The "Wok Wiz" and the Tea Wiz

Red Blossom Tea, in the heart of San Francisco's Chinatown, is one of my favorite little corners of the Universe. It's where I go in San Francisco to sample good tea, buy my precious Longjing tea, or just swap Chinese restaurant gossip. It's the product of a makeover of a generations-old tea, ginseng and herbal medicine shop. While the senior Luongs still dispense ginseng and other potions (including Wolfberries, or Goji Berries, a "superfood" just now hitting the pop charts), young sprouts Peter and Alice Luong dispense knowledge and love of fine tea in an attractive modern space.

If you've come to San Francisco Chinatown to learn about Chinese food, you may have taken one of the "Wok Wiz" tours, and if you lucked out, got the "Wok Wiz" herself, Shirley Fong-Torres (sister of journalist Ben) as a leader. She's made the tea shop a regular stop on her tour and on Sunday I happened be there seeking refuge from the noisy street festival outside when Shirley and her tour group showed up, and snapped the above picture. That's Shirley on the left, and Alice Luong on the right.

Fortune Cookies going to the dogs...

The late muckraking journalist Paul Jacobs once ate from a tin of dog food on live TV, to illustrate a point: the labeling requirements for pet food are more stringent than for people food.

What has this to do with fortune cookies for dogs? Well, they do exist, Virginia, and I spotted them at Cost Plus World Market. Intriguingly, they are advertised as being chicken-liver flavored and therefore are most likely far more tasty than the stale vanilla-flavor variety I sometimes get at the end of a Chinese meal. I have no idea what fortunes are inside the cookies, but the next time I run across a dog that's just finished a Chinese meal I'll ask.

What precedes the fortune cookie reward for eating all your doggie veggies most likely is served in one a dish like the one at the right (they come in two sizes). These strike me as having a purpose in life. Was your last takeout or delivery Chinese food unfit for human consumption? Put it in front of Fido. Was some offal dish from that authentic Sichuan restaurant just too, well, awful? Fido will lap it up. Hmm..... that makes me wonder if.... never mind.

The Offal Truth about Sichuan Home Cooking

On the eatingchinese.org website I recently added a new feature, "Nasty Bits, Sichuan Style" which is a left-handed tribute of sorts to Anthony Bourdain, who sometimes seems to have invented the eating of offal. It features "Nasty Bits Recipe of the Month", such as "Home-Cooked Ox Penis", the inaugural selection for January. Admittedly, I created the feature to titillate and perhaps draw a few eyeballs to the site, as much as to tweak the self-assured A. B. a little. But there is nothing sensationalized about the source of my recipes, it's a little book called "Home-cooked Sichuan Cuisine" published in China. The recipes, therefore, are presumed to represent a cross-section of dishes served in Sichuan homes. The entire list of recipes in the book is presented below, and perusing it may

a) impress upon you the waste-not-want-not sense of economy of China's cooking and eating culture,

b) give you food for thought about "authenticity" and whether you REALLY want to find it in a Chinese restaurant, or

c) make your mouth water.

