What’s Wright in the World

From the Texas branch of the Wright Clan. Food was great. No need to translate recipes. Missed the rest a y’all.

Journey to Xi’an
November 27, 2005

“China is not the same as it was tomorrow.” This epigram was penned by Jack Hoar, a former Fulbright Scholar after his work in China. One need look no further for verification than the New Campus of Xi’an International Studies University.
I just learned the institution is flying under a false banner. The formal name of the school on the public records is Xi’an International Studies Institute, but the administration aspires to University status, anticipates it, and demonstrates that aspiration in many ways: There is a giant globe surrounded by a “dancing fountain” on the old Campus; Gracefully curved around the globe in three-foot high letters are the initials XISU; in the center of the old campus is a ten foot granite statue depicting books of the various languages taught here, atop which is a box, embossed with the initials XISU; all official stationery and student workbooks carry the title, Xi’an International Studies University The crowing evidence of the goal, is the new entrance gate to the new campus, a fourteen million dollar edifice proclaiming entry onto the campus of “Xi’an International Studies University.”
On Tuesday of this week, the school was visited by the leaders of the China Ministry of Education. In preparation thereof, construction work has been virtually round-the-clock for the past several weeks. When I left the campus the Friday before (9 days ago), there were unpaved areas, in many areas where grass and foliage was to be installed there was still construction dirt, building surfaces were unpainted, scaffolding everywhere. By Tuesday morning, the campus saw paved walkways, grass, plants and trees in place, building surfaces painted, and the Street façade of the twin ten story, semi circular library buildings was complete and emblazoned with red banners welcoming the honored guests. The transition was amazing.

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When we were being trained at BYU for our teaching experience, we were told we would learn well the phrase “That’s China.” It has many meanings: excitement, contrast, change, and occasionally frustration. The latter would describe my experience over the past two weeks of planning a Thanksgiving Dinner for our little church branch and our guests. The first step was easy; find a venue. Above the foreign teachers’ dining room is a banquet room, just right for fifty people. The building housing the room is less than 50 steps from our apartment. Access to friends from off-campus was made convenient by taxi access directly to the front door.
The lady with whom I worked in the planning of the dinner is a wonderful, helpful person. Unfortunately, she left town the day after we confirmed the room, scheduled to return on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. The person to whom she gave the follow-through assignment, in a word, didn’t. So Rao (her name be sincerely praised) returned to find a fretting me, and except for turkey, no plans for a menu.
She found a menu from a former year, and on Wednesday morning we sat down to work out the dishes to be served. Turkey had been ordered before Rao left, she returned with news that air freight difficulties had delayed its shipment. I was dismayed to learn that only one turkey had been ordered to serve 50 people. Then I was told the Chef had no recipe for sweet potatoes or mashed potatoes. The internet provided recipes, and Rao’s office provided translation, about which more in a moment.
Thanksgiving is a school day for us. Janet taught all day, while I spent most of the day fretting about the dinner and getting packages mailed to the US in time for Christmas (a three and a half hour ordeal). I was told the turkey arrived in time, and everything was under control….until 5:15 PM, 45 minutes before dinner was scheduled to be served. I got a frantic call from the interpreter, saying the chef did not understand the recipe for sweet potatoes! I had an international culinary crisis on my hands. I rushed over to the restaurant, and into the kitchen to find the cooks peeling THREE sweet potatoes and THREE apples to serve fifty people. After scanning the original recipe, and talking to the translator, I learned that she had done a superb job of translating everything, except the servings per recipe. The recipe as given her was for eight servings. I asked the chef if he had any more sweet potatoes, he said “no.” I was prepared to chalk up sweet potatoes as a lost cause, when he asked through the interpreter, pointing to a pan of what looked like refried beans: “I have some of this, can we use it?” It turns out he had planned on a sweet-potato puree with candied glazing, but was so intent on pleasing us, he had not considered it would sate the palates of western tongues as well as the recipe we had provided him.
I breathed a sigh of relief, told him to forget our yam recipe, and started to leave, only to be stopped and asked how we wanted the turkey to be served. Having been told only one turkey had been ordered, I asked if there would be enough for everybody. “Oh, yes, it is a 20 turkey.” I shuddered, a 20 pound turkey for 50 people?
Oh, no, a 20 Kilogram Turkey, 44 pounds! Jurassic Park came to mind.
I asked him if the bird could be brought to the banquet room and carved there. A long pause… It seemed the bird was so large it would not fit in their ovens, so they had to split the bird (horizontally) to bake it. “But, he said, we can pin it back together, bring it up and let everybody see it, then carve it in the kitchen.” My mind was not sufficiently supple to envision a pinned bird, but it was conjuring all sorts of potential disasters in the transportation to and from the dining room. ‘Carve it in the kitchen, serve it in the dining room, forget the display.” The chef was relieved. He then opened another oven and proudly displayed the mashed potatoes he had prepared. They were, indeed, beautiful, white, and in every way western in consistency.

