Butterfly Effect: Erma Yina, the Blogger, the Movie, the Earthquake and the preservation of Qiang culture

In August of 2004, a tourist took a snapshot of a beautiful young Qiang woman named Erma Yina and posted it on his personal blog. The photo touched other Netizens, resulting in a flood of Chinese tourists to Taoping Village, Sichuan where the girl was photographed, and a flood of more pictures and national celebrity for Erma Yina followed. As a result of the girl's Net-driven idol status, a movie was shot in Taoping, "Erma's Wedding," short on plot but very long on local color.

On May 12, 2008, the Wenchuan earthquake all but wiped out Taoping and Erma Yina's birthplace of Li Xiang and threatened the future of Qiang culture.

Probably influenced by the Internet-spurred celebrity of Taoping Village and its famous resident Erma Yina, approximately 10 billion yuan (US $1.5 Bn) of investment from China and abroad has been allocated "to save and rehabilitate the quake-threatened Qiang culture."

The movie, "Erma's Wedding," was recently released in an English-subtitled DVD in the "Follow Me Chinese" series which features, though not exclusively, movies of a high propaganda value. The movie is described as "A true record of culture and natural landscapes of Qiang ethnic minority before 5.12 Wenchuan Earthquake."

From Peru with love: Cuy on China's Tables?

Peru has borrowed more from Chinese cuisine than has any other non-Asian nation. Peruvian-Chinese "chifas" (whose name derives from chi fan, or "eat [rice]" dot the Peruvian landscape more than chop suey parlors ever did the U.S. landscape. It's said that even non-Chinese restaurants in Peru have a variety of wonton soup as a standard menu offering, and lomo saltado, which amounts to Peru's national dish, is said to be of Chinese invention. It goes without saying that Peru would like to repay China for its culinary largesse beyond her greatest conbtribution to China's larders to date, the potato.

Enter the cuy. As the intriguing blog Double Handshake explains, the cuy, better know in the English-speaking world as the guinea pig, is a favored delicacy in Peru:

The animals, which reproduce extremely quickly, are full of protein and low in fat. Cuy, as it is called in Peru, can be fried, broiled, roasted or turned into soup. Peruvians eat about 65 million guinea pigs annually.

It seems that modern breeding methods have produced more guinea pigs than Peruvians can eat, and export options are currently limited. Why not, wonders the blog (which covers both China and Latin America) interest China in adopting a new taste treat? It convincingly lays out half a dozen good reasons why cuy would probably catch on, including a catchy slogan “It’s keyi to eat cuy!”

To Double Handshake's list of reasons why it makes sense to export guinea pigs to China for human consumption, I would add another: precedent. A cuy, or guinea pig, after all, is just another rodent, albeit a cute one. A rat is a rat is a rat, and skinned and cooked (see the picture in the Double Handshake blog) a guinea pig looks remarkable like the end product in an earlier blog post of mine, Eating your way through the Chinese Zodiac. That gustatory delight started out as the uncute critter depicted below. I've yet to taste either, but perhaps another selling point for cuy might be the catch phrase "It tastes just like rat."

From the Shanghai Bites Archive: Bow-wow stuffed baozi creates controversy

[Note: I have decided to let my Shanghaibites.com website and blog expire, and am reprising selected posts here in the @GarySoup Blog. This one was posted on February 27, 2007 in Shanghai Bites]

No, this is not something Michael Ohlsson ("Weird Meat") missed. It's a Yankee-style hot dog place, and the weirdest thing about it is its location: the northeast corner of People's Square, near the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Center. I tried the dog last December, when I took the picture. There seemed something not quite right about the bun, but otherwise it walked like a hot dog, talked like a hot dog, and looked like a hot dog to me. And I should add tasted like a hot dog.

The controversy, if it can be called such, relates to the graphic logo of the jauntily leaning dog. Others in the blogosphere have pointed out that it's a copy of the logo used by Top Dog, the beloved and venerable mini-chain in Berkeley, California. I think it has also been reported that the Mac Dog owner once worked at Top Dog for a few months. Is Top Dog complaining? Not that I've heard. Should they complain? Unless they are planning to expand beyond their three East Bay shops to Mainland China, I think not. After all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

From the Shanghai Bites Archive: Bourdain Blows It

[Note: I have decided to let my Shanghaibites.com website and blog expire, and am reprising selected posts here in the @GarySoup Blog. This one was posted on August 5, 2007 in Shanghai Bites]

I was excited to hear that the latest installment of Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations" had him in Shanghai, sampling local small eats. When I caught the re-run, though, I found it to be a huge disappointment. Although the episode was identified as "Shanghai," there was a scant 10 minutes or so of an hour-long blitzkrieg Long March to Shangrila, and it was stock travelogue stuff. AB at the Nanxiang Steamed Dumpling Shop, proclaiming their xiaolong bao product to be "the best dumplings in the world." AB stopping by Xiao Yang's for some shengjian bao (a.k.a. "fried dumplings"). And finally, the really exciting and titillating blip of Anthony Bourdain buying "stinky tofu" from a street vendor and representing that it was something new to him. Then poof, off to cormorant fishing (another travelogue yawner).

