The Homecoming Myth

Despite my pedigree (parents who met through the Asian student union at Cal; a great uncle whose name is on the San Francisco Chinatown branch library for contributions he made to Chinese American studies), I never really - never truly - embraced the Asian American identity until I went to Asia. No, not just went to Asia but actually spent considerable time there. Previous visits were a whirlwind of sightseeing, getting stuffed with local delicacies and going out at night, but this time was different. Camped out for a week or more in one spot, you realize that even though from the outside you look more at home than anywhere else you've ever lived, your mannerisms and your words betray you. Consider it a different form of passing, one which the locals are always quick to spot.

Growing up half-Japanese American and half-Chinese American (fourth generation on both sides) in the Pacific Northwest, I've always unquestionably thought of myself as Asian. After all, that was the box that I checked each time I took a standardized test. I had a sense that our family wasn't quite like some of my peers, whose parents were immigrants, but I felt secure in embracing that identity. People could tell by looking at me that I was Asian, and if pressed I felt confident claiming both halves of my heritage, even though I don't speak either language and by most standards would be considered "white-washed."

But then I went abroad to Europe, and suddenly the image I had of myself and who I was no longer matched up with what others perceived when they looked at me. It was like standing naked in front of a funhouse mirror. To foreigners, I could not possibly be American, as I claimed. (Because Americans are obviously either black or white). But nor did it make sense (to me, at least) to say that I was Asian because, under the circumstances, it would imply that I was from China or Japan. The simplest explanation, because of my Japanese name, was to say that my father was Japanese and leave it at that, but even that felt misleading. If I thought that somehow I would be more accepted traveling through the nations of my ancestors, I was quickly disillusioned.

The Japanese are too polite as a society (at least to your face) to do more than look pleasantly surprised when you claim ancestry and exhibit a toddler's grasp of the language, but the Chinese are brutal. When stepping out with any non-Asian acquaintances, they will automatically address you first, in Mandarin, and then make no effort to conceal their scorn when your inability to understand manifests. If they are elderly Chinese, they will repeat themselves, louder and slower, as if that will help.

"But..but you look Chinese!" splutter the ones who can speak English.

A Chinese who can't speak Chinese is unheard of. I'm sure the same train of thought runs through the Japanese subconscious, but they just don't say it out loud in front of you. To them, living in [relatively] ethnically homogenous societies, language may as well be passed down through DNA. I wish it were.

I didn't jet over to Asia with the pretense of "finding my roots." Even though other relatives have located our distant relations in China and Japan, it wasn't a reunion that I particularly yearned for. Because, even if I could communicate with them, what would I say? What is there to say? All of the family I've ever known are American born and bred. If there's anything in our genes, maybe it's identity crisis.

The lack of understanding between Asians and Asian Americans is practically tangible, perhaps on one side of the Pacific more so than the other. Being judged, ridiculed and stared at in disbelief when you can't read a menu but you recognize the food on sight; it's something that only other Asian Americans can relate to. 

I think I know who my people are now. And they're not in Asia.

Metropolis

For all the hype, both negative and positive, Shanghai felt surprisingly livable. My host's sixteenth floor apartment (sleek, modern and full of natural light) looked out, on the one side, to the modest park that sat between our building and the other tall structures that comprised the residential complex, and West Beijing Road on the other. On a clear day one could theoretically see all the way out towards the famous Pearl Tower, an architectural abomination that nonetheless draws tourists like flies to rotting flesh but, while I was there, heavy smog hovered in the air like a curtain.

Similar to Singapore, Shanghai bears the mark of colonialism with elegance, proudly displaying gorgeous, well-preserved buildings and foreign compounds. My favorite snapshot of the city was walking around the Bund at night, with the old European-style buildings illuminated behind me, and looking across the river to the flashy skyscrapers opposite. Just thirty years ago, that area was just farmland. But at the same time, elements of modernity and new wealth abound. Near our apartment, the Jing'an Sculpture Park featured avant-garde installations that, against a backdrop of skyscrapers, achieved a pleasant harmony.

