Bubble Tea @ Home

I’ve been doing a bit more cooking (and yes, learning new ways to prepare frozen 만두 [mandu] does count as cooking in my book).  However, I’ve been reluctant to post pictures of everything so as not to give the impression that this is a cooking blog.  Because that it ain’t.

But I tried making home-made bubble tea for the first time tonight, and wanted to encourage anyone out there who has been thinking about it to give it a try.  I like mine very simple — just peach tea, a tiny bit of sugar, and tapioca pearls.  And given my painfully sensitive teeth these days, very little ice.  No powders, no dairy, and preferably no caffeine.

So I was at the grocery store tonight, and I picked up a box of tapioca pearls.  I got the small kind hoping that they would fit through the regular straws that I already had, and they were white since I couldn’t find the black ones that you usually see.  (I think Asian grocery stores would have the black kind, and will definitely look for them on my next trip to the not-so-local K-grocer.)

When I got home, I made a pot of caffeine-free herbal peach tea.  I cooked the tapioca pearls for 25 minutes, and then let them sit in the hot water for 25 more.  I also made a simple syrup of brown sugar and water to sweeten it.   Mix all that together, add a little ice, and this is what I got:

Okay, so it looks a little weird because the pearls are white and not black.  They were a little soft, because I don’t think you need to cook the miniature ones for as long as the larger ones, but they tasted exactly the same.  And my entire box of tapioca cost $3.99 — the same price I pay for a single drink at the Lollicup that is a 30-minute drive away.

Anyway, just wanted to share!

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If you want to try this yourself, be sure and use plenty of water — recipes I saw on the internet suggested a minimum of 8 cups of water for every cup of tapioca pearls.  I used 4 cups of water and 1/2 cup of pearls, which seemed fine and gave me plenty of tapioca.  The next time I make it, I’ll make an even smaller batch and won’t let the pearls sit as long — maybe 15 minutes instead of 25.  And I read that if you cover the pearls with the simple syrup, they should last in the refrigerator for a few days.

O Fortuna

I am hardly superstitious and don’t believe in much, and that includes fortune-telling.

However, I have to admit that I have a soft spot in my heart for those hard little fortune cookies. Whenever possible I try and take the one that is “pointing” at me, and while adding “in bed” at the end is a humorous distraction, I find myself secretly looking for a hidden meaning that transcends mere amusement.

Last night we went out for Chinese food (and yes, I did read the recent NYT article that argues fortune cookies are actually of Japanese, rather than Chinese, origin). After our meal I eagerly grabbed my cookie, and this is what my fortune said:

“Sometimes traveling to a new place leads to great transformation.”

And on the back, where they do that learn-a-Chinese-word thing, the word was “Daughter” (don’t know how to type in the characters, but the pinyin looked somewhat like “nu” and “er”). I thought that particular fortune together with the word “daughter” was an auspicious combination, for obvious reasons.

I hope that this is a good omen for our upcoming trip to Korea!

Beyond Black and White

When I was in high school and looking at colleges, I recall being invited to several minority recruiting events. I rarely went, mostly because I wasn’t interested in the schools that were hosting them. However, I did receive an invitation to attend a “diversity outreach” event at a small, predominantly white liberal arts college that seemed similar to a few other schools that I was considering. It looked interesting and my parents agreed to take me, so I signed up.

As soon as we got there I realized my mistake, and wanted nothing more than to

Asian Salad vs. Salad in Asia

Or, “A Tale of Two Salads,” with apologies to Charles Dickens. (Yes, technically it’s two tales of one salad each, but that didn’t sound as nice.)

Salad #1:

We went out for dinner tonight to The Cheesecake Factory, a restaurant that I have been to about half a dozen times in my life. Every single time I have ordered the Chinese Chicken Salad, simply because that was what I ordered my first time there and I liked it. Also, I’ve been too lazy to read the rest of their prodigious menu. Tonight was no different, although when we were seated I vowed that next time I would try something different.

It’s pretty much the same green salad with chicken and mandarin oranges that you can get in any number of chain or even fast food restaurants. Sure, sometimes the ingredients vary a little depending on the place — cilantro, bean sprouts, red cabbage, sliced almonds, scallions, peanut sauce, and crispy tortilla strips (!) have all made appearances in variations I’ve tried at different restaurants. The Cheesecake Factory’s version comes piled high with puffed cellophane noodles. But they all have something in common: a leafy green base that, to my knowledge, probably isn’t very Chinese, Asian, Oriental (grrr), or whatever ethnic adjective that the menu claims it is.

