Bed, Bath, and Beyond: Secrets of Chinese Longevity

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There was a time, back in my heyday of idealism and social-work-induced rent options, when I lived with 8 girls in a 5-bedroom apartment in Harlem.  I had somehow finagled my own room, likely on gossamer claims of being a restless sleeper, but most of the girls shared a room.  One such heavier-sleeping friend was named Joann, who shared a room with Amy.  The two of them enjoyed an alley about two feet wide between their twin beds, and were book-ended by a burgeoning, barely restrained closet on one end and their bedroom wall on the other end.  I loved that apartment.

The problem, of course, with Joann and Amy’s room, was the complete lack of floor space.  You couldn’t go in and loll against the wall or sit in a chair.  No, if you wanted to see what the giggling was all about, you had to plop yourself right down on one of their beds.  Amy’s side was plopping-safe, but every time I dropped myself on Joann’s side, it was like falling on hard-packed cement.  (Somehow, my brain was never able to retain this information, leading to many unfortunate experiences)  Her mattress, you see, wasn’t normal.  It was a “Chinese mattress.”  Constructed, it seemed, to confer pain rather than rest on its users.  (Or at least on its quick-sitting guests).

“Chinese mattress” is probably not the official term, but it was our colloquialism (my friend Mary, who is getting married this weekend (Yay for Mary and Cristoph!) also once owned such a contraption).  These mattresses are about 4 inches thick, can be carried by hand, run their owner close to $50, are made of tightly packed straw or something like it, and, according to this news clip on YouTube, could be carcinogenic.

Which, by way of rambling and desultory introduction, brings me to my completely unresearched and largely anecdotal point:  Old people in China are mysteriously healthy.  They aren’t creaky.  They might be a bit stooped, but they tote babies around under their arms, they sit on the same 2-foot tall plastic stools relished by the rest of their kin, and they express a concerted lack of oofing when sitting and getting up again.  On the whole, their old age seems pleasant, fruitful, less overshadowed by pain and doctor’s appointments.  What is going on?

I have a guess.  Or, more accurately, three guesses.  I call them “bed, bath, and beyond.”

Bed:  The Chinese people generally sleep on the hard, uncomfortable mattresses described above.  Regrettably, for those of us who can’t relinquish our vision of a downy nocturnal paradise, these beds are probably good for your back.  You can’t curl up on your side, flanked by pillow-mountains and a warm husband, twisting untold numbers of vertebrae and your neck in the process.  No, if Chinese mattress users even thought about straying from a ramrod-straight prostration strategy, they’d probably bruise something by morning.  Over a lifetime, I have to think that their spines are straighter as a result.

Bath:  By “bath” I euphemistically mean “toilet.”  Have you ever used a squatty potty?  (I could (and should) write an entirely different post dedicated to the story of my mastery over those once-stultifying holes in the ground…feel my triumph, oh mainland!)  The squat toilet is basically all that’s available in China, unless you’re in a Western restaurant or hotel, in which case you might be lucky enough to rustle up a ma tong.  It means horse bucket and it’s the Mandarin word for Western toilets.  Yes, I laughed too.

The lack of Western toilets in China is not the result of any disparity in technology, knowledge, or affordability—no, the Chinese actually just prefer their squat toilets.  They think they are cleaner.  And, when you get right down to it, they’re probably right.  Instead of baring your undefended bottom to the murky history of some public toilet seat, you just put your shoe-clod feet on the potty’s rumble strip and go to it.  (At my husband’s workplace, they had to post signs explaining that it’s not okay to stand on Western toilets and squat on them…)  My point is this:  every old person in China uses, and has been using, these toilets all their life.  Two, three, maybe four times a day, they have to squat to just a foot above the ground, hover in that position for a few minutes, and then haul themselves back upright.  I’ve never seen a Chinese toilet equipped with handicapped bars or support of any kind.  Prerequisites for toilet use thus include: decent balance, flexible hamstrings, a stellar Achilles’ tendon, functional quadriceps, and a redoubtable backside.