Slightly further in the opposite direction, the revamped Jing'an Temple glittered with hefty donations from the nouveau riche. (And quite literally at that - it looked as though a giant had held the building by its foundation and dipped it in molten gold). The temple was perhaps blasphemously opulent for a Buddhist place of worship, but in the context of the neighborhood's contemporary identity - a consumer's mecca of designer shops, it made sense.

It would be easy to write Shanghai off as culturally sterile, since after all some of the biggest attractions are commercialized pedestrian areas selling cheap trinkets and knock-offs. Not to mention that the majority of the city's inhabitants are foreigners. But beneath the glitzy Times Square ambiance, Shanghai does have its quirks - old buildings that developers won't touch because they believe they're haunted; the nation's largest collection of vintage propaganda posters displayed in the basement of an apartment complex; trendy (by my SF standards) bars next door to hole-in-the-wall family restaurants. Complicated, enigmatic and timeless, Shanghai is the sort of place that begs for a return visit.

Tianzifang.

Jing'an Sculpture Park.

Jing'an Temple.

Shanghai in Photos: 1933

Not far from the Hailun Road metro stop rests the concrete skeleton of the Old Millfun slaughterhouse (confusingly also known as Laochangfang, according to Google Maps), a vestige of the Art Deco period whose interior has been repurposed into cafes, studios, beauty salons, shops and event spaces while retaining the original cattle ramps and narrow passages presumably intended for humans. The very neighborhood radiates with yuppie industrial chic; on the way there I passed through a stretch of cement-tiled road lined with tea houses, galleries and coffee shops that would not have felt out of place in Brooklyn. The street itself is not incongruous with cosmopolitan Shanghai, but the proximity to "real" China (clotheslines barely high enough to keep blankets from skimming the sidewalk, folding tables for mahjong, tiny markets with cardboard boxes of produce spilling out toward the street), merely ten paces away across the pedestrian bridge, surprised me. But, thinking of how my inner-city high school in Seattle's Central District was adjacent to the affluent Madrona neighborhood, cities often seem paradoxical in layout.

See more of the slaughterhouse and Shanghai here.

Save the Pandas

Northeast of the city center lies the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding - the most famous local attraction, and rightly so. For the equivalent of $10, it's probably the only place in the world where you can see dozens of pandas from cubs to adults up close. 

I arrived at the park not long after it opened in the morning, and watched the keepers set up for the day's first feeding, sticking bundles of bamboo shoots upright in crevices ground into the wooden platform where the adult pandas lounge during the day (essentially a viewing stage for visitors). After a while they lumbered out of their overnight enclosures, and proceeded to eat...and eat and eat. Often lying on their backs and using their paws to bend branches over their faces and munching the leaves, the pandas rarely moved except to defecate or to attack a new clump of bamboo after they'd exhausted one.

The cubs were more active but clumsier too - scurrying over the grass and each other, but constantly falling onto their bellies as they tripped or their legs gave out. The adorable, physical awkwardness of trying to figure out one's own body reminded me of my hosts' 20-month old son.  

For a large "donation" fee you can have the volunteer experience, consisting of a presentation about the park, cleaning bamboo shoots for the cubs, receiving a panda swag bag, and cuddling with a cub while the staff snap pictures of this bucket list moment. In preparation for the photo opp, the keepers lured a 1-year old female inside with an apple. But because she was still groggy and slow-moving, a keeper hoisted her up under her arms - like a child carrying an oversize teddy bear, and brought her over.

Being herbivores, pandas aren't a threat to humans, but they do have sharp claws that can be dangerous if they're feeling playful. So, to keep the cub distracted during the shoot, her keeper smeared honey on her paws, which she happily took to licking and smacking her lips in front of the camera.

What was it like to hug a real panda? Well, she didn't smell at all like I anticipated. And while her thick fur was fluffy, in terms of texture it was rough like a dog's rather than silky like a cat's. I pressed my cheek against the top of her head, wistfully thinking how therapeutic it would be if I had access to one all the time. Reluctantly I gave her a last squeeze, somewhat consoled by the fact that at least I had photos document the moment.

