so i'm on the only organic farm in all of sichuan province. nice, huh? the chinese family i live with own the farm. father, maybe around 55, retired from the government and opened the farm four years ago. daughter, emily, lived in canada for 7 years, went to a university some place in toronto, met her chinese husband, chris, there. they moved back to help with the farm one year ago and got married and now run the market side of everything. maybe about 10 farmers and 10 packers on the farm each day, when it is not busy season. now is busy season, so a few more farmers. and one iowan. :)
the women who work on the packaging side, which is most of what i do, call me "mei mei". this means "little sister". i like that. they don't speak english, only emily and chris do, and they stay in their office all day. so today, in the packaging bit, we exhausted the extent of my mandarin while i explained my family, everyone's job, and how i'm not married and how that's really okay. then, i found out whether they were married and had siblings or children. other than that, i welcomed them to beijing and asked if they were going to the olympics, and that's about all i can say.
well, i can also say "vegetarian" and "toilet" and when i say them they sound very similar. so imagine me walking up to a street vendor and saying: "pardon me, this looks very tasty, but first, could you tell me, is it a toilet?"
i would also like to thank mr. stiles, for teaching me how to say "poo" in chinese. the word for "poo" in chinese has the word "bian" in it. but this is pronounced like "bien" in french, so in a fluster to say "okay, okay, that's okay" at a street food vendor stall, i instead said "poo, poo, poo". i think i was probably grasping for "c'est bien, c'est bien, c'est bien." at that point i just gave up and hopped on my bike and left. you should have seen that guy's face, though. partly horrified and partly tickled.
anyways, back to the farm. i already said how it has helped to increase the income in this area considerably. it's a good place, and the veggies are very good here. i have packaged many of them. and cleaned them and whatnot. every day is a little different. well, the two days i have been here anyways. for example, today i worked with string beans, peanuts, chilis, squash of all kinds, lettuce, bamboo, green onions, turnips, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and probably some other things that i can't think of and don't know the name of. also, i'm the sticker woman. i put stickers on things, probably because it doesn't require a lot of explanation.
my favorite is packaging the chilies. since they are organic, some of them don't grow straight (or so emily has explained). some of them grow in a spiral or get a little wonky in some other way. as long as they are not broken or partly eaten by bugs, we want to package them. we put them wonky ones at the bottom and lay some of them straighter ones on the top, then cover them in celophane like anything you have ever seen at a grocery store in usa or canada. now, emily says that people don't want these wonky chilies, so we need to kind of hide them at the bottom, otherwise people won't buy them. but the crooked ones and the ones that grow in spirals are my favorite vegetables on the farm! i think they are very cute, fun, unique, i don't know . . . i just like them. and they taste just fine. i only put one or two of the very spiraly ones in each batch. that way, if the customer hates the spiral ones, they don't feel to put out, and if they happen to be like me and like the spiral ones, well, we can't spoil one family with too many. but it's really too bad we can't package them separately: "boring straight chilies" 3 yuan, "renegade chilies" 5 yuan.
i really enjoy the packaging part of the farm. for one, it is fairly simple, considering my mandarin is kind of "poo". i think it's easier to watch and learn the packaging part than to watch and learn the farming techniques. but also, i like to think about the families in chengdu and hong kong who are going to unwrap what i am sending to them: a lovely package of delicious organic veggies. and they'll never know i was the one who did the work. i feel like putting a bow on each batch! instead, i leave them with a simple green sticker that says "organic farm". after this experience, i will probably think more often of where my food is coming from and the people who package what i eat, every step of the way. i'll tell you something else, i'm also going to wash my food like a mad person. i know i wash my hands after the toilet, but i can't speak for every vegetable packager on the planet. also, we dump the veggies on the floor a lot for sorting. the floor where the dog sleeps. the floor where people walk after using squatty toilets and not changing their shoes. people of hong kong! wash your veggies!
06 June 2007
05 June 2007
fun with food and stories of rabbits
1. people in sichuan would like to think that they have the spiciest food on earth, similar to how people in montreal think an iowan has never seen -20 weather in the winter. both are wrong. iowa is cold, and korea has the hottest, spiciest, make-your-face-burn-off food i've ever eaten.
