Watching the street vendors and the chéngguǎn do their little dance at the street market near our apartment provides an interesting anecdote for two crucial Chinese cultural concepts: 人情 and 面子。

There’s a colourful, bustling, crowded and filthy street market near our neighbourhood (see here for more photos), and I suspect its days are numbered.

Every time I go recently in the late afternoon there are chéngguǎn (城管：”city management” by-law enforcers) cooperatively hassling the illegal vendors who choke the roads leading to the Jade Spring Road Vegetable Market (玉泉路菜市场). By “cooperatively” I mean it’s a big game. The chéngguǎn deliberately and obviously drag their feet. Their van inches around the corner at the far end of one street, giving the vendors plenty of time to yell, bundle up their stuff, and, sometimes laughing, sometimes running, make a show of clearing off. Or they cover up their produce and act like they’re just hanging out… next to closed boxes full of tomatoes. The chéngguǎn take their sweet time pulling around, parking, and getting out. Then they saunter up the street, and as soon as they’ve passed by the vendors roll their sacks back out on the pavement and re-stack their cabbages, fish, rabbits, fruit, or whatever. The day I took the following photo, three of the chéngguǎn were sitting on the side of the road having tea with a couple vendors who had boxed up their stuff and had it stowed away right there beside them. I would have taken their photo, but we had our daughter with us and they were smiling and making faces at her. In the picture below, a chéngguǎn (on the left) ignores a vendor who has obediently folded up her produce in blankets in a pile beside her. She’s just waiting for them to leave so she can uncover her vegetables and start selling again.

I have seen a chéngguǎn in this market get a little mean (it was the guy in the picture above, about 30 seconds before I took the picture), and it was when a cucumber seller decided to ignore him and not make a show of clearing off as he approached. That seemed to make this particular chéngguǎn a little angry and he lunged for the guy’s wooden vegetable box, which was quickly yanked out of reach by a rope and dragged off down a side street. No attempt to pursue, even though he would have easily had it in about two or three steps.

“Humanity” 人情 and “Face” 面子

I described all this to one of my Chinese coworkers, and he explained it with two terms: 人情 and 面子。 “Human feelings” 人情 is how he explained why the chéngguǎn carry out their orders to the absolute bare minimum ‘letter of the law’ degree, and how they can sit down and chat over tea with the same people they’re supposed to be hassling. They recognize a lot of these people, he said, and don’t want to stop them from trying to make a living; they personally couldn’t care less whether there’s a street market here or not. It’s nothing personal. But they have their orders, and the point of orders in China is to do just enough so that you can tell your superiors that you did them. The actual purpose of the order, the ‘spirit of the law’, is entirely beside the point, especially when your superiors are only giving you the order because their superiors gave it to them and they want to make their superiors happy because they’re working on a promotion.

The other key term he used was “face” 面子。 Why do they bother with the silly charade of bundling up their cabbages in full view of the chéngguǎn (who’s walking toward them maybe only a few meters away), and scooting off down an alley only to come back a few minutes later? It gives face to the chéngguǎn. It’s an acknowledgment of who’s in charge. Chéngguǎn can give these kinds of people all kinds of trouble if they want to; sometimes they can be brutal (see here, here, here and here). Sometimes the vendors fight back. The vendors are almost all illegal migrants near the bottom of society and without legal protection. They’ll yell and run and make a sincere effort to clear off as quickly as possible when they sense that they need to; they aren’t always laughing and you do sense fear sometimes, depending on the circumstances. But at least for now, in our particular street market, all the chéngguǎn require is a little “face”, a show of deference, a lack of defiance, tails between legs, and they’re satisfied.

These streets are easily the most lively (热闹) in our area, but with the consistency of the harassment, half-hearted as it appears, I bet it’s only a matter of time before this one goes they same way as the street markets near our old place.

There are more street market photos in the Our Tianjin 2010 photo gallery, which I just now finally finished uploading. So if you’ve seen it before there’s some new stuff (like sheep brains and an explosive dog). You can also see video of what it’s like to try and ride a bike through this market here: Tianjin Street Market Dash video.

