< Disclaimer> < Return To Issue Article Index >

On Friday afternoon Tsering Ji stopped by my campus apartment to ask questions about the English lesson.  This tall young woman with the long face and graceful moves is a rarity among her classmates.  She actually wants to learn English.  As she was leaving, she told me that the class would be having a hot pot luncheon in Guza town on Saturday, and I should join them at 10:00 a.m. Hot pot.  In many parts of China this is a winter dish.  Here in Sichuan it is a rite of endurance.  Piping hot food fished from a cauldron laced with enough red pepper to blow the roof off Pace Picante Sauce's little red thermometer.  On the one hand, I always enjoy an outing with these Tibetan college students.  On the other hand, could my stomach lining deal with hot pot?  And most importantly, was this a bona fide invitation?  Technically, the class monitor, not Tsering Ji, has the authority to speak for the class.  Would I be a gate crasher? The next morning I was up, dressed and ready to go by 10:00, still uncertain.  At about 10:20 Tsering Ji arrived out of breath and told me to come on, they were expecting me.  Stretching my short legs to match her long-legged gait, before long we caught up with a group sauntering down the road.  These Tibetan men have a distinctive stride, acquired from matching the gait of their yaks.  Swaying from side to side, the weight from the hip down to the heel rolls to the out pointed toe in an unhurried rhythm.  We passed them on by, since both of us needed to go to the bank before the meal.

A toast

On the way to the bank we stopped at the restaurant.  By now it was about 10:45. A student, Tsering Dendrup, was leaning on the door frame talking into his cell phone. The place was empty. He was one of the students leaving after this term.  During the dinner he would assume the roll of toastmaster.
.

We went on to the bank.  We saw another handful of our group standing in 'line,' also withdrawing money. I say 'line'.  In China lines don't really exist.  Standing at a bank counter is like a full court press.  People line up the full length of the counter; about eight people can fit the length of it.  Not eight shoulder to shoulder, but eight nonetheless.  Then there will be bodies roughly three deep pushing in from the rear.  They are squeezed in at all angles, as they try to worm their way to the front.  I tend to just stand behind this wall of bodies, leaving an 'appropriate' space between me and the person in front of me.  New people coming in step around me and look for a seam between two people, and insinuate themselves there.  Eventually I may get tired of waiting, and start inching myself into the heaving mass of bodies.  Usually I try to plan enough time for this, hanging back until the crowd thins out.  Often the teller, sitting at a desk with her left shoulder to the counter, will see me and rise a little to catch my eye, and then motion for me to pass her my bank book through the slit in the window.  It takes a few seconds, but the crowd then melts just enough for me to squeeze one shoulder and a hand close enough to the counter to signal with fingers how much money I want, and then to press my PIN into the little machine to authorize the transaction.

Twice a year, a group of vendors swoop down on Guza for a few weeks to sell their wares.  They put up tents in an empty lot that is at the dead end of a little side street.  Guza is a one street town, so the side streets are very short, and usually end up in a school or a condominium courtyard.  This street, however, where the bank is, seems to end at a pair of brick columns.  Twice a year you can walk through those columns and enter an intriguing bazaar.  It is a great diversion for this sleepy little school town.  Through the tents, awnings and overgrown garden shrubs you can glimpse on three sides long low brick buildings in various stages of disrepair. 
Instead of leaving the bank and turning right, back to the main street and the restaurant, I saw that my students were lined up to the left.  They were standing around watching a couple of hawkers.  One was squatted on the ground, with a deck of cards in her hands.  Laying in front of her was a circle divided into many wedges, with random numbers around the circle and Chinese symbols.  If you paid her a 'buck' you could pick a card and she would tell your fortune.
.

Next to her, obviously her shill, was a man on a short stool with a small coal brazier between his legs, holding a small pot with a thick brown liquid thinly coating its bottom.  He would ladle a small amount of this thick liquid deftly onto a white square board in front of him.  First a drop, then flatten it with the ladle making a smear. Then another smear, then lift the ladle and let it trickle down into spikes and swirls.  He laid a stick on it, pressing it into a thicker portion of smear.  Wait a few seconds, and then gently lift it off the board with a long thin spatula. Then I noticed he had a green Sprite bottle mounted on the corner of his table; five or six of these shapes stuck out the sides of the bottle. I saw fish, birds, dragons, butterflies.  Two circles lay in front of him with spinners.  Around the circles were pictures of animals or flowers.  For free, you could 'spin' (or just nudge it a little) and walk away with one of these delicacies.  I saw a girl pick out a butterfly, then walk away nibbling at its fragile wings. Then I surmised that this edible liquid was brown sugar.

Boys from the class

..
We watched this artisan for a while, before drifting on into the bazaar. I kept thinking we should get to the restaurant, that one guy standing there must be getting impatient, and the guys we passed on the road, where were they?  But the girls were totally relaxed, enjoying themselves. I asked the girl nearest me, "uh luh ma?"  (are you hungry).  She said not.  Well then, no hurry for lunch, I thought.