Beyond:  The longevity of China’s elderly is likely also extended by diet and lifestyle factors so numerous that I simply call them “beyond”.  People in China just don’t seem to overeat with quite the relish we do in the States.  As one woman somberly observed, “for Americans, enough is not enough.”  People in China care a lot about their health, they eat a lot of vegetables, and they apply a dizzying range of Chinese medicinal concepts to their dietary choices, with a zeal that Westerners would call strict discipline, but which the Chinese simply think of as logical.  They are also lucky to have a narrower range of dietary malefactors:  nothing is deep-friend, and you can’t find high-fructose corn syrup to save your life, and Chinese desserts are…well…let’s just say I don’t think sugar cravings are a big problem over here.

So, if you want to be a flexible, jaunty, creak-free member of the geriatric legion, consider the way of the Chinese:  Pee in the ground, sleep on a slightly softened rock, eat your veggies, and you’ll enjoy your eighties.

China Doll Mission: Impossible

Lately, Matt and I have been hunting for a doll.  Not just any doll—a doll that looks Chinese.  While this may seem an unusual errand for kid-less newlyweds like us, it wasn’t entirely random.  We were on a mission.

Around Christmas time, Matt’s brother and sister-in-law, Abby and Josh, sent us an email.  They have some friends who adopted their four-year old daughter from China a few years back.  At some point last winter, she was playing with her dolls, but after surveying a few more closely, she put them down, and said:

“Mommy, I want a doll that looks like me.”

Her mom thought this was a reasonable request, and she began to look around.  If you’ve scoured any Barbie aisles lately, you’ll know this is a tall order.  If anyone is actually selling an Asian Barbie, I would bet money that they just put different eyes on an other-wise Caucasian face and body (like all of the “black” Barbies I’ve ever seen).  Abby and Josh heard about the search, and naturally assumed that such a doll should be easy to find in China.  Matt and I we were duly dispatched

The first few shops we tried dished up this sort of fare:

Dolls on Old Shekou Street

Matt checks Coastal City Mall

A bit mystified, I used my signature combination of broken Chinese, English, and hand-flapping, to ask the clerks what was up.

“Dui bu qi (excuse me), ni you (you have) doll China face? (hand gesturing around my face)”  The clerks, who are invariably young, slim teenagers, burst into giggles and said,

“Mei you! (no have).”

“Why no have?” I asked, with a played-up shrug.

“We like dolls look like you!”  One explained, with more giggles.  By “you,” she meant dolls that look like me.

Oh boy.

We thought maybe we hadn’t cast a wide-enough net in our search.  When Matt’s parents visited us in March, I dragged them up and down some shopping streets near us.  My father-in-law likes to embraces these sorts of missions, and he did his best to ask in one shop.  The girl took off running, in a promising way, toward another shop.  But, alas, this sister shop produced only the same blonde haired, blue-eyed (and oddly fur-lined) options that everyone else had.

Look Familiar?

Dolls at the end of the Rainbow

(Incidentally, that doll in the center with the white hair is actually a famous little lamb cartoon character.  In a marketing move that probably wouldn’t fly in America, the cartoon is also the mascot of a hot-pot restaurant called “Little Sheep”…where you can slice up the little lamb, boil her in your pot with garlic and chilies, and then chow down.  Hmm…not exactly the fate I would have chosen for Big Bird or Blues Clues if I were a kid.)