But I usually order them anyway, even though I feel oddly uncomfortable doing so. Maybe it’s because I suspect that these salads are about as authentically Asian as white actors in yellowface. Or maybe I’m afraid of perpetuating some kind of stereotype about Asian people preferring “Asian”-ish salads over non-Asian salads. But I generally do like them over non-Asian salads, so does that make me a walking stereotype?

I hope not. I hope I’m just someone who likes little oranges in her salad.

Salad #2:

A few years ago I went on a business trip to Japan, and a group of female Japanese employees took me out to lunch. They asked me where I wanted to go, and I responded that wherever they liked best was fine with me. I was ready for donkatsu, teriyaki, soba, udon, or any of the other Japanese delicacies that I had heard of, if not tried. I was even steeling myself for something more, ah, unusual — not any specific dish per se, just something that my imagination was having fun concocting for me.

Instead, they took me for my first ever visit to a Sizzler.

Once seated, the most senior person in the office decided that we would all get the salad bar. At first I had been disappointed at the American-ness of our lunch destination* — I wanted culture, dammit! Authenticity! But since I was feeling pretty nervous on this trip already, I decided that the salad bar was the reassuringly familiar anchor that I needed. I quickly fell into making the same salad that I usually make at salad bars – leafy greens, sliced cucumbers, shredded carrots, sweet red peppers, and crispy chow mein noodles. But when we returned to our seats, it was clear that I had constructed an “American” salad. Everyone else had some kind of version of what looked like a three-bean salad in front of them, with nary a torn piece of iceberg lettuce to be seen aside from my plateful.

In a way it was funny, because I had been wondering if anyone would think that I was Japanese. I figured that as long as no one heard me say anything, a woman with Asian features out to lunch with six or seven Japanese women wouldn’t seem out of the ordinary. As it turned out, you only needed to look at our plates to spot the impostor.

*I am actually very touched that they wanted to take me somewhere that would be, uh, familiar to me.

Year of the Dragon Boats

I was going to write a post reflecting back on my accomplishments of 2007, but since that was such a short list (no, really) I thought I would focus on just one. (Mama2Roo — I’m hoping this can count as a post for your contest as well!)

I’ve always been wary of competitive team sports, mostly because I suck at them. Big time. This fact was confirmed by a bad experience with CYO basketball in fourth grade, which cemented my view of team sports, or at least my interest in participating in them, for about 23 years. (Let’s just say that no one ever sufficiently explained the rules of the game to me, including the terms “offense” and “defense” and how they differed. Needless to say, much unhelpful ridicule from my teammates ensued. Oh, and the fact that I was Asian didn’t help — no one had heard of Yao Ming back in 1984.)

But this past May, some of my classmates invited me to join an all-women dragon boat team that was being formed to compete in an upcoming dragon boat festival. I had never heard of dragon boating before, but it sounded like fun. I was intrigued by the idea of doing something with an Asian connection, and with getting to know the people from my class better. I had also liked canoing when I was younger, and a dragon boat looks a lot like a really big canoe:

Sixteen people (seated in eight rows of two) paddle at a time; a seventeenth person sits at the front as the drummer, and an eighteenth person stands at the back as the steerer. I actually tried steering for about half a practice, but felt really nauseous standing up and went back to paddling.

Getting Ready

Without fail, our practice warm-ups included jumping jacks as I had never done them before: We stood in a circle next to the boathouse, and did ten jumping jacks while our team leader counted off each one. Then she would say the name of the person to her left, who would then count off ten, and so on until we had all either counted or collapsed. One time someone decided to say her ten in Spanish, and feeling bold, I counted grunted mine in Korean. The person after me shouted hers in Japanese, and from then on we usually heard several different languages along with jumping-jack-induced groans.

We practiced on the same river that we would race on, one that is not exactly known for its cleanliness despite claims that it is now “swimmable.” (The color is a dark brown reminiscent of my mom’s gravy, and like gravy, just because you are able to swim in it doesn’t mean that you would want to. Or that you should.) Our boat never tipped over, but there is still a lot of splash and spray. After each practice I couldn’t wait to jump in the shower, more to scrub any possible river-borne toxins off my skin than to clean off the sweat.

Race Day!