See more of the pandas and Chengdu here.

Sichuan Style

On my third night in Chengdu, my hosts decided that it was time for my inaugural hot pot experience. I call it an "experience" because it is not just a meal that one simply eats; no, in Sichuan, home of the aptly named numbing peppers, one suffers through it. If you're vaguely thinking that you've had hot pot before, think again - it's definitely something that would stick in your memory like a physical injury.

The spread.

We sat around a square table, one person per side, with a recessed gas burner in the center. After a quick exchange with the server, it was decided that we would have a combination of plain and spicy broth with an assortment of raw veggies, meats and dumplings to cook in it. And beer. Throughout the entire meal the three of us of legal drinking age would collectively consume five or so large bottles. 

The broth arrives in a large cauldron, which is set on the burner to boil. Once bubbles are visible, it's time to dump in the raw ingredients. I should note that this is not a relaxed cook-your-own meal like Japanese shabu shabu; it is a workout. The spicy broth is essentially the seventh circle of hell in liquid form. At first bite it burns the mouth, numbing it over time, while clearing the sinuses and, hours later, the bowels. In the colder northern reaches of China, where this dish is more common and my hosts had lived and worked previously,  hot pot is the reason why "diarrhea" is one of the first Chinese words they teach foreigners. Whether this is due to the bacteria from using the same chopsticks for raw and cooked foods or the sheer spice is unclear. 

The cooking. And, no, the toddler did not eat from the red broth.

The beer was intended to counteract the burning spiciness, but I found that the slight carbonation of the drink exacerbated it - that is until the numbness set in. My strategy throughout dinner was to nibble something spicy (a mushroom, a piece of lamb), guzzle down some beer, and then let my palette recover with veggies cooked in the plain broth. I'd say the consumption ratio was something like 1:4:8. 

Perhaps by now I've made the ritual seem torturous, but in reality it's one of those situations where you want to keep eating because it's so delicious despite the pain it inflicts. Or maybe I'm just a masochist. We bought some ice cream bars on the way home to relieve our sore mouths.

Several days later I took a cooking class that included a trip to the local market with the instructor. After an awkward exchange that's become all too common in the last two months ("Where are you from?" "America." "You don't look American." "My family is Japanese."* - 10 minutes later in the market - "...you can probably find these in Japan!" "...cool.") Mounds of spices, more kinds of tofu than I ever knew existed, and succulent produce better than anything you'd see at Whole Foods at a quarter of the price - I was snapping pictures left and right. The locals probably thought I was crazy.

Spices n things at the market.

The meat section was a little questionable, due to the lack of refrigeration and blatant disregard for hygiene. Butchers and customers alike turned the hunks of meat dangling from metal hooks this way and that, and I cringed when I saw the employees casually chop the meat, bag it, accept money and give change without any hand-washing or wearing of gloves. The actual products weren't that shocking - I'd seen hooves, innards and skinned rabbits before, but the black chickens and pig faces were new to me.

I found these a little disturbing.

I felt a little bad for the fresh fish, flopping around in plastic kiddie pools with barely enough water to breathe, but all thoughts of the market were banished from my mind by the time we sat down to eat several hours later, and I was more preoccupied with the sheer amount of oil I was about to consume. The way Chinese chefs use oil in cooking is all too similar to the liberal use of alcohol employed by the French in cooking and baking. Those peanuts in kung pao chicken? Fried in the wok before being added to the rest of the mix. As a pastry cook, though, I'm all too aware that there is rarely much overlap between the things that taste good and the things that are good for you, but life is too short not to indulge once in a while.

Kung pao chicken, beer duck, cucumber salad and spicy eggplant.

*Since arriving in China I've taken to telling people that I'm Japanese because otherwise I get a lot of grief for not being able to speak Chinese. Asian-Americans are like unicorns to Asians - they've possibly heard of us, but they don't understand us. Whereas Japanese people were too polite to question me, Chinese people have no qualms about openly displaying scorn and derision.

