Hostpitable Arriving

 

This past December was the second time I had flown into China. Like the first, a young Chinese woman with long black hair, a smooth, pale complexion, and high round cheeks waited for me, dimples showing as she smiled, bearing a sign in her hands for “Gorski,” and speaking good English. It is good to be welcomed.

I arrived in to the shiny, functional, attractive even,  airport in Beijing. The school’s driver drove us away. The new airport roads eventually spilled out into the streets, with their mix of new and old, ancient and futuristic. Large Chinese lettering proclaimed this a foreign land and demarcated businesses, many of them restaurants of one form or another from little hole in the walls with a couple low tables and plastic stools to large formal dining rooms with carved wooden chairs and many, many mid-range places where the Chinese eat often, not to mention the portable carts and stalls of street food. Of course you have to have money to eat. In all the bustle of a quick departure and arrival I’d neglected to exchange dollars for yuan. Hui, my greeter, lent me fifty bucks and I was set. Though you can’t always get what you want (to eat) in a foreign land, sometimes you get what you need (and it is often good).

It was different some 20 years ago when I first flew into Asia, landing in Hong Kong before its return to China, before the new airport. Then you landed, it seemed, between buildings like through a tunnel, the glowing neon Chinese characters jutting out from the buildings, hanging out over the streets of the densest concentration of humans on the planet. I only transited then between planes. I had my own young, pretty, fair complexioned Chinese women who also spoke good English. We traveled then on the cheap, searching out a way into a foreign land with plenty of time and vague destinations. Except when the destination was a home that wasn’t her home anymore. But still we were welcomed—with warm greetings, with food.

On my first day in Beijing, after a couple easy hours of visa acquisition work, I was taken to a long, lovely lunch. I walked on the sunny streets with the American principal of the school, the director, a diminutive but influential man, Mr. Xiang, as well as Hui, and Vanessa the visa go-between person, to a restaurant a couple of blocks away. And this was a restaurant of the finer variety. We had Peking duck, among other dishes that spun around the lazy susan on the round table. The duck was crispy and succulent. You place small pieces of the duck in a thin round wrapper with some hoisin sauce and thin strips of green onions. The combination is divine and one of the signature dishes of Beijing.

The hospitality continued in Yantai, my new home, a city on the ocean with big long beaches and a wide seaside road and promenade. That hospitality included food. After a half-day introduction to my school, it was off to another restaurant with my fellow teacher and Chinese co-worker who picked me up from the airport in Yantai (and fed me the night before). A splendid array of meat, seafood, and vegetables (known and unknown) was displayed in a room next to the kitchen and you picked what you wanted. At my school, alcohol is allowed on the company paycheck and I ordered my first Tsing Tao of my stay in China. The meal was served in a lovely sort of indoor garden.

Having determined the restaurant was a good one, the next week we went back. This time the evening included the Chinese staff and Mr. Xiang who was in town with his lovely assistant, bringing old textbooks from Beijing. This evening we had a private room with it’s own bar, dedicated wait staff, and bathroom. The round table sat 15 of us. Seating is arranged. The principal and her husband were the hosts. I sat to the left of the principal, the honored guest. It was my duty to pick the drink of the night from the beer, wine, and brandy stacked up on the bar. From what I choose, we would make toasts. I chose the French wine. A bottle was placed on the table for me and for one of the young Chinese teachers to consume together, and other drinking partners received their bottles. Food began to arrive in stunning varieties of flavor and appearance.

Seafood and meat, vegetables and broths made their appearances. A delicious pork dish with a sweet brown sauce was delicious; their were scallops with egg and scallions in a fragrant, clear broth, and a surprisingly subtle stringed celery salad made from celery that was said to be watered with milk, topped by airy, dried tiny shrimp. And the toasts continued and the drinking continued. I offered one to the success of the school. Mr. Xiang’s aide, who sat by my side and translated, was finally connived into drinking some wine. It was not a good thing. She began speaking to me in Chinese and shortly exited the room.

A week after that it was Christmas and New Year’s, happily celebrated by the Chinese. We went to another restaurant. When I started taking notes, I was offered a tour of the kitchen, which I passed on then, but might still take up, since the restaurant owner is a high school friend of the principal.

I have gotten to see a few Chinese kitchens. At the restaurant in Qufu, hometown of Confucius, where the waitress just took us back to the small kitchen of woks and steamers and butcher blocks to pick out some food. At the home apartment home of a Chinese women/traveler/ex-restaurant owner who had a three-layer electric steamer, a couple of big ol’ woks with a grill hood that pumped straight out the window, and a big round butcher block cutting board with a cleaver and a big jug of peanut oil nearby. Then there are the multiple little hole-in-the wall places where you just peer back and get a view of the woks and bowls of spices; and the food carts with a couple of items ready to serve at 5 in the morning before the train leaves. On the train, the helpful young Chinese with their bit of English, always ready to make sure you know where to go and have something to eat in case the meals that are wheeled down the narrow aisle don’t do it.

The Chinese kitchens got me thinking about my time in the big, wok-filled kitchen at Jimmy Lee’s in the mid-90s when the place was rocking. I always liked making the gigantic pre-dinner portions of fried rice. We got out this huge wok, a couple feet across and I just got to go crazy with the biggest metal spatulas we had, tossing yesterday’s rice and the other ingredients around by the shovel full. There weren’t that many ingredients, so Jimmy let me make it on my own, though I suppose he tasted it every once in awhile. After it was done, seasoned right and the right shade of brown, it went into big stainless steel hotel pans for dinner service.

Hospitality—the Chinese teachers at my school say, “It is our duty.” The Chinese seem ready and willing for the new world. Or is me? Open to the world and lucky to be born where I was. New schools, teaching English, are popping up all over. The students want to learn. New buildings upon buildings soar up with accompanying cranes (I can see eight of them from my apartment) that spread across the skyline, sometimes leaving unoccupied, partially completed apartment towers rising from wide empty streets. Trees are planted, flat screen TVs are mounted, the ocean waves roll in, English is taught, and food is served.