The social worker in me was actually quite touched by this little girl’s request.  I appreciated her pride of self, and her apparently independent notion that it would nice to play with a doll that looked like her.  Actually, through its sharp contrast, her request reminded me of a famous doll experiment, the Clark Doll Experiment, conducted in 1939.  Maybe you’ve heard of this?  If not, here’s our brief history lesson for the day:

In the late 30s, 40s, and 50s, Dr. Kenneth Clark, an African-American psychologist and the first black president of the American Psychological Association, and his wife and follow psychologist, Mamie Clark, completed some ground-breaking work.  They conducted a series of fascinating and heart-wrenching experiments to evaluate the impact of the Jim Crow laws and “separate but equal” model of educational segregation.  The Clarks showed black children, between ages 6 and 9, two dolls that were exactly the same.  Except, of course, that one had white skin and one had black skin.  When asked “which doll is the nice doll?  Which doll is the good doll?  Which doll would you like to play with?” usually more than half of the children pointed to the white doll.  When asked, “which doll is the bad doll?” many pointed to the black doll.  When asked to explain why a doll was beautiful or bad, they noted their skin color.  (You can see a few minutes of haunting footage here: Clark Doll Experiment, as part of a 2005 short film called “Girls Like Me” where the experiment was repeated in Harlem–with almost identical outcomes.  I really recommend you watch a few minutes–it’s compelling)  Clark’s results were presented as evidence to the Supreme Court during Brown vs. the Board of Education, helping to bring about the seminal decision that “separate” education could never be “equal.”

Now, I think there are some very different motivations behind the Chinese people’s preference for blonde dolls, but the situation still merits some concern.  Here is my 3-part thesis. 

• First, and possibly most important, while it would be unusual for a little American girl to grow up without dolls, China does not have an analogous tradition.  Dolls are a Western product, only recently introduced in China, and nobody my age grew up playing with dolls.  To expect a range of thoughtfully designed Chinese dolls to be on the market at this stage is probably premature.
• Secondly, and of similar importance, I see nothing to suggest that Chinese people feel inferior to other races or nations.  To the contrary, I see fierce pride for self and country, and the general notion that China is the center of the world, interested in outside people and ideas only to the extent that they can be used to improve China.  With very brief exceptions, like the Japanese occupation during WWII, and the century-long occupations of the islands of Hong Kong and Macau, China has never been under anyone’s thumb.  While I feel very confident in saying the preference for white dolls vs. black dolls in America was (and is) an issue of institutionalized racism, I highly doubt the Chinese nurture any beliefs about the superiority of white people.
• I think these blonde/blue-eyed dolls are popular in China because the Chinese people, like people in so many other places, really do believe that white/light skin is more beautiful than black/dark skin.  Skin pigmentation in China is quite varied—a field laborer from the south might have much darker skin than a business woman from the north, and in addition to Han Chinese people, the majority group, there are many Asian minority groups represented in China.  Regardless of their background, though, Chinese women carry sun umbrellas and visors en masse, and wear long clothing in the summer to avoid getting tan.  They believe, and maybe it’s true?, that if they get a tan once, their skin will not go back to the way it was.  Nearly every facial product in beauty shops in Shenzhen promises “whitening”–I personally have some whitening day cream at home due to the fact that I couldn’t buy anything else.  When I go to get a facial, or step into one of these shops, they invariably say “ni de pi fu hen hao! (your skin very nice!)”

But it gets worse.  One Chinese woman very recently explained to me that many of her countrymen have an intrinsic fear of black people.  “Especially the ones from African with the very, very black skin.  If children see someone like that, very often they cry.  They are just afraid, they haven’t seen someone like that.”  I asked her if she thinks such opinions are fueled by TV or movies, and she said no, she thought these were just natural reactions to the unfamiliar.

Even if it were a natural reaction, we have lots of natural reactions that need to be curbed, adjusted, educated.  And if it were 1905, maybe she’d have a point.  But, in today’s China, I don’t think such fear is a natural reaction.  Even if there were no movies or TV shows directly linking dark skin with “badness” in China (which I doubt–they watch the same things we do), the thousands of movies and advertisements featuring beautiful White people still send a message.  By contrast, I’ve never seen a single ad featuring anyone with dark skin in China. I’ve run into this attitude in South America as well–and I suspect it exists in many places.  Much of the world believes light-colored skin is better and more beautiful than other kinds of skin, and often prefer to inter-marry with lighter-skinned members of their own community.  I remember a Peruvian friend in college explaining that her mom’s family had disapproved of her dad because he had darker skin that she did (both were Peruvian).  Americans, who embrace a healthy tan and at least agree on and advertise the beauty of certain men and women of different races, may actually be ahead of the game in some respects.  I feel idealistic even saying this, but I really hope my grandchildren grow up in a world where beauty is a much broader concept that it is today.