Mount Qingcheng

Wanting to get a break from Chengdu's sprawling network of high rises, I took a day trip with my host to Mt. Qingcheng, a series of 36 peaks located near Dujiangyan City, about a forty minute train ride northwest of Chengdu. As I noted previously, the air quality in the urban center isn't much different than it is in LA, but right away when we exited the station and made toward the densely wooded hills, our lungs relished the difference. Getting there is not difficult, however we learned the hard way that train tickets should be purchased at least a day in advance (because tickets do sell out for desired times and unless going through a third party vendor you'll probably have to wait in line to make a purchase), and that a passport is necessary - for foreigners, a Chinese resident card is not sufficient.

Near the main gate.

As a revered center of Taoism dating back over two thousand years BC, this UNESCO Heritage Site is dotted with ancient temples and palaces. Some of these have been adapted to souvenir shops, but they're relatively few and far between and thus not too much of a buzz kill. There are two paths up the mountain, which the English-language tourism website helpfully refers to as "anterior" and "posterior." For convenience's sake, we took whichever one means the front.

The trek up to the top is not a hike per se - the path gravitates between walkways of wooden planks periodically penetrated by trees that the builder didn't want to cut down and old paving stones. Oh, and steps. Lots and lots of steps. It's been several days since this excursion and my calves still ache. 

Vendors in the main palace.

With the slight time pressure of a late afternoon return train ticket, we didn't linger as long as we could have at each site. Some highlights: a lake with a pretty boat that ferried us across before unceremoniously slamming into a few rubber tires on the other side as if it only had two functions - moving and not moving; a furnicular whose path went over beautiful cliff paintings; elderly Chinese men with long beards and traditional garb who looked as though they could be original to the centuries-old buildings; a baulstrade thick with heart-shaped locks in a poor imitation of the Pont de l'Archevêché in Paris; a souvenir shop that, with the aid of a green screen, specialized in making videos of you and your loved one flying through the local scenery. On our way back down the mountain, I stood transfixed, utter revulsion churning inside me like vomit after binge drinking, in front of the latter until I remembered that we were running to catch our train on time. (We did).

Greenery.

Although there are many incongruous elements to contemporary Mt. Qingcheng, the pristine beauty of the forest; the way it absorbs sound like a sponge and the gorgeous autumnal palette that materializes when viewed from up high retain a respectable spirituality commensurate to its history. I wish we'd had enough time to go down the other path, but for that one would certainly need more than a day. Near the bottom of the mountain, guesthouses perch just off the main road as it begins to slope upward. Next time, maybe...

Chengdu in Photos

Although it's the fifth largest city in China with a population around 11 million, Chengdu probably isn't that well-known to the average foreigner. If you've heard of it, it's probably because of the large panda breeding and research center at the outskirts of town. My hosts, who have been here now for almost two months, are still getting to know the area, so last weekend we set out to explore some areas that were new to all of us.

1. Wenshu Temple, a sprawling Buddhist complex including a monastery and beautiful gardens.

2. Jinli Street, one of several recreated "ancient" pedestrian areas. It's kitschy, with a decidedly Epcot Center-like vibe, but fun for people-watching and sampling street food.

3. The so-called Wide and Narrow Alley, a network of pedestrian streets similar to above. But instead of cheap souvenirs, the businesses here are more of the handicraft shop, restaurant and bar variety.

4 & 5. People's Park. Whereas in other countries a park is somewhere one might go to find peace and solace, or perhaps a bench to sleep on if homeless, here parks are intended for large social gatherings and activities. From dancing to tai chi to karaoke, passing through an urban Chinese park on a weekend epitomizes the colloquial phrase for having a good time, which roughly translates to "hot and noisy" in English. Chinese people also have no qualms about setting up amplifiers and subwoofers within proximity of other groups' amps and subwoofers. Hot and noisy indeed.

Photos will be posted to Flickr asap; the website seems to be blocked by the Great Firewall.