共产档
MISH - MASH
Link: http://bigchickinchina.blogspot.com/2011/02/i-hate-jiaozi.html
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
I Hate Jiaozi
When I was a newbie here, I was invited to people's homes for dinner a lot. It was incredibly sweet, especially as nobody had a whole lot of anything back then. It's harder then hell to cook a lot when all you have is a single gas-burner, and I do deeply appreciate the effort people put into the shopping, cooking, cleaning, and supervision of dumb white guests. However, and this is a big however, sometime around 1995, someone decided the proper food for dumb white guests was jiaozi, and the entertainment for the evening should be making jiaozi.
So picture this: you're invited to dinner, and you get there, and you find everyone grinning like apes. Why? Because you have to help make dinner. They wheel out a barrel of flour. For the first time ever, you notice flat uncluttered surfaces in a Chinese house. And then the hideous process begins: someone begins to mix flour with warm water and the stretching, pounding, roping and strippling begins. That's just to make the dough. The protein in the flour has to be developed into ropey gluten so the dough can be stretched. Ugh. This is a long long process and if you offer to help---being a hell of a great strudel maker--everyone will laugh at you and tell you how YOU don't know ANYTHING about jiaozi.
This is pretty much the crux of the matter. Even if you shoot pasta out your ass without trying, everone will assure you that you don't know squat. So you sit through the tedious process of beating the tar out of the dough. Then you sit through the resting period. Someone brings you a cup of tea. You're famished, and consider eating the cup. While this is happening, you hope for snacks: alas, none, as no one wants to take the edge off that first bite of jiaozi goodness. You'd think someone would take this opportunity to mix up the filling and let the flavors blend a bit but no, everyone sits around and stares at you, the pet foreigner. Pictures may be taken. Someone whom you have never seen before may come over for their promised English lesson. Oh, didn't the host tell you? He's studying for an important exam and you are going to teach him what he needs to know for the test. You've never heard of the test and in your coversation with the student you discover that if he passes this test, he's going to the UK as a lecturer in economics, and yet his English is on the "I am happy meet you Dear Friend" level. If that. At one point he refers to Milton as a "bourgeous proletariat revolutionary" and you try not to bean him with your empty cup. Very empty cup. So now you're hungry AND thirsty. Can it get worse?
But wait, it does. They are now pinching out bits of dough, then rolling them with little rolling pins that look like fat cigars. The rolling pins are dandy and might do well for that pie you were thinking of baking--mmmm, pie---but then you discover, as they roll on, and on, and on, that they intend to make over 2,000 jiaozi that very night, so they have PLENTY to give to visitors during Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) and that every last one will be filled, stuffed, folded, and sealed shut that very evening before the first go into the pot to be cooked.
You wait, drooling, while 2,000 tiny wonton wrappers are rolled out before your eyes. Then the host comments on how he needs to put on his coat and buy the meat for the filling. "It's better fresh," he tells you as he heads out the door. So now you wait while the host tries to find an open butcher shop---it's now about a quarter past eight--and you wait, and wait, and wait, until he returns, triumphant, a sack of ground meat in his hand. Oh god, it's pork, and you are about to have pork-and-ginger jiaozi. The pork is dumped into a big wooden bowl. Ingredients--chopped ginger, and a LOT of salt--are tipped in. Now the humiliation begins. Before you can say "trichinosis" someone hands you a circle of dough, a teaspoon with raw pork, and instructs you to fold the dumpling up exactly the way they did. Having grown up with Czech great-aunts who taught you a thing or two about noodles, you make a respectable little dumpling. Everyone stares at you as if you just took dump in the jiaozi mix then bursts into laughter. Your dumpling is passed around so they can see HOW STUPID you are, you can't even fold a jiaozi! You notice, however, that EVERYONE'S jiaozi are folded in different ways but you keep silent as you think at this point if you talk you'll kill someone. Your feeble attempts at making jiaozi are put to the side, as they wouldn't want to hurt a real guest's feelings by serving them defective jiaozi. Someone seeing your disconsolate face (really, it's just hunger) tells you to cheer up because "Your bad jiaozi will open up and spill the content so no good for guests, you know we will cook them just for you and you eat and you will know what is good jiaozi." You want to say screw you all but can't, because it's not good manners and these people DID invite you over, even if they wrested a damn English lesson out of you, not to mention a photo op...You look up and notice with dismay that several of the family members are taking pictures of themselves wearing your discarded coat: they are showing how slim they are, and how they can wrap the coat around themselves with room to spare. My, so now they're mocking your clothes, your tastes, and the size of your ass. Fortunately, you are too weak with hunger to pick up a stool and brain Lao Tai Tai, the grandmother of the group who is showing that she can wrap your coat around herself twice, so you stay where you are and fold, fold, fold, even though each dumpling--lovely to your eye, firm, even, well-packed--gives rise to much merriment at your expense. But it's ok, as foreigners don't have feelings and don't mind being mocked as they are too stupid to know what is subtle.