Related stuff from the blog:

• Tianjin Street Market Dash video
• Our Tianjin 2010 photo gallery
• Before & After: Tianjin’s transformation at ground level
• Making Our Neighbourhood More ‘Civilized’

Related stuff from the web:

• Photos: chengguan officers blocked by hundreds of citizens for attacking several young men in Changsha
• A Killer the Nation Has Pity For
• A practical handbook for beating street vendors
• Chinese training manual offers advice how to beat offenders without leaving marks
• Above the Law? China’s Bully Law-Enforcement Officers

Here are some photos from around our neighbourhood in the days before Tomb Sweeping Festival 清明节 (April 5). Tomb Sweeping Festival is when Chinese traditionally honour their ancestors by tidying their graves and making offerings to them, mostly by burning spirit money (纸钱) and other paper offerings. See more photos in the Tomb Sweeping Festival 2011 photo gallery.

A family tradition. A family burns spirit money on the sidewalk outside our apartment complex:

Spirit money for sale on the corner nearest our apartment complex:

Spirit money (纸钱) is usually called “ghost money” or literally translated as “paper money”. This man is also in the following photo.

Piles of spirit money ash. Intersections are prime locations for sending burnt offerings to your ancestors:

Local media pooh-poohs on the practice of burning piles paper in public spaces and then leaving the ash to blow around. This neighbourhood notice board says:

“Civilizedly offer sacrifices and tidy the ancestral tombs,
safe and sound Tomb Sweeping Festival”
文明祭扫 平安清明

See more 2011 Tomb Sweeping Festival photos here.

More about Tomb Sweeping Festival:

• Tomb Sweeping Day (清明节) 2010 in Tianjin [photos]
• Tomb Sweeping Day [info]

When my sister in Canada was pregnant we mailed her some Chinese split-pants (开裆裤) as a joke. There’s no way she would possibly have taken them seriously. But they’re no joke to most Mainland Chinese. I can’t remember ever hearing about split-pants before we came to China, and I’d certainly never seen them in action! Most North Americans probably don’t even know what Chinese split-pants are, and the ones who do know probably aren’t aware that most Chinese people greatly prefer them to diapers. Chinese parents typically don’t use diapers, at least not like we do, not because they’re an unaffordable luxury, but because they feel diapers are horribly inferior to split-pants.

Yesterday I played The Poopsmith Song by Over the Rhine (listen / lyrics) for my students before making them compare and discuss Western and Chinese styles of potty training. Had about 30 in the class, in their 20′s to 40′s, and they produced a long list of criticisms: diapers make the baby uncomfortable, they’re environmentally unfriendly, dirty, bad for the baby’s health and skin, too hot, etc. There was only one student who had anything good to say about Western-style (i.e. diaper-using) potty training, and I’m pretty sure he was just throwing the foreign teacher/father a bone. I actually had to explain some of the major differences between North American and Chinese potty training styles because most of the class didn’t know anything about North American potty training. For example, they didn’t know that most “foreigners” don’t know about and have never even seen split-pants.

I’m not advocating one way or the other here, but I am curious about what different families do in China, especially if one or both parents is a foreigner and they’ve decided to use split-pants. I know of a couple expat/Chinese couples that do Chinese-style potty training — in both cases the husband is the foreigner. I’ve got my preferences, of course, but to each their own; I don’t really care how other families do it so long as you clean it up afterward. So, my question to couples who actually considered both methods of potty training: Which method do you use? How did you decide? What are the pros and cons in your experience? I’m genuinely curious. (But don’t worry, mom — it’s only idle curiosity. I know I promised. :) )

(P.S. - The photo is from this gallery: Morning with a village family.)

China’s the kind of place where you can ask a totally innocuous question:

“Hey, what’s that?”

…and get the most bizarre answers, like this one from last week:

“That’s Píxiū (貔貅). Businessmen like Píxiū because it doesn’t have an anus, so it can eat fortune but the fortune can’t ‘exit’.”

“… … ah.” (See Pixiu in Wikipedia.)

It’s easy for foreigners to get used to being surrounded by stuff we can’t name, can’t read, don’t recognize or don’t understand. It becomes so overwhelming that we don’t think to ask or even want to ask. But curiosity in China is worth it. There’s a lot of crazy-to-us stuff in Chinese culture, all around us, just sitting out there in plain sight. Píxiūs aren’t uncommon; these pictures are from the front desk of the gym where we exercise.

All you have to do is ask. Take, for example, the alcoholic drinks pictured below that are often seen at the front check-out counters of restaurants. They’re usually in big glass jars filled with all manner of marinated/preserved-in-alcohol animals like snakes and seahorses and turtles and who knows what else.