So there, you have my deep thoughts for the day.

All in all, our hunt for a doll approaching anything like an ethnically accurate Chinese girl has been a bust.  To be truthful, I haven’t even seen a brunette.

Ironically, someone suggested we check with the people at “American Girl”–a popular doll company in the US.  (I had their Kirsten doll when I was little–she’s a blonde-haired, blue-eyed character who was supposed to be a girl who lived in the MidWest in the 1850s.  I also had a carefully constructed plan, involving an upfront combination of the resources of my next four Christmases and birthdays to buy all of her accompanying loot…).  Apparently, they’ll make anything you request, and already have a line of ethnically varied dolls.

I really hope that little girl keeps thinking the way she is thinking–and that she gets a beautiful Chinese doll.

Phnom Penh: Palaces, Pol Pot, and Eating Ants

One thing I love about living in another country is that all the long weekends and vacation days are a complete surprise.  Even if you kind of know Qing Ming Weekend is coming up, it’s not burned into my brain like Thanksgiving or Christmas, and so it ends up feeling like free time, rather than a day to continue cherished traditions.

Last week, Matt got Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday off (woot woot Chinese long weekends!), and we headed to Cambodia to visit our friends Mary and Christoph.

Holding local produce...and beverage products

It’s really hot in Cambodia–we didn’t quite realize.  So this is us looking a bit steamed and limp.  But happy. 

On our first full day, we met Mr. Kohn–Christoph and Mary’s favorite tuk-tuk driver.  His ebullient smile was undaunted by rain or heat, he had an awesome new green tuk-tuk, and he knew the city like the back of his hand.  What a sweet man.

 

The streets of Phnom Penh are even wilder than those of Shenzhen, and the capital is tellingly less-developed than much of what we’ve seen in China.  Some things were surprisingly familiar though, like their shared penchant for wrapping small babies in swathes of (seemingly) unnecessary clothing, despite 90 degree weather:

Official figures (e.g. those in my head) confirm that Cambodia dishes up roughly 1 Buddha statue per person, and we greatly enjoyed poking through their many, many wats (temples).  (Sans-shoes, of course.  We learned that you’re not supposed to wear shoes in a Buddhist temple, nor point your feet toward the Buddha.  If you sit, you sit on your heels, with your feet tucked respectfully backwards.)

I appreciated the architectural creativity in Cambodia–their temples and palaces were all very ornately carved, and full of frescos and colors.  This style was refreshingly different from the interior simplicity of Japanese Buddhist temples, China’s Forbidden City, and the royal palaces of Korea.

On the grounds of the National Palace

A 4-walled fresco had this white-out line running through it--flood? Khmer Rouge? Not sure

One small step for woman...

Most available surfaces were this ornate--amazing

After a lovely morning at the National Palace, we steeled ourselves for a trip to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.

Most Westerners have heard of Pol Pot and his killing fields, but I didn’t feel particularly well-informed before our visit.  We learned that Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge movement was only in power from 1975 to 79–I thought it had been more like a decade–and in that short time, they massacred nearly 1/3 the population of Cambodia (1.7 million people).

One of the most f**-d up list of rules I've ever read

The museum was created on the essentially unchanged grounds of the most infamous political prison camp in Cambodia, the dreaded S-21, where over 14,000 political prisoners were tortured and killed during this terrible regime.

Room after room of jail cells

Barbed Wire Fences

I have rarely set foot in such an evil-feeling place.  I couldn’t even look at most of the displays; mostly I just wanted to throw up.  It is said that Pol Pot learned from Mao, and his regime, while more hostile and more extreme in some ways, bore the fingerprints of the application of Communism in China.  When Pol Pot first took over, his idyllic vision was to return the people of Cambodia to “year zero”–to a peaceful, agrarian (e.g. uneducated) society.  People were forced to migrate from the cities into the country (at the height of this, the capital city had 1,000 residents), and most personal freedoms were banned–business, religion, books, education, etc.