2. in china, they eat loofa! did you know that loofa is a gourd? i didn't know that. i don't really like it, the texture is strange. other than that, it tastes like cucumber. i've got a dried loofa that i received as a gift from the village which i'm going to try to bring home without destroying. i get lots of smiles when i wander around with a dried loofa gourd hanging off of my backpack next to my asics.
3. back to spicy food, i've had hot pot twice now. a very traditional sichuan food, hot pot originated in chongqing, which is a city here in sichuan province. the sailors would eat it to keep warm and dry on the boats in the winter. it is hot spicy and hot temperature hot, and it is so good. you put everything into this boiling hot oil, kind of like fondu, and then you pull it out and let it dry in a bowl of sesame oil. the first time i had hot pot, it wasn't too crazy. but last night i had as a welcome meal at the farm, and my host family ate basically every part of an animal that you have ever heard of but have never eaten, except maybe in a hot dog: cow stomach, chicken stomach, duck intestine, something liver, something kidney, something heart, and a big ol' pig brain right in the center pot. i had tofu and potatoes and lotus root and different kinds of mushrooms. "wo chi su" (which means--i am vegetarian, sorry, i can't eat any of those brains, thanks) is one of my several decent chinese sentences. although there were some brains wrapped up in my tofu; afterall, they were all cooking in the same pot. so, what the heck, i ate some bits of pig brain last night. yum!
4. this farm feeds me way more than india wwoof farm, and way more often. whew!
5. kind of unrelated to food, but the village where i am now, called xichong, before this organic farm started up, the local people made only a little of $100 a year. in an entire year, only $100! now, with the farm, the local people make more like $5,000 a year. still, not very much, but a considerable improvement in only 4 years. the organic farm, which is the only one in sichuan currently, brought with it developments to the area, irrigations systems, good jobs, and they buy food from the local farmers to send with their supplies to hong kong and chengdu, as well as other local markets in the area that are too far for local farmers to get to on their own. cool, huh?
6. so yesterday when i arrived at the house where i am staying with my host family, i began to enter the first floor bathroom, and was steered away. reason: there was a live chicken living in the bathroom. emily, my host sister and farm director told me it had been given to their family two days before and had been living in their bathroom and had sort of taken over. i don't know why, but i thought, "oh, now they have a pet chicken." we had that chicken for dinner with mushrooms. i found it floating in a bowl of water this morning in the hallway. also, out my bedroom window this morning had appeared the drying carcass of a rabbit, just bones, feet, and ears, kind of. it was reminiscent of fatal attraction. the carcass was boiled in the turnip soup we had for dinner along with our former pet chicken. i'm not a vegetarian because i think that meat tastes bad. i like meat. but i am an american in the sense that i can't eat something that i've seen living, or with it's head still attached drying outside the window of my bedroom. okay, now that i've said that, i know it's a total lie, because i do eat what i catch when i go fishing. but still, even thinking of it now . . . it really made my stomach turn.
7. so this guy brian i met in chengdu told me a story about one time when his friend's dog brought a dead rabbit into the house. the dead rabbit belonged to his friend's grumpy old neighbors. it seemed the dog had killed the rabbit, so they cleaned it in their sink and placed it deftly back into the neighbors' backyard so they would think the rabbit died of natural causes. the neighbors came over later and said that the strangest thing had just happened because their rabbit had died and they had buried it but then it ended up in the middle of their backyard--clean and smelling like soap. also makes me think of fatal attraction. isn't that the best story?
8. the food here really is good, even if they can't out-spice me! the absolute best is gong bao dofu (= kung pao tofu in usa? i think, maybe?). oh so good.
9. the chinese people i have asked have denied the existence of brown rice.
10. the farm is wonderful. i spent the day today packaging vegetables, sorting peppers, putting stickers on things, and walking around with some government officials on a farm tour. all is well. tomorrow we do some picking and lots of smiling because more government officials will come tomorrow, too. the farm is in it's organic review process where they have to prove to 8 billion people who don't really know anything about organic farming that they are an organic farm to get an export licence, or something. should be a good time.
