melting pot demography, has its fair share of excellent restaurants; I'm positive they exist somewhere.
There are competing schools of thought for laowais in China on the subject of food. Some take the "go native" approach, devoting themselves to eating Chinese food almost exclusively. The logic for this scheme, admittedly, is solid. Chinese food is cheaper and better and fresher than foreign food. Following a Ricardian principle of comparative advantage, why eat anything else?
Well...sometimes Chinese food just doesn't cut it. Four and a half years here cannot erase the 24 I lived before them, when my taste buds enjoyed their formative experiences. And while I know that a bowl of noodles will be nutritious and tasty and cheap, I still often opt for a mediocre burger or sandwich. In the mornings, bad coffee trumps good tea. For a quick lunch, cheese and crackers cannot be beat. Even if the cheese cost me an internal organ at an imported supermarket.
One of my favorite travel experiences in China was my two-week jaunt through Tibetan Sichuan. The food, my friends, was the same- every meal, every town- local Chinese. I enjoyed it enough, but the first thing I did upon arriving in Chengdu was splurge on a gigantic meal at Peter's Tex-Mex bar and grill. My stomach still hasn't forgiven me for the sudden gastronomic bounty after two weeks of deprivation.
I walked back to my guesthouse nearly doubled over, but quite happy. For overcooked "Tex-Mex" restored my proper sense of culinary balance, regardless of where I was in the world.
Shenzhen Redux
Aloha, dear readers- my silence in recent days is attributable to being on the road, in this case Shenzhen. I've been here for a work-related conference held at the Shenzhen Exhibition Center, a building I found more interesting than the exhibition itself.
The exhibition center is huge. Enormous. Very, very big. Let's put it this way- you could hold both the Democratic and Republication national conventions in the building simultaneously without attendees from either side even running into each other. You could hold the entire NCAA tournament there; in about two days. The entire Moscone Center-the exhibition center in San Francisco I once thought was somewhat large- would fit neatly within one of the seven halls in this monolithic edifice.
Walking around the Shenzhen center got me thinking that China has bought into the cult of the large. Once a uniquely American paradigm, the cult of the large basically refers to an unquenchable desire of a nation to have the biggest of everything.
China already has the biggest population in the world. It has the biggest municipal area (Chongqing, with 30 million smoggy souls). China has the biggest square, the longest bridge, the biggest international terminal (Beijing), and even the biggest Buddha for those needing a spiritual angle. If China were a US state, it would be Texas.
For better or for worse, China may never get to see its "bigness" era to its logical conclusion. America's development meant big cars and big suburban single-family houses. Today's reality of recession and global warming makes that choice impossible for the Chinese, who will likely have to content themselves with little apartments and rail travel in the years going forward.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
I read today that Americans can visit 155 countries around the world without a visa. Unfortunately, the one I choose to live in isn't one of them. I'm off to Hong Kong on Monday to extend my visa, a process that takes 24 hours, most of which I'll spend trying to figure out ways not to spend money.