On the day of the festival, all the teams arrived early and lined one side of the river with tents, blankets, coolers, and chairs. Apparently some folks practice year-round, rather than just the three weeks prior to the festival, and have pre-race preparations that included militaristic-looking push-ups. (But I didn’t see anyone else doing 200+ jumping jacks, so I remained hopeful that those would give us a competitive edge!) All teams had completed time trials the day before, and were assigned to divisions based on their times. Especially after watching the Push-Up Brigade, I was more than content to be in the slowest least competitive division.

The races took place over the same 500-meter course, with up to three boats racing at a time. My team would be participating in three races spaced throughout the day. Each race begins from a “floating start,” where a festival judge standing on the river bank tries to line up the three boats along a diagonal line (diagonal to account for the bend in the river). Each race ends with a loud blast from an air horn, but if you’re sitting in the boat shouting and chanting with everyone else, even the loud horn is easy to miss.

We won our first race, although we didn’t realize it until we were several strokes past the horn. We lost our second. We also lost our third and final race, but came in at our best time all weekend, and so in some ways it felt like a victory.

Looking back, it was great being out on the water, doing something fun and athletic and with other women. And finally, for a couple of weeks at least, I was part of a sports team.

Chinese = ???

I’m still supposed to be Doing Real Work, and so unfortunately this post will not be particularly well planned or thought-out. But I was taking a teeny-tiny break by lurking ever so briefly in the Blogosphere, and came across the phrase “Chinese water torture.” And I wondered, what exactly are the origins of this phrase? Does it have anything to do with China?

While it’s true that Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, it is very useful for quick info and ideas for critical consideration. What it told me about Chinese water torture was this:

There is no evidence that this form of torture was ever used by the Chinese. The popularity of the term “Chinese water torture” may have arisen from Harry Houdini’s Chinese Water Torture Cell…

And this:

It is also thought by many that the term Chinese water torture comes from the same set of terms as Chinese fire drill, Chinese whispers, and Chinese checkers, where the word Chinese was originally used by the Victorians as slang for “confusing” or “containing erratic qualities”.

Tangent: I first heard of the “Chinese fire drill” in high school, when my classmates and I first started getting our drivers licenses and obviously had no real place to go. When a friend explained to me what it was, my first thought was, “Wait, what’s the point?”

My second thought was, “I’m glad I’m not Chinese.” Because even then, used in this way it didn’t sound like something positive.

For kicks, I looked up Chinese fire drill:

The term is traditionally explained as coming from a British tendency around the time of World War I to use the adjective Chinese as a slur, implying “confused, disorganized, or inferior.” [2] Other “Chinese” slurs of the day included “Chinese national anthem” (an explosion) and “Chinese puzzle” (one with no solution).

But back to the torture, lest I stray too far from my original question. I surfed just a few clicks more, and found this from The Straight Dope:

Dear Cecil:

Did (or do) the Chinese torture prisoners using the Chinese water torture? –Fritz Reece, Chicago

Cecil replies:

Probably not. “Chinese” is one of those all-purpose English pejoratives in which foreign is equated with weird. Two variants may be noted. The first is Chinese in the sense of “confused, disorganized, or inferior,” as in “Chinese fire drill” (a chaotic scene, or more commonly these days, the collegiate prank in which everyone tumbles out of a car at a stoplight, runs around to the other side, and piles in again), “Chinese ace” (a bumbling pilot), “Chinese navy” (a disorganized group), and so on. The other sense is “exotic, mysterious, or devious,” as in Chinese handcuffs (the finger restraints that bind more tightly the harder you try to pull your fingers out), Chinese checkers (the game is said to have been invented in the latter 19th century by an Englishman), and of course the Chinese water torture.

And

Word sleuth Barry Popik tells me the first known use of the term was Harry Houdini’s “Chinese Water Torture Cell,” a stunt introduced circa 1903 in which Houdini was lowered into a tank of water upside down and had to come out alive. Popik says the drip-drip-drip method of torture, not referred to as “Chinese,” is described in Brian Innes’s The History of Torture (1998 ) as having been invented by one Hippolytus de Marsiliis in 16th-century Italy.

So maybe we should be saying “Italian water torture” instead.

I don’t want to be oversensitive, or “choose” to interpret things as being racist that really aren’t, or any of the other accusations that fly when people of color question the names that things (and people) are called.

But I do think twice when things that have nothing to do with China are called Chinese, because that often means that “Chinese” is being used as shorthand for some negative and pejorative adjective.

Okay, going back to my grindstone now.