The Nanxiang is certainly photogenic in its setting and activity (as in the above photo), and deserves a visit simply because it's a shrine to xiaolong bao. But it was galling to see Anthony Bourdain, as has been done with almost every video tour of Shanghai before, hunker down with the local tourism boosters and agree with them on the party line that the Nanxiang's XLB are the best anywhere. True, they once were, but if AB's team did their research, he would know that the Nanxiang's culinary glory has faded and there are probably mom-and-pop shops making tastier, nore delicate-skinned xiaolong bao in almost every Shanghai neighborhood today.

Shengjiang bao from Xiao Yang's establishment and even chou doufu from street vendors are also covered in almost any guide book a visitor is likely to bring with him. But I forget, Anthony Bourdain's show is on the Travel Channel, after all.

Vetting Bund Shanghai con't.: Four very different thumbs go up for New Year's Day dinner

Expect the worst, but hope for the best, we like to say in the U.S.

A couple of posts ago, I embraced Bund Shanghai Restaurant tentatively, based on the imperfect nature of the breakfast fare I tried and/or of my sense of taste, then impaired by a head cold. Last night the Spring Festival gave me an excuse to take a flyer on it for dinner with my personal review panel in tow, they being three generations of very picky Shanghainese women in the persons of my wife, Mother-in-law and step-daughter. Coming in cold, as it were, with them, I was prepared to be both disappointed and scorned, but happily suffered neither fate: we all loved it from first bite to last.

I ordered conservatively, with the intent of getting a read on how well they did the Shanghai classics. We started with kao fu, five-spice beef and salty duck for cold dishes, followed by Yan du xian (see post below). pan-fried nian gao (also de rigeur for a Shanghainese New Year's feast) and hong shao rou (red-cooked pork belly), always a potential show-stopper. We added onion beef (on the request of my stepfaughter, whose tastes have become somewhat Americanized) and gambled on something called "Seaweed fish" from the Chef's Specials menu which sits in a little holder on each table.

The kao fu came first, and my MIL, the toughest critic of the bunch, led the chorus of praises for Bund Shanghai's version, which featured kaofu cut into smaller diamond shapes than usual, blanched Virginia peanuts and donggu (Shitake) mushrooms. The Nanjing salty duck was lean and appeared to have been freshly cured, showing no sign of refrigerator burn, dry edges or other discoloration. It was as good as I've had at Xiao Jinling in Shanghai, famous for its Nanjing duck. The five-spice beef was lean and tender shank meat, subtly spiced, not overpowered by five-spice powder as is often the case.

Yan du xian, a soup that eats like a casserole, is considered by some to be the most indispensible part of a Shanghainese New Year feast. It is listed on the Bund Shanghai menu as "Boiled Bacon and Pork Soup" and contains (for symbolic reasons) both cured pork and fresh pork, winter bamboo shoots and tofu sheet knots (bai ye jie). Bund Shanghai's version was comforting, rich, and salty. Some might find it too salty, but "salty" is part of its name and of its aim. The nian gao ("Rice Cake w/Shepherd's Purse and Shredded Pork) was the softest I've ever had, almost of melt-in-the-mouth tenderness. I wondered if this was a misfire, expecting a little more al dente character, but the three women were wowed by it.

The hong shao rou ("Soy sauce-braised pork" on the menu) was as unctuously appealing as only red-cooked pork belly can be, and Bund Shanghai's version did not commit the error of being too sweet. Hard to believe, but the owner told us that the house's red-cooked pork butt (ti pang) is even better.

The onion beef was unexciting to me, but the stepdaughter loved it and took the leftovers home with her.

The "seaweed fish" probably got the coolest reception, partly due to its unfamiliarity and possibly due to the fact that it came last, after we were pretty much stuffed. It turned out to be yellowfish filets that had been dipped in a thin, seaweed-infused batter and deep fried, then arranged on the plate to look like fish. "Not very good," said my wife, as she reached for another piece of it. I thought it was fine.

We finished with jiu niang ("Small Mochi in Rice Wine Sauce," as the menu put it), complements of the house. I abstained, because this dish is too sweet for my tastes, but my wife had no trouble eating my bowl as well as hers.

We spent time talking to some of the staff and found out more about the restaurant. The owner has been in the US from Shanghai for 20 years, and is an attorney with a private practice. He actually opened the restaurant create a livelihood for recently immigrating relatives. (His mother is the cashier, and a sister is the hostess).

There are two dinner chefs at Bund Shanghai. One formerly worked at the Jin Jiang Hotel in Shanghai, and the other worked as a chef for the Municipal Government of Shanghai (official functions and the like). We chatted briefly with the latter and found out he is actually from Wuxi, Jiangsu province, which made him a hit with the girls, who are Wuxiren as well). Both chefs had worked at various restaurants in the suburban Peninsula area before he recruited them to work for him, a reversal of the usual direction for talent drain.