Sure, just peering into their interesting-in-a-bad-car-crash-sort-of-way depths is surprising enough for most lǎowàis that we don’t even think to try the labels. I saw these particular jars regularly for three YEARS before I finally tried to read/translate the outside of the container, and…

Red Ginseng Three Penis* Tonic Liquor
红参三鞭补酒
The nourish-kidneys-and-strengthen-male-virility type, Original “Folk Recipe”
滋肾壮阳型 来源《民间方剂》

This isn’t in some scuzzy adult store in a nasty part of town (if it was I probably wouldn’t be blogging it); it’s right up at the checkout counter of a regular neighbourhood family restaurant. Much like the menu of the dog meat restaurant near our old place, which I translated as a student just to get some vocab and ended up with way more than I bargained for.

I’ve encountered too many “No way!” “Way!” moments in China. I don’t know why they so often involve body parts. But I do know that next time I ask, the person could make up a completely bogus, far-flung explanation for whatever it is and I’d totally buy it.

*P.S. — You are undoubtedly wondering, “Which three?” Well, the ingredients aren’t listed on that label. However it turns out that there’s a famous, traditional brand of “three penis liquor” 三鞭酒 that can be found on the shelves of the average neighbourhood supermarket that does list the ingredients. I found this one at the supermarket closest to us, two minutes up the road. (Cost about $2.)

Zhang Yu’s Specialty Three Penis Liquor
张裕特质三鞭酒

The long list of ingredients begins with: “high-quality baijiu 优质白酒, edible alcohol 食用酒精, soft-ified water 软化水, seal penis 海狗鞭, deer penis 鹿鞭, dhole (Asiatic wild dog) penis 广狗鞭….” And, in case you’re also wondering, there’s a very good chance that those are Canadian seals.

P.P.S. – This is begging for a better title. How would you answer this question: “Curiosity + China = ______”?

Last night was The Lantern Festival 元宵节, the final night of Spring Festival 春节 and that means the last night of fireworks(!), so this morning it’s finally all quiet on the eastern front.

We joined the happy crowds last night on Tianjin’s frozen Haihe river 海河 near Ancient Culture Street 古文化街 and launched a couple “wish lanterns” 许愿灯 (usually called 孔明灯) — the candle-powered sky lanterns you’ve probably seen pictures of.

These pictures aren’t great, but it was actually a pretty fun scene. Hundreds, maybe thousands of lanterns were floating around, fireworks up and down the river, lots of people having fun, etc.

Ok, the pictures really aren’t that great, but all those little dots in the sky are lanterns. It looked cool, I promise. Just look at the photos and use your imagination.

You can actually see it better in the video clip below.

Some of the flaming lanterns got stuck in trees, and every so often one would come hurtling down to the ice in a blazing arc of glory. We even launched a couple:

These were the only lanterns to be found at Tianjin’s Ancient Culture Street 古文化街，which was a bit of a disappointment considering it was the LANTERN Festival, but it was still fun to launch fire hazards into the night sky from down on the river. We’ll definitely do this again next time we get the chance!

You can browse the rest of our Spring Festival fun here.

In China, some bugs are for eating, others are for fighting, and still others are for raising as pets. This is your pictorial introduction to north China’s most commonly found edible insect offerings.

No doubt there are more insects than these on restaurant menus in northern China, but these are the ones I’ve innocently stumbled across during my three years is Tianjin. These are also the ones my students and coworkers say are most common, and the ones they admit to eating.

Insects aren’t the kind of thing people eat everyday, but they do occasionally appear on restaurant menus; they aren’t just tourist food, and this isn’t Guangdong province (广东), where southerners eat freaky stuff for fun. Most of my students have eaten at least one of these. In a large class, and among my coworkers, responses usually range from people making disgusted faces to “Those are delicious!”

(Mouseover the Chinese text to see the pronunciation.)

1. 蚕蛹 Silkworm chrysalises

蚕蛹 means silkworm chrysalis/silkworm pupa — the internet says a chrysalis is a hard-shelled pupa, while a cocoon is a protective covering around a pupa. Picky picky. Anyway, what you need to know is that when they’re deep-fried (炸) or BBQed (烤) you eat the whole thing. At least according to one class of adult students. Another student’s dad fried (爆炒) them at home for the family, but they didn’t eat the outside. They ate the yellow stuff inside, which this student said tastes like tofu and smells like raw meat or fish. Apparently there’s also black stuff inside that you don’t eat. 蚕茧 means silkworm cocoon.