Matt and I talked at length about the draw of Communism, a system of thought that has inspired so many, and yet that seemed to go so disastrously wrong in almost every modern example we have.  Why?  I don’t really have a good answer, but it made me think about one small piece of the problem: the tendency to strictly legislate ideals.  Rather than persuading people through public debate, philosophy, or other means, citizens are simply forced to comply with whatever the leader thinks will create the perfect society.

As we were talking, an odd memory came to mind for me.  In sixth grade, our teachers created a year-long project that culminated in Country Day.  Students worked in pairs to create a country–we made up the flag, national dishes, climate, exports, the government, etc.  I remember having a spirited debate with my partner, Meghan Saylor, over how our country would handle divorce.  I had been raised in a Christian home and heard about rising divorce rates in the news, and I truly believed that divorce was wrong.  I felt willing to allow “1 divorce per person” but didn’t want to allow more.  Meghan, forward-thinking 11 year-old that she was, said “but what if a woman marries one guy, and he beats her, so she leaves him, and then her next husband beats her too?”  My instinct was to say “well, that’s her fault.  She shouldn’t pick these bad men.  I don’t want a society full of divorce!”

Nearly twenty years later, I don’t recall what legislative solution our oligarchy arrived at, but the instinct I had, at such a young age, came back to me.  I didn’t like divorce, and I wanted to encourage people not to get divorced.  (Which is, of course, different from encouraging healthy marriages)  But my gut instinct was to make it a law, and punish infractions, rather than to somehow motivate people to pursue better marriages in some other way.

I’m not saying that this is anything like the evil we saw in the Tuol Sleng, I’m just saying that the combination of ideals, power, and being highly educated (believe it or not, Pol Pot was educated in France), too easily conspire to prompt a leader to ignore dissent and to force his will, thinking he knows best.  (Matt recently read a book called The Lucifer Effect that offers a frightening and convincing summary of the social systems that reliably lead to horrors like Auschwitz, Abu Ghirab, and the Tuol Sleng.  We aren’t as infallible as we think.)

I could go on, but I won’t.  Instead, let’s end on a lighter note:  eating bugs.

In our efforts to appreciate Khmer cuisine at a popular outdoor BBQ restaurant, Matt ate beef-friend ants…

And I'm supposed to kiss you later?

Christoph, an ant aficionado, declared the dish delicious

All the buggy glory...and we work so hard w/ our pesticides in the states...

And I enjoyed a cappuccino at the F.C.C. (Foreign Correspondents Club).  I think, qualitatively, that Matt’s adventure made him happier. 

After a few days of exploring in Phnom Penh, the 4 of us packed into a cab for the bumpy, 6 hour ride to Siem Riep, home to dozens of ancient temples, including the world-renown Angkor Wat.  More on that next time!

Man Meets Coconut

Last weekend, I was in the mood to test drive my new African Chicken recipe, so Matt and I invited our friends Kyle and Jess over for dinner.  (We do also like them–this wasn’t a purely mercenary poultry endeavor)  (If you’re fuzzy on the AC reference, this was the Macanese dish I rambled on about last time, see recipe here).

Now, this was all well and good, except that in my fervor for culinary precision, I bought something I don’t think I’ve handled before:  a fresh coconut.   Not the peeled, white dreidel-ish sort, not the hairy brown kind, nor the big green type, but a blonde-brown, nearly hairless, hard-shelled varietal.  I don’t know if I’ve seen this one before–it looked like an extremely large, spherical, un-cracked pistachio nut.

This purchase led to a bit of a kitchen kerfuffle on Saturday morning.