• Stir-fried Preserved Ham with Celery and Pot-Stewed Tofu
• Stir-Fried Shredded Pork and Green Pepper
• Steamed Streaky Pork and Taro
• Pickled Pigtails with Wild Chilli Pepper
• Stir-fried Meat Stuffed Egg Rolls in Fish Flavor
• Fried Steamed Streaky Pork
• Stir-fried Preserved Ham with Pickled Cowpea
• Steamed Upper Part of a Leg of Pork
• Sichuan Sausage
• Home Cooking Style Shredded Pork
• Shredded Pork with Sweet Brown Sauce
• Stir-fried Pork Liver with Pickled Chilli
• Steamed Streaky Pork with Rice Flour
• Fried Streaky Pork Stuffed Bean Curd Sheet Rolls
• Steamed Pork Spare Ribs with Rice Flour
• Stir-fried Preserved Ham and Heartleaf Houttuynia Herb
• Stir-fried Preserved Ham of Home town with Garlic Bolt
• Pork Large Intestine in Casserole
• Dong-Po Pork in Bamboo Canister
• Rice Crust and Pork in Luzhou Mellow Wine Flavor
• Dry-stewed Pork Balls
• Dry-braised Upper Part of a Leg of Pork
• Steamed Pork Spare Ribs in Little Bamboo Cage
• Dry-stewed Pork Tripe with Pickled Radish
• Steamed Pork Spare Ribs with Glutinous Rice
• Golden Pork Large Intestine with Crisp Skin
• Dry-stewed Pork Large Intestine with Mushroom and Fermented Bean Curd
• Hot and Spicy Stir-Fried Pig Uterus
• Home-cooked Pork Tripe
• Hot and Sour Tendon
• Stir-fried Pork Kidney
• Home-Cooked Tendon
• Dry-Stewed Tendon
• Stewed Pig’s Brains and Minced Pork
• Stir-Fried Tender Ginger and Shredded Pork
• Stewed Streaky Pork and Sweet Potatoes
• Boiled Mushroom Sprout and Fat Beef in Chafing Dish
• Dry-Stewed Oxtails with Garlic
• Sichuan Style Fat Beef Rolls on Hot Iron Plate
• Stir-Fried Mutton with Sweet Brown Sauce
• Hot and Spicy Fried Rabbit’s Head
• Dry-stewed Dog’s Meat with Pickled Radish
• Home-cooked Ox Penis
• Stir-fried Eggplants with Mashed Pork in Fish Flavor

If you answered c) to the above, you are either Anthony Bourdain, an Anthony Bourdain wannabe, the person who A.B. is striving to become, or a Chengdu homie.

Chowhound.com gets our Zeal of Approval

In light of the suspension of eatingchinese's discussion forums, and while its lazy webmaster searches for a more spam-resistant alternative, eatingchinese.org suggests, nay, insists that its visitors try hanging out at chowhound.com. For those who are unaware, chowhound is a shining example of what God or Gore or whatever Geek invented the internet intended it to be, a vast Community Memory Project, an attempt to pre-empt the power of the computer for the use of the community. Sure it covers "civilian" cuisines, but within its vast network of discussion boards it contains as much appreciation and deconstruction of Chinese cuisine and its bypaths as any two single purpose message boards might have. You can dissect your favorite (or least favorite) Chinese restaurant on the appropriate regional discussion board, ask about restaurants in Turpan on the China board, share your recipe for Strange Taste Chicken on the Home Cooking board, indulge in some serious wok talk on the Cookware board, or give your props to Panda Express on the Chains board. No one will stop you from crying in your pijiu over burgers or doughnuts, either, if that's your perversion.

And you probably will run into me.

Communist Party unit formed at Wal-Mart HQ

Being a, shall we say, non-fan of Walmart's, I've liked the way that Beijing has jerked Wal-Mart's around, forcing them to allow trade unions in their China stores. Although symbolically stunning, though, that didn't have a whole lot of meaning (as it was probably explained to the Good Ol' Boys in the Bentonville HQ) because independent trade unions in China are just a form of window dressing and have little real power. Imagine my glee, therefore, to read the news that the 300-lb. gorilla, namely the Chinese Communist Party, had decided to camp out at Wal-Mart's China headquarters in Shenzhen.

December 21, 2006

Following the foundation of a trade union at its headquarters in November 2006, Wal-Mart China has now announced the establishment of a Communist Party Branch at its China headquarters in Shenzhen.

Wang Suiming, commissioner of the Shenzhen CPC Standing Committee and director of the Shenzhen Municipal Organization Department, says that the establishment of the Communist Party Branch at Wal-Mart China's headquarters shows that Shenzhen has made a great achievement in pushing foreign enterprises to open party branches in their companies. Wang also says this will help promote the city's efforts in constructing the "Two New Organizations"–economic organizations and new social organizations–particularly the construction of a party league in foreign-owned firms in the city.

Wang asks party members and members of the Two New Organizations to play an example and work to constantly expand the Communist Party's influence and sense of team spirit.

All the glad tidings are in this article.

OK, no more Wal-Mart's postings in 2007. Unless they force my hand, of course.