In the end, the evening was a great success. The turkey was tender, western tasting, and delicious. The yam puree was well-received. Among the twenty separate items, there were plenty of Chinese style dishes for our guests, and plenty of western style for the foreign visitors (of which we are).
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It is still pitch dark at 7:00 AM in Xi’an. Thus it was in darkness that Janet, I, and seven other teachers from our little branch, piled into a small bus, en route to the city of Dali, for another round of teaching students in a high school there. My primary topic this time was Teen-speak. I introduced them to the world of Dude, Cool, What’s up, let’s crash, and where ya hangin’, and why Penelope does not rhyme with Cantelope. It was fun.
On the way to Dali I captured the image of the sunrise over the Chingling mountain range, which will be posted on Yahoo Photos, with a few other shots.
In the afternoon we went to an ostrich farm. We looked at ostriches. Photos attached.
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I have become fascinated by the different implements of commercial transport seen on the roads and streets of China. The attached photo shows a handcart, an oxcart, a three wheeled blue truck and two sizes of commercial transports. It barely scratches the surface of the variety one sees every day. Several of the pictures you will see were not taken by me, but by a friend of a friend, who shares our fascination with things with wheels, and with the streets of China.

Enjoy!

Journey to Xi’an
November 20, 2005

Winter weather is arriving in Xi’an; Nights dipping into the 40’s, cold fog shrouding the mornings. No snow yet.
The week has been mostly devoted to extra-cirricular school activities. We had an American movie day for them early Tuesday evening, exposing them to old Dick Van Dyke Television episodes. Wednesday was a full day of classes. Thursday evening I spoke to 200+ Business, Pre-Law and Law Students. The invitation to speak had been extended on Tuesday afternoon. The assignment was a one-hour talk on International Business and American Law. Thanks to the internet, enough material was found to fill the time. Some of the Law students who attended the lecture have asked the administration for a course of American Legal Language for next semester. I hope it works out.
One of Janet’s students who attended the lecture wrote in his weekly journal, that he had just attended a presentation by a “Portly American Gentleman.” Coincidentally, when Janet read that to me, I had just stepped off a scale and was congratulating myself for having lost 40 pounds since September 2. Ah, well.

Friday evening, I was a guest at the 11th annual song festival, which featured 35 finalists from the University. Some of them were professionally trained. The program included Chinese Opera, American Pop, Rock and Roll and Hip-Hop, plus selections (in English) from Evita and Phantom of the Opera, and a liberal sprinkling of Chinese folk and pop music. Two of my students did a very credible job of a country-western version of “Forever” in English. One thing we learned: When the Chinese put on a show, plan on spending three or more hours. They have not heard of the western two-hour program rule.

Janet is recovering slowly from a particularly persistent bout with the flu. Lest you be concerned, it is not the notorious avian flu. The available literature suggests that malady is only contracted through exposure to droppings or handling of a live-diseased animal, something of which neither of us have been a part.

On Saturday, we ventured into a very nippy morning, to visit the Forest of Stelae Museum in downtown Xi’an. This is a sacred place to Chinese scholars. It is said to be the largest single collection of ancient stone tablet writings anywhere. To a foreign visitor, it is an awesome display of acres of and hundreds of stone tablets , dating from 300 B.C. until the present. The tablets were used as libraries, memorializing great poetry, civil laws, architectural plans, philosophy, emperatorial decrees, and other writings in Chinese history. I felt a bit of a chill as I stood before 2000 year-old tablets bearing the wisdom of Confuscius, contained on a row of as many as ten stone tablets, each measuring perhaps five feet high and three feet wide, inscribed with Confuscian epigrams. Some stelae were as much as ten feet tall, with intricate designs and beautiful calligraphy carved into and covering the polished surfaces of mostly granite slabs.

Saturday evening, we treated one of our Chinese students and her husband to a dinner at Pizza Hut. In Xi’an, Pizza Hut is an upscale restaurant. The couple had never eaten pizza before. They had never before eaten with a knife and fork. They had never before eaten in a restaurant where fewer than five or six separate dishes were presented for the dining experience. By the end of the meal they had become fairly adept at the knife and fork. There was pizza left over, which we offered to them in the familiar pizza take-out box. Their response: “No thank you, we have had enough.” We will not take our Chinese acquaintances to a western Restaurant again, without first determining their western food comfort zone.
Happy Thanksgiving!