The recipe called, blissfully, for the addition of a half cup of coconut innards to its delicious sauce of white wine, butter, coconut milk, and chilies.  Wielding my trusty Henkel cleaver, I held the coconut very still, and struck delicately at the crown.  I wanted to open only a small hole to start, so fresh coconut water wouldn’t run all over the counter.  The cleaver made a tiny mark, like I had tapped distractedly with a fork, and glanced off.

Frowning, I re-positioned the coconut, and had at it again.  Another loose mark, but no headway.  Goodness…I shouldn’t have passed up those numerous and consistently unappealing opportunities to watch Tom Hanks get sunburned in Castaway.  How do average people open these things anyway?

Then, I remembered that in each scenarios in my life involving drinking straws and coconuts, someone had a machete.  So, with new resolve, I spent a full minute hacking at that coconut.  In my mind, the coconut would yield to the crushing blow of my cleaver, like those submissive pumpkin squash I’m so fond of over here.  In reality, my efforts created a fetching series of shallow brown dents, like an artistic herring-bone abstraction.  But, not like cutting open a coconut.

At this point, Matt came over to see what in the world I was, er, “cooking”, and to assess my chances of retraining all 10 fingers in the process.  He had been trying to enjoy our peaceful Saturday morning, and some rare moments of televised basketball (March Madness had eeked out coverage on ESPNWorld in China, but most other trifling American athletic endeavors are swallowed in the maw of ISM (international soccer mania)).  My grumbles and hack-noises likely weren’t helping.

I looked up hopefully.

“You have a degree in materials science, right?  Why can’t I open this thing?”

He looked at my equipment, and then the Schneider gleam came into his eye.  (Sometimes he can’t help himself)  He opened a few drawers and started on Plan A.

Plan A: Puncture Coconut with Hammer and Cheapy Kitchen Knife

Making Some Headway (See the little smile?)

Plan A succeeds!  He made a hole, and I gleefully poured the yummy coconut water through a sieve and into a pitcher, for later refreshment.  Now, onto Plan B.

Plan B: Break It In Two! Hack it open! (Back to Original Tools)

Revising the Strategy-Plan B.2: Operation Porch

Enter: Screwdriver

Reassessment

Plan B.2.1: Brute force (Exit: Screwdriver)

Ajfhijdkljiufdd! (That was me shrieking with excitement in the background)

Success!

Look at that face!  So loveable.  (This is what the Schneider eye-glint business hopes for and foresees from the outset…)

I have to say, cavemen must have been happy guys.  Who knew the untold satisfaction of coconut-splitting?

Oh, and the chicken was tasty too!  (I grilled it on 400 for 40 minutes, turning every 10, and it came out beautifully.  Not quite enough spice for my taste, though, so next time I’ll use hot paprika and double the chilies.  Yum!)

 

Eating African Chicken on China’s Only Portuguese Island

The Ruins of St. Paul's

The geographically-inclined among us can likely pinpoint Macau on a map (just off the south-eastern coast of the Chinese mainland), but most of us would be a trifle fuzzy on the particulars.  Nowadays, Macau is best known for its casino-punctuated skyline (Macanese gambling rakes in a bigger annual haul that Las Vegas) and European cobbled streets, but in the past, it was a European colony.

The Grand Lisboa Casino

The Portuguese landed on the island in the 1500s made it an official colony in the 1800s, and only handed it back to China in 1999.  This restoration snuffed out the last dying ember of European colonialism in Asia.

Luckily, nobody snuffed out the food.

Macanese food is a curious blend of Chinese, Southeast Asian, and Portuguese influences, which basically means anything could happen, piquing the curiosity of nearby gastronomes.  Matt and I have been meaning to visit the island for a while, and last weekend, with his mom and dad  in town, we all headed for the ferry port.

(Linguistic Aside:  After my difficulty in figuring out how to introduce my in-laws during their last visit, I learned the proper Chinese this time around.  My teacher had no idea what an “in-law” was, but when I explained that I meant my husband’s parents, she was all smiles.