Finally, someone thinks to put the pots on to boil, and two batches go in: theirs, the supposedly "pefect" jiaozi, and yours, the defects. They rise to the surface and the smell is, well, awful, as you loathe pork and ginger but know you can't leave until the meal is over, at which time everyone will charge to the door en masse. You'd also like to pee, but it's your first time in this home and it's kind of bad manners to use the toilet the first time in...it's warm, which is nice, but only from the steam and the amount of people packed in a tiny space. The smell of unwashed bits, damp wool, and Chinese herbal remedies is almost, but not quite, obscured by the smell of ripe boiled pork.
Finally, FINALLY, with much fanfare, the dumplings are fished out and ladled into bowls. Different types of vinegar are offered, black Chunking vinegar which you love but makes you vomit, millet vinegar from Shaanxi, which is your personal favorite, rice vinegar from the South. There are other condiments--a dish of picked peppers, for example, but you douse your dumplings in millet vinegar and then you notice something. Your dumplings are perfect: each one has held together perfectly, while the others--well, hee hee hee, most have split open and vomited their contents into the boiling broth. The dumpling which had a little coin inserted into it---like a Three Kings Cake only largely inedible--has split as well and the coin is nowhere to be found. Hee hee hee. The guests mutter among themselves as they fish through the broth trying to find the meat and ginger filling: without it, they're mostly sucking down limp noodle casing. It is a dim triumph, because you, sadly, now have stuffed dumplings, plump and proud, each filled with a mixture of chopped ginger, ground pork, and a not insignificant amount of chopped bone, gristle, and tendon. What can I say--the quality of meat back then was suspect at best, and hungry people eat what they can get. You are gagging each one down, partly out of hunger, and partly out of manners. You offer some of your plump beauties to other guests who shudder at their ugliness. Why? Why are they considered so ugly? They are symmetrical, nicely folded and crimped, and they didn't fucking fall apart while boiled. Why are they considered so horrible?
The answer is clear: because you, a foreigner, made them.
When the meal is over, the guests charge out the door. By the time you get back to your building, the front gate is locked. You manage to alert the sleeping security guard and he lets you in, but the elevator is locked, as the person who is allowed to run it has gone to bed at 11. You walk up 12 flights of stairs and fling yourself down on your bed, noticing as you do so that it's almost two a.m. and worse, you're still hungry. The next day in Chinese class you will yawn, a lot, and your stupid foreigner advisor will scold you for not having done your homework and tell you that you should, for the sake of your Chinese, hang out with the locals more often.