2. in china, they eat loofa! did you know that loofa is a gourd? i didn't know that. i don't really like it, the texture is strange. other than that, it tastes like cucumber. i've got a dried loofa that i received as a gift from the village which i'm going to try to bring home without destroying. i get lots of smiles when i wander around with a dried loofa gourd hanging off of my backpack next to my asics.
3. back to spicy food, i've had hot pot twice now. a very traditional sichuan food, hot pot originated in chongqing, which is a city here in sichuan province. the sailors would eat it to keep warm and dry on the boats in the winter. it is hot spicy and hot temperature hot, and it is so good. you put everything into this boiling hot oil, kind of like fondu, and then you pull it out and let it dry in a bowl of sesame oil. the first time i had hot pot, it wasn't too crazy. but last night i had as a welcome meal at the farm, and my host family ate basically every part of an animal that you have ever heard of but have never eaten, except maybe in a hot dog: cow stomach, chicken stomach, duck intestine, something liver, something kidney, something heart, and a big ol' pig brain right in the center pot. i had tofu and potatoes and lotus root and different kinds of mushrooms. "wo chi su" (which means--i am vegetarian, sorry, i can't eat any of those brains, thanks) is one of my several decent chinese sentences. although there were some brains wrapped up in my tofu; afterall, they were all cooking in the same pot. so, what the heck, i ate some bits of pig brain last night. yum!
4. this farm feeds me way more than india wwoof farm, and way more often. whew!
5. kind of unrelated to food, but the village where i am now, called xichong, before this organic farm started up, the local people made only a little of $100 a year. in an entire year, only $100! now, with the farm, the local people make more like $5,000 a year. still, not very much, but a considerable improvement in only 4 years. the organic farm, which is the only one in sichuan currently, brought with it developments to the area, irrigations systems, good jobs, and they buy food from the local farmers to send with their supplies to hong kong and chengdu, as well as other local markets in the area that are too far for local farmers to get to on their own. cool, huh?
6. so yesterday when i arrived at the house where i am staying with my host family, i began to enter the first floor bathroom, and was steered away. reason: there was a live chicken living in the bathroom. emily, my host sister and farm director told me it had been given to their family two days before and had been living in their bathroom and had sort of taken over. i don't know why, but i thought, "oh, now they have a pet chicken." we had that chicken for dinner with mushrooms. i found it floating in a bowl of water this morning in the hallway. also, out my bedroom window this morning had appeared the drying carcass of a rabbit, just bones, feet, and ears, kind of. it was reminiscent of fatal attraction. the carcass was boiled in the turnip soup we had for dinner along with our former pet chicken. i'm not a vegetarian because i think that meat tastes bad. i like meat. but i am an american in the sense that i can't eat something that i've seen living, or with it's head still attached drying outside the window of my bedroom. okay, now that i've said that, i know it's a total lie, because i do eat what i catch when i go fishing. but still, even thinking of it now . . . it really made my stomach turn.
7. so this guy brian i met in chengdu told me a story about one time when his friend's dog brought a dead rabbit into the house. the dead rabbit belonged to his friend's grumpy old neighbors. it seemed the dog had killed the rabbit, so they cleaned it in their sink and placed it deftly back into the neighbors' backyard so they would think the rabbit died of natural causes. the neighbors came over later and said that the strangest thing had just happened because their rabbit had died and they had buried it but then it ended up in the middle of their backyard--clean and smelling like soap. also makes me think of fatal attraction. isn't that the best story?
8. the food here really is good, even if they can't out-spice me! the absolute best is gong bao dofu (= kung pao tofu in usa? i think, maybe?). oh so good.
9. the chinese people i have asked have denied the existence of brown rice.
10. the farm is wonderful. i spent the day today packaging vegetables, sorting peppers, putting stickers on things, and walking around with some government officials on a farm tour. all is well. tomorrow we do some picking and lots of smiling because more government officials will come tomorrow, too. the farm is in it's organic review process where they have to prove to 8 billion people who don't really know anything about organic farming that they are an organic farm to get an export licence, or something. should be a good time.
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