Gong-Gong and Po-Po

“Oh!  You mean gong-gong and po-po!”

“Er…yes?”  I said.

She explained that in China, a woman calls her inlaws  gong-gong and po-po.  A man calls his inlaws ye-ye and nai-nai.  If Matt and I were to sprout little Schneiders one day, they would use the same words for their grandparents.  In that way, the language tells you right off the bat whether these are paternal or maternal grandparents.  I think it’s kind of sweet that a daughter-in-law or son-in-law basically uses the same words a child would use for grandpa/grandma when speaking to their in-laws.  By contrast, “in-law” sounds like some kind of cold American legal term…)

African Chicken (Portuguese: galinha à Africana)

But I digress–back to this African chicken business.  The history of this peculiar dish is intriguing (the WSJ offers a summary here), and it’s name is certainly odd; nevertheless, African chicken is one of the signature dishes in the Macanese canon.  They marinate a whole chicken in a sauce of red chili, coconut milk, garlic, paprika and butter, then broil it with more sauce, then serve it up with even more sauce.

After an enjoyable (though very crowded) day of island explorations, the four of us settled ourselves down at Restaurante Litoral (Rua do Almiirante Sergio, 261-A853-2896-7878), highly recommended by our guidebook, and backed up by the packed restaurant, and the wall of “Best of Macau” certificates lining the stairs.  We ordered a big salad, a baked rice with roast pork, and the chicken.  While it was all delicious, I thought the African Chicken won by a mile.  The sauce was nice and chunky, the chicken was perfectly juicy and tender, and the flavor was spicy and creamy and wonderful.

Mmmm!

If you’re feeling experimental, give this recipe a try and tell me what you think–I might do the same and report back.  (More family pics at the bottom too)

AFRICAN CHICKEN RECIPE  (From Adventure Girl)

· Sauce Ingredients: 4 Tablespoons butter, 3 fresh red chili peppers, chopped (seeded if you don’t like it too spicy), 2 cloves garlic, chopped, 1 large shallot, chopped, Grated rind of 1 lemon, 1-1/2 cups coconut milk (fresh if possible), 1/2 cup white wine, 1/2 cup evaporated milk, 1/2 cup grated coconut (fresh if possible), 1 Tablespoon chopped fresh tarragon, 1 teaspoon paprika, Salt and pepper to taste

· Make the sauce:  Melt the butter in a saucepan. Add the chili peppers, garlic, and shallot.  Sauté until softened. Stir in lemon rind, coconut milk, wine, evaporated milk, coconut, tarragon, and paprika. Bring to a boil; then turn down heat and simmer for about 30-45 minutes. Season to taste with salt, pepper, and other seasonings; let cool.

· Cut one chicken, the best quality you can find, and cut it up into parts (legs, wings, breast, etc.).  Place the cut-up chicken in a container and pour on some of the sauce to marinate. Marinate for at least 1-2 hours.

· To cook, place marinated chicken pieces on a broiler pan, spread with more sauce and broil until cooked, turning and basting often. (You could probably also bake the chicken at 400 degrees for about 40 minutes, or even grill it). Serve chicken with extra sauce, a big salad, and French-fries or potatoes.

Photos from our Trip to Macau:

The Church near Largo Senado (Main Square)

Matt and Melissa on the steps of the A-Ma Temple

The Aforementioned Crowds

A European-Style Fountain

St. Paul's from the Side

Six Months of Loveliness

It’s February 20th today–our six month wedding anniversary!

(I always struggle when using anniversary to describe month-based units, because it’s really supposed to be year-based units, hence the “anni” part, but since no one else seems to mind, I’ve dropped suggested solutions like “semi-anniversary” and the like.)

Taxonomical dilemmas aside, I want you to know that I am a very happily married lady.  I’m not sure how long the honeymoon phase can last, but I’m hoping for at least 5 years.    I love Matt even more now than I did when I married him, and I’ll venture a guess that he feels the same way.  We thought we had some good evidence to go on when we said “I do”, but I am still often in awe of how great married life can be.  Even though 80% of our time is devoted to the regular daily stuff, when you love being around someone, that stuff is great too.