Translated by（翻译）：王大发财
你们管这东西叫馄饨，我呢就叫饺子，我不管是煮饺子、冻饺子、刚做的饺子还是煎饺子，我讨厌饺子。
我刚来中国那会儿，经常被人请到家里吃饭。感觉很温馨，一想到大家那时候条件都不是很好，只有一个单眼炉灶，又要做很多菜，那难度简直了。大家买菜做菜烧菜洗碗还要辅导傻逼白人怎么吃，我很感谢主人家。但是，1995年的时候吧，有人觉得，傻逼白人应该吃饺子才对啊！于是当晚的娱乐节目就成了包饺子。
请想象如下画面：你被人请去吃晚饭，好，你到了，在场所有人笑得和猩猩一样狡黠。为什么？原因是你也要搭把手做晚饭。他们取出了面粉袋子，这是你第一次在中国人的家里看到一张平坦又整齐的台面。可怕的事情开始了：这时候有个人开始用温水倒进面粉里搅拌混合，然后又是拉又是摔，又是拉成一根绳，然后又扯成一坨坨。这还只是做面皮。要达到能够拉扯的地步，面粉里的蛋白质一定要被揉成绳状面筋才行。呃。整个过程无比的漫长，你要是搭把手吧，大家都要嘲笑你，告诉你饺子不是这么做应该怎么怎么做。
就是这点让我很不爽，就算你不费吹灰之力拉出了一坨面团，所有人还是认为你连蹲都不会蹲。所以虽然揍面团的过程很乏味，你只能耐着性子看。好，休息阶段结束，有人给你端了一杯茶。这个时候你要饿死了，连茶杯都想吃掉。总应该有点零食什么的吧：没有，什么都没有，大家都等着吃第一口饺子。你觉得应该有人呈做面皮的机会拌馅了吧？没有，所有人都围着你坐着眼巴巴看着你，你就是个宠物，外国来的。想象一下，你从来没见过的人走过来让你给他上英语课。难道主人没告诉你？他要参加一个重要的考试，你呢就要负责把考试里所有的考点交给他。你们聊天提到的这个考试你根本就没听说过，聊着聊着你发现你的学生只要通过考试就准备去英国教经济学，这家伙的英语水平还停留在【I am happy meet you Dear Friend】的水平。他说米尔顿是资产阶级-无产阶级改革者，你努力克制自己不用手里的空茶杯敲他。茶杯里啥都没了。你现在又渴又饿。你觉得大概这就是最惨了吧？
等等，最惨的还没来。他们开始揪面团，揪成一坨坨，用小小的擀面杖擀成粗雪茄的样子。擀面杖看着很不错，让你想到烤馅饼，谁知他们不但没停，反而一直擀啊擀啊，那晚上他们居然想做2000多个饺子，这样春节期间才能有足够的饺子招待客人，在第一只饺子下锅之前，所有的2000多只饺子都要填馅、包好、封口。
你一边等一边吞口水，眼睁睁看着2000个小馄饨皮在你眼前被擀好。这时候主人发话了，他穿好衣服要出门买馅。出门的时候，还不忘告诉你：“新鲜的才好。”主人出门找还开门的肉店了，你继续等待——已经八点过十五分了，你还在等啊等啊等啊等，主人得意洋洋地回来，手里提着一包猪肉馅。天哪，居然是猪肉，马上吃的居然是猪肉生姜饺子。猪肉被倒进一个大木碗里，调料有姜末、很多很多盐。
现在你就要开始丢脸了，你还没把“旋毛虫病”这几个字说出口，就有人递给你一块圆面皮，上面还有一勺生猪肉，开始教你如何完全按照他们的步骤折饺子。幸亏你和捷克的祖姨妈一起长大，学过一点面食制作的你还是包出了很不错的小饺子。大家都看着你，就好像你包进去的是垃圾，最后爆发出一阵欢笑。你包出来的饺子被每个人传看，让大家都看看你有多傻逼，你居然连包饺子都不会！这时候你发现所有人包饺子的方法都和你不一样，但是你保持安静，因为你知道如果这个时候开口，你会杀人。你包饺子的尝试可耻地失败了，大家也不愿意你包的残饺让真正的客人吃到不爽。有个人看到了你闷闷不乐的样子(其实完全是被饿的)，这人让你不要难过，高兴点，因为“你包的烂饺子开口露馅，这样对客人不体面，我们会专门为你煮饺子，你吃过就知道什么是好饺子。”你想说去你们他妈的，但是你说不出来，因为这样做不礼貌，别人毕竟邀请你过来做客，就算从你这里骗了一堂英语课，还给你拍了照……拍照？我擦这家人的几个亲戚正穿着你脱下来的外套自拍：套上你的外套他们显得如此苗条，衣服的其它地方还空荡荡的。天啊，这帮人开始嘲讽你的衣服和品位了，居然还讽刺你长了个大屁股。这家人的祖母正在炫耀你的衣服能在她身上裹两圈，你已经饿得虚脱，否则你肯定会找一把板凳，朝这老太太脑袋上狠狠敲去。你就坐在那里，蜷缩着，蜷缩着，蜷缩着，看着眼前一只只饺子被包的漂漂亮亮的，看着大家拿你寻开心。但是这样做没有关系，外国人是没有感情的，也不介意被人嘲笑，因为我们笨啊，偷偷嘲讽我们是发现不了的。
最后有人建议应该下锅开煮了，于是下了两批饺子：一批是他们包的完美饺子，一批是我包的残饺子。饺子煮着浮了起来，那味道闻起来太恶心了，你最讨厌猪肉和生姜了，但是你又不能中途离开，吃完饭才能走。你还想尿尿，但是你第一次来人家家里就要用厕所又不太礼貌。厕所很暖和，这点不错，可都是房间里的蒸汽和小小的空间里那么多人造成的。没洗过的东西、湿润的毛衣、还有中草药补品的味道几乎都被煮熟的猪肉味道给盖住了。
终于，终于饺子出锅装碗，各种醋，你喜欢吃但是让你作呕的重庆醋、你最喜欢的陕西的小米醋、南方的米醋。配料还有一碟子剁辣椒，你选择了小米醋，这时候你发现你做的饺子还不赖，居然个个都没漏。其它的大多数都破了，馅漏的到处都是，混进了汤里。有个饺子里面放了硬币，结果这个饺子开口了，硬币也找不到。客人们一个个交头接耳，在汤里面捞来捞去找肉馅：没了肉馅的饺子就成了面皮。这无疑是个小小的胜利，因为你毕竟成功包好了饺子，个头饱满拿得出手的饺子，每个里面包的都是姜末和猪肉，还有不少碎掉的骨头、软骨和筋膜。你发现所有人都不说话了，一部分原因是因为饿了，一部分原因是出于礼貌。客人们对于自己的丑饺子表示震惊，你把自己做的丰满好看的饺子给了一些他们。为什么当初他们觉得你包的饺子很难看？这些饺子形状对称，折叠整齐褶子好看，而且最关键的是不会他妈的一煮就烂。为什么这些人觉得我包的饺子就这么糟糕？
答案很明显，因为你是外国人。
吃完饭后，客人们涌向了门口。回到自己的住处，大门已经被锁。保安已经睡去，你把他叫醒，他把你放了进去，但是电梯又锁了，负责电梯的人11点就回去睡觉了，你只能爬上12楼，躺上床发现已经是凌晨两点，你又饿了。第二天上中文课的你哈欠连连，你那个蠢兮兮的外国人顾问骂你怎么没有做家庭作业，还告诉你如果要锻炼你的中文，就应该多接触当地人。