After drifting around the maze of tables of wares in a timeless bubble of a warm Spring morning, the tide changed and suddenly we were all headed out, back to the main street.  As we neared the columns Tsering Ji, one of my more advanced students, said to me, "Sherab Drolma eez hongry.  Let's go."  We got back to the restaurant.  There were maybe three people already sitting, nibbling on the sunflower seeds in the condiment dish, a light covering of shells at their feet.

The room filled quickly.  I noticed their Tibetan literature teacher, seated at another table.  The class monitor, Gunga Tsewang, came up to Tsering Ji and me to chat.  He told me that he had come to my room Friday night, but I wasn't home.  I was puzzled.  I was indeed home, watching a movie with an English Department student.  We had the lights out, but I know the glow from the TV screen lights up the curtain.  He and Tsering Ji saw the drawn curtain and no lights on, and thought I wasn't home.  I simply hadn't heard them; they were quiet as mice, rather unusual for Tibetans.  So there was my invitation from the monitor, delivered but not received.
We were in a hot pot restaurant.  Each round table comes with a hole in the center, in which is laid a wok with a divider down the center, sitting on a gas burner.  Two differently flavored spicy broths are poured in.  You select your raw food from a wall of racks, then sit and dip food into the boiling broth from your tray piled high with meats, vegetables, seafood and seaweeds.  About eight people can sit around one table.

On a visit to Xi'an last year friends took me to a Mongolian hot pot restaurant.  I rather enjoyed that experience.  Each person had a bowl with tahini, sesame paste.  A series of condiment dishes went around the table, so that each person could personalize the taste in his bowl with such as cilantro, garlic, hot sauce, chives and more.  The broth was tasty, with dates floating in one side and just a few red peppers in the other.  The waiters brought dishes of raw food ordered by the guests.  There was a lot of thinly sliced curled goat meat, yang rou, beef, niu rou, and a great assortment of vegetables and long stemmed button top mushrooms.  There were clear noodles, or fen si.
...

Another toast Pot dividing spicy from spicer

Some say the hot pot evolved from the nomadic fires of the Mongols, then was adapted by Beijing and Japan.  I fondly remember the delicious simmering clay pots in Japan that eschewed the tongue numbing spices preferred in China.  A few months back I read an article by Ron Gluckman, in Destinasia, claiming that the hot pot was invented in Sichuan.  I guess you could say that this dish served in Guza is a local invention, since it has no closer tie to Mongolian hot pot than ravioli does to wan tan. In Guza, miles and worlds away from Xi'an, two broths fill the halves of the divided pot.   One broth is a bland salty stock with red floating dates.  The other side is red from la jiao, the fiery red pepper paste, and is loaded with hua jiao, the numbing seed of the prickly ash.   The students took turns filling the platters from the racks of foods in the other room, filling our pot with a wide range of mushrooms, various sea-based flora, vegetables as varied as whole leaves of lettuce and thin slice of potato, small shrimp, frozen chicken legs, thick sliced bologna, and other things I didn't touch but think were slices off gelled blocks of pig blood, and intestines.

The luncheon was typical.  The boys drank beer, the girls drank Sprite and Coke, and tea was plentiful.  The boys offered each other cigarettes.  One by one tables took turns as the boys stood and toasted each other.  We had no guys at our table, so they had to come one by one and toast us.  In this triglot environment, where the students easily shift between Mandarin, Sichuan, and the Khampa dialect of Tibetan, I could only guess at the intent of these toasts. 

I had my digital camera with me, having learned that these students fondly collect pictures of themselves with their friends.  As I moved from table to table I stepped gingerly.  It was like walking across a frozen pond slipping on chunks of slush.

Then the singing started.  Oh, and can this class sing!  Both boys and girls regaled us.  I hadn't heard the girls sing before, a special treat.  They sang their Tibetan songs, singing about mother, friendship, and the wild freedom of the mountains, ululating in clear ringing tones.  Some songs were in Tibetan, while others were in Chinese with Tibetan melody and theme.

As the dinner progressed I steered the conversation towards the reason for this fete.  Listening through the usual vagaries and unknown vocabulary, I gleaned that it was to honor the seven classmates who would be leaving at the end of this term, to enter the teaching jobs awaiting them in their home villages. Tsering Dendrup, Sherab Drolma and the other five gathered for a group picture, and I felt the weight of loss. I had promised the English Department to give a lecture at 3:00.  It was already advertised, people had stopped me all morning both on campus and in Guza saying they were looking forward to my talk.  Sitting at the restaurant I kept eye on the time.  I had promised Mr. Yang, from the English Department, to meet him at the lecture hall at 2:30 to make sure the overhead projector and mike were working.   Finally at 1:30, although no one was making a move to leave, I forced myself to begin saying goodbyes and inching towards the door.  An entourage grew, as students walked with me to a taxi and saw me off.  I had to rush to get home, heat the iron to touch up my dress, change and arrive out of breath at 2:40 to the lecture hall.  No one noticed that I was late.  The hall was already filling. 

At the end of the day, back home at last, I plugged my digital camera into the computer and savored the photos, as my tongue gingerly touched a blistered palate. 

The article below is the first article that Santina wrote for the magazine: 

Kangding - On The Road To Tibet

To write Satina Click Here
.

< Send a Letter to the Editor > < Subscribe> < Submit An Article >< Disclaimer>