The Night Market

The most unusual things are not unusual in China. Living here, you kind of get used to that constant feeling of; "What on earth is going on here!" in the back of your mind. You even learn to disregard it most of the time. We foreigners have taken to saying:

"T.I.C. baby!" - This Is China.

Amazingly, that expression is often the most logical and available explanation for the completely inexplicable things that happen here on a daily basis.  Let me explain...

A few weekends ago, several of us laowai girls met up in Suzhou, about 3 hours from my home, for a couple of days off. We wandered into a western-style pub boasting hamburgers and imported brews, and having ordered cheeseburgers and beers from the Chinese bartender downstairs, we settled ourselves in the craft-store decorated upstairs room. A few minutes later, the waiter appeared and set the first burger down in front of me. As an aside, it's worth mentioning that meals are never served together here; food is brought out as it's ready, which generally leaves everyone at the table eating at different intervals. I inspected the burger to find a bun containing lettuce, tomatoes, and a single slice of white cheddar cheese – and nothing more. Confused, we quickly called the woman back.

"Where is the burger?"

"Yes," she answered confidently.

"No— I mean, the meat, the burger. Where is it?" She looked confused. "This is cheese hamburger."

"Right," I continued. "I wanted a cheeseburger. But this is just cheese. Where is the burger?"

"You mean beef?"

She was now catching on.

"Yes, the beef," I replied. "Where is the beef?"

"Oh! You want beef and cheese hamburger?"

"Yes, a cheeseburger - a beef and cheese hamburger. Yes."

"Oh okay. Yes. Sorry. Beef and cheese. Okay. You not said beef." And it was true. I hadn't said beef.

Later, she reappeared with three beef & cheese hamburgers... the beef was a very rare side of steak squished between a bun and some lettuce. "TIC baby," we said with a laugh.

Other things are more regularised, like the way students in my school, even after 7 months since my arrival here, still shout "Hallo!" just after I've passed by.  Then, when I say the obligatory 'hello' or smile back, they dissolve into a puddle of giggles and shout and push at their friends who, invariably, have dared them to say something to the foreign teacher. This annoys me in that it always makes me smile, hard as I try not to, because they are so ridiculously innocent and easily humoured.  In some ways, I really understand what it must be like to be a celebrity.

I'm also now fully okay with the pushing and shoving and general WORK that it takes to simply order a chicken sandwich at KFC or buy train tickets, and the fact that, given the chance, my students will happily turn on the TV to full decibel volume and watch the most inane soap operas ever, mouths dropped and eyes glazed in full attention. They will also spit sunflower seeds all over the floor and let food run all down their mouths during each meal, but when I ask them to stick their tongues out and say the 'th' sound in class, they are suddenly beyond embarrassed about having a mouth.

With the onset of winter, I have been forced to go in search of cold-weather clothing. Chinese people like their clothes to fit tightly, and I am already four or five sizes larger than their XL, so it has been a difficult task. However, I've gotten used to pants that cut off my circulation and sweaters that fit like shrink-wrapping, and I've learned that warmth is warmth - who cares if it shows off my under-toned stomach and huge laowai arms.

This evening, the air is cold and dry and I don my coat and black scarf and gloves, walk down the uneven, dark stairwell out of my apartment, and cross the bridge where water and green 'moss' sit idly. I go to the night market. The night market has become one of my regular dinner stops. Every evening, half a dozen chef families lug their huge cooking cart-barrows to the vacant patch of lot next to the tax building, across the street from my apartment. Usually the husband bears the burden, shouldering the long wooden handles of the wheeled cooking cart and toting it down the road and into the lot. Around 5 PM every day, just as I ride my bicycle home from a long day of school, five or six carts come in from all directions to set up their nightly cooking stands.

The cooks lay out a sundry of items, uncooked and on plates for the shrewd, hungry patrons to pick and choose as they please. Lima beans, cabbage, celery, all kinds of greens, duck heads, fish in all shapes and sizes, frogs, potatoes, everything you can imagine. I usually choose three dishes and order rice, all to go. This evening, I approach the first stand on the left and find the chef to be the woman who'd once recognized me in the supermarket and said 'hello', after which I spent four hours trying to figure out where I knew her from. I've frequented her stall at the night market ever since, even though I know her food isn't the best there.

This evening, she asks me what I want and I scan the displayed plates for possibilities. She offers some kind of bean, which I decide would be good, and I immediately order potatoes, which have become one of my Chinese favourites - small potatoes, smashed into flat, round pieces and then fried with garlic and herbs. I also hope to eat bamboo shoots, but don't see any lying out, so I ask her for them.

"Zhu shun" I say, repeating the phrase I've heard and said so many times before, living in the bamboo capital of the world. She looks at me blankly, and I think I must have messed up the tones. I repeat, "zhu SHUN" - fourth tone not first on the shun, hoping to make an impression. She thought for a minute and then repeated back...

"Emm SHEN SHEN, ahh hao de... okay." Good good, so bamboo, lima beans mix, potatoes and rice. Fine dinner. She invited me to 'sit awhile' in her tarp-tented seating area and served me her best green tea in a flimsy, plastic cup.

I rub my hands together for a while, check my cell phone, burn my tongue sipping the tea and spit the bits of loose leaf that caught on my tongue onto the floor of the tent. A small group of people sit at one of the other plastic patio tables eating snails out of a big bowl, quaffing huge bottles of local beer.

Ni ting bu dong ma? they ask in the local dialect.

Ting de dong putonghua.  I speak mandarin, and they smile.

One of them is missing a lower tooth. "You are very smart! You are American!" he says, assuming my nationality with ease and returning to his meal.

Later, I bring the food home in small, Styrofoam boxes and spread it out on my bed - the only warmish room in the house. I pour a glass of Tibetan wine and open the food, letting the salty, oily, delicious aromas fill my bedroom and filter through my olfactory system.

Potatoes, check.

Lima beans, check.

Rice, check.

Bamboo shoots.... not so much check.

Now, I have before me something that looks like green peppers and clearly some kind of animal organ. I mentally rewind to the bamboo shoot conversation, knowing there had been more than a little room for error - trying to decide what she thought I wanted.

Pulling out my now well-used Chinese/English dictionary (that I never leave home without), I open to the Chinese side and go for shen, knowing there could be several possibilities.

I scan down the list of entries—

1. Deep, dearly
2. Body
3. Stretch
4. Crane one's neck
5. God, deity, divine
6. Kidney

There it is. Kidney.

Oh well, this is China, after all.

And it turns out, wouldn't you know it – the kidney doesn't taste too darn bad.