I love giving Matt a big hug when he comes home from work.  I love that he turns off all my white noise and makes French press coffee to coax me out of bed in the morning.  I love cooking up something new for dinner and having someone to feed it to.  I love taking walks at night, and trying to understand China and take in new ideas together.  I love that Matt encourages my writing and projects and cooking experiments, and that he likes having dinner parties and brunches with new friends.  Life has this new quality of permanence and unconditional love and stability that was hard to match with shifting roommates and apartments in NYC.  (Though I am thankful for that season too!)

I’d say it’s been six months of loveliness.

And I didn’t coin that term.

I once asked a friend how married life was going, around her first anniversary.  She laughed and said “it’s been a year of loveliness!”  I was taken aback.  Really?  Isn’t it supposed to be a struggle with tears and fights over toothpaste tube use and whatnot?  Then she explained that for the first several months, she felt like people didn’t expect to hear that everything was wonderful and easy, so she would try to dig up something to appease them.  “We did argue over replacing that red magnet on the fridge…”  Finally, she just gave up.  “Married life is great!  I love my husband!  Go and marry someone you think is awesome, ASAP!”

And so I did. 

I have to say, for the record, that whomever decided to tell dating couples that “every couple has problems” and “the first few years of marriage are really hard” really did me a disservice.  I know that’s true for some couples, but the rest of us aren’t getting much press.  And that kind of advice doesn’t help you end mediocre dating relationships.  If someone had just said to me, years ago, “hey, let me level with you–dating can be easy and smooth, and early married life can be a peaceful joy that is practically conflict-free,” then I would have ended all my past relationships a heck of a lot earlier!  I’m not a big fighter myself, and I enjoy harmony and connectedness, so I would have known something smoother and more loving was possible.

Luckily, I met Matt.  And it was easy and wonderful and we fit so well, and I just knew I wanted to spend my life with this man.

You might think it’s just us and the crazy year-of-loveliness girl, but that’s not true either.  I’ve been continually surprised at how many other couples in my circle of friends are having the same experience.  It’s like the best-kept secret of early matrimony.  Nobody stands up at a party and says “we are so in love, and we haven’t run into any conflicts to speak of, and the sex is great,” because…well…that would be weird.

You have to ask.  I remember talking with two friends from my church several months into both of their marriages, and the one who was more recently married was telling us how much she enjoyed her husband.  The other one said, “oh, thank goodness, you’re having one of our marriages!” and then they both laughed.  No one had really told them it was possible either!  Another single lady and I once asked another friend, who was seven or eight years into her marriage, how things were going.  She looked around furtively, then leaned in and said “I am really enjoying our sex life–it’s kind of a recent discovery.  My husband actually had to ask me for a day off last week!”  We were both shocked, but so happy she’d told us this!

I know that not every couple has a smooth dating experience, or an easy first year of marriage.  And I don’t think that’s bad–some couples thrive on debate and drama, others are struggling with major personality differences, or have challenges to deal with up front.  I’m not saying those people aren’t happy, or that smooth and easy is the only recipe for success.  I also know that Matt and I might encounter tough decisions or have a real disagreement someday.  In fact, I’m assuming we will.  And I hope we talk and pray and hold each other’s hand then the same way we do now.

But for now–married life is wonderful.  And I want that on the record.  I love Matt Schneider!  And I’m going to make him a great dinner tonight.    Get ready, honey.

The Corrections

This blog has not run a correction before, but I suspect it is merited this time.  I posted a link to my friend Marcella’s blog, but I think it went to a Chinese site…oops.  I fixed the link in the related post, but in case you already read it and suffered a twinge of despair at its inaccuracy, here is the correct link:

 https://maadventures.wordpress.com/

Check out the Dec 31st post, entitled “Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night” for possibly incriminating pictures of us all in reindeer ears.

Happy Chinese New Year!