We’ve found these at the Muslim sidewalk BBQ places in our area (pictured above) and at a nearby north-east peasant family style (东北农家) restaurant (below):

2. 知了猴儿 Cicada larva

In Tianjin people call these 知了猴儿，or you can just say 炸知了 (“fried cicadas”). Cicada larva, as an animal, is 知了幼虫。Cicadas, as animals, are also called 蝉。

You can see some fried scorpions in the background.

3. 蝎子 Scorpions

When it comes to food, these smaller scorpions are more common than the big gnarly black ones (shown in the second picture at the beginning). My students have also had 蝎子 in soup, and said it was really good.

4. 蚂蚱(儿) Locusts/grasshoppers

As food they’re called 蚂蚱; in a restaurant or at a vendor’s stall you can buy “fried locust” (炸蚂蚱). As an animal they’re also called 蝗虫。Everyone I asked said these two words were the same thing, but they weren’t 100% sure and there was disagreement. I checked four dictionaries and got conflicting answers depending on both which dictionary it was and whether I was searching the English or the Chinese. But whatever — I probably couldn’t distinguish a grasshopper from a locust in English. The important thing to know is that the thing in the pictures that people eat is called 炸蚂蚱。

These aren’t the ones used in cricket fighting (斗蛐蛐儿, also 蟋蟀), or the katydids (蝈蝈(儿)) that people raise as pets for their song.

P.S.
I think I’ve got these straight; let me know if any names are inaccurate or if I’ve left out anything important!

P.P.S.
Contrary to the expectations of friends and family, I haven’t actually eaten anyone of these. I sort of got the self-challenge adventure-eating stomach-over-mind insect-consuming impulse out of my system with the cockroach in Thailand, but I suppose if I had an excuse I’d go sample this stuff with someone, just for kicks. Plus, my younger sister’s boyfriend really upped the ante this summer when he ate his way through southeast Asia, so I need to reassert my superiority.

All these photos except for the silkworm chrysalises (蚕蛹) were taken at the Ditan Temple fair in February 2010. The 蚕蛹 photos come from our neighbourhood, taken last week.

We stepped off the Great Wall onto a terraced mountainside, and then followed a narrow farmers’ path through a corn jungle down to a village in the valley.

Photo Gallery: Mountainside Great Wall Corn Jungle Village Hike

Along the way a woman invited us into her hillside home to have look around.

Click a photo to go to the photo gallery.

We’ve done this hike before, but never when the crops were above our heads. The previous galleries have better village shots and people shots, especially this one: Happy Forest village — 2008 June 6

Chinglish is everywhere in China, but rarely is it this awesome!

I saw this tonight in the Tianjin subway. It’s handler gave me permission to take her explosive dog’s picture. “Explosive dog” is 搜爆犬 (sōu bào quǎn).

Summer is just about done, so here’s a photo gallery of “our” Tianjin covering the first half of 2010 (Spring Festival to present): Tianjin 2010 — Spring & Summer. There’s lots to see, like these grandmas in the park having a group eyeball-rubbing session:

The photos come from all over: partially abandoned and bulldozed hutongs in Tianjin’s less developed districts, the Great Wall in northern Tianjin, street markets, etc.

Click a photo to go to our Tianjin 2010 — Spring & Summer gallery.

Living in Tianjin and not knowing about this food is like living in America and not knowing about hamburgers, except that maybe there aren’t giant Chinese corporations more powerful than some national governments selling “oil sticks” and “tofu brains” next to KFC on every potentially profitable street corner on the globe. Still, you can find Tianjin’s local … delicacies … within walking distance of most neighbourhoods here. These local foods are a defining characteristic of the city, and you can feel the warmth and even a little pride from locals when you ask about them.

Breakfast is an especially big deal in Tianjin. Many people don’t like to cook breakfast themselves and the sidewalks are filled from early to late morning with folding tables, plastic stools, and crowds of people enjoying their very public meals.

Last week my sister came from Canada to see us, so I took her out before 6am one morning to sample both the local daily exercise scene and some breakfast. We took pictures, so here’s breakfast, Tianjiner-style, in no particular order. See the warning label at the bottom. Most dishes cost around two kuài ($0.30).

When Tianjiners travel overseas and get homesick, this is the stuff they miss.

1. 锅巴菜 gābacài

I like this stuff, though I wouldn’t have a clue what it’s made of just from eating it: maybe some sesame sauce, strips of something, some pink sauce, thick brown broth, and you can throw in some cilantro and crushed hot peppers in oil if you want. Apparently gābacài (锅巴菜) is a Tianjin original, and it’s seriously high-energy food; you feel like running a few miles afterward. According to this online recipe, it’s made with a mung bean-&-millet broth, strips of chopped, crepe-like jiānbǐng (煎饼), some of kind of gravy made with over ten kinds of seasonings, sesame paste, chilis in oil, pink fermented tofu sauce and cilantro. In standard Mandarin it should be guōbacài, but in Tianjin it’s gābacài — people often think it’s funny if the foreigner knows to use the local pronunciation.

2. 老豆腐 lǎodòufu

My students rave about “old tofu” (老豆腐) or “tofu brains” (豆腐脑) whenever I bring it up in class, but even they admit that it looks disgusting.

From what I can tell, it’s slimy lumps of tofu in an oil bath with some brown (sesame?) sauce thrown in. For me, the taste doesn’t come anywhere close to making up for its appearance. Of all the Tianjin breakfast foods, we liked this one the least. I think my sister stopped after the first or second spoonful.

3. 油条 yóutiáo

Two small strips of dough pinched together at the ends and deep fried, “oil sticks” are pretty much donuts without any sugar or flavouring. I honestly don’t see the point, unless you were trying to consume as much oil as possible without actually drinking it straight, though for some reason I still eat them occasionally. These things are everywhere at breakfast time, perhaps the most ubiquitous of all Tianjin’s breakfast offerings, maybe because they travel easily. 5 máo ($0.07) each.

The wider thing in the fry pot in the above photo is called a guǒbìngr (果饼儿) in Tianjin (薄脆 báocuì in Beijing). Guǒbìngr are thin and crispy rather than donut-y.

4. 面茶 miànchá

If you cooked it in less oil and traded the salt for brown sugar, you could slip bowls of miànchá (面茶) onto a Canadian family breakfast table and no one would notice (assuming that some Canadians actually still have family breakfasts). According to this online recipe and my Chinese-English dictionary, it’s made from millet, sesame paste, sesame oil, and sesame seeds. Unsweetened porridge, basically. I don’t know how to translate the name; the characters are the ones for “noodles” (面) and “tea” (茶), but I’m not seeing either in this dish [see comment #14]. Anyway, I’ll definitely be eating this again on a somewhat regular basis, though I can’t say the same or the “tofu brains” in the right half of the photo above.

5. 煎饼果子 jiānbing guǒzi

This is more or less the Chinese breakfast burrito, except that other than having a thin crepe-like wrapper, it’s (sadly) nothing at all like a burrito. The styles can vary and you can sometimes choose for yourself (see a list here), but a standard jiānbing guǒzi (煎饼果子) will be a green onion crepe lined with egg wrapped around a yóutiáo (油条 “oil stick”) or a crunchy guǒbìngr (果饼儿 — stacked overhead in the photo below), with some sauce and crushed red peppers in oil, and then folded twice. These transport well, and I often see them on the subway in the morning.

6. 豆浆 dòujiāng

“Bean broth” (豆浆) is better known in North America as soy milk, only the Tianjin variety is unsweetened and served really hot in a brimming bowl, scooped out of a big pot. Dòujiāng to-go comes in a bag with a straw. Sometimes they’ll add sugar to it if you ask. I like dipping the yóutiáo (油条 “oil stick”) in it, but I get funny looks from my Chinese friends when I do this.

This post doesn’t include every single kind of Tianjin breakfast food (there’d be no end; Tianjiners love them some breakfast!), but these are all the biggies. Hungry?

P.S. — Warning

Adventure eaters, be ye warned: This kind of local food is pretty much guaranteed to use the cheapest, poorest quality ingredients, and in China that means something different than it does back home. If, for example, you were deliberately trying to consume “gutter oil” (地沟油), which is discarded cooking oil that’s been skimmed off the sewer slop that was scooped out of manholes and resold in used containers back to restaurants and street vendors, you would eat things like yóutiáo (油条 “oil sticks”) or lǎodòufu (老豆腐 “old tofu”) at places like those pictured above, or you could go to an average local restaurant and order shuǐzhǔròu (水煮肉 “water boiled meat”), which is basically meat and vegetables in a serving bowl filled with oil. Most Chinese dishes use incredible amounts of oil, but the ones I’ve mentioned here use even more than usual and are therefore thought to be the most likely candidates for gutter oil.