Why So Tiny When So Famous?!

By Carly

We walked into the tiny deserted hallway. We were going to a traditional Vietnamese music shop to see the owner and his daughter play some traditional instruments. 

The tiny, deserted hallway

We walked into the main room.  You probably are thinking the main room is a big room with instruments on stands and all kinds of shiny and fancy things, but it was almost the complete opposite. Though he was one of the most famous traditional musicians in Vietnam, his shop was a tiny room, about ten feet wide by ten feet long. It had wacky instruments covering all four walls and lining the edge of the floor. There were also some instruments hanging from the ceiling!  Two instruments had been placed on the floor. A girl who looked about 14 years old sat in front of one and an old man sat at the other.  

  

It turned out that the girl was actually 20 years old and was studying at the Traditional Music University and the old man was her father so he was probably about 45 or 50 years old, though he looked older.  

Adele, Perrin, Emma, Zoe and I sat on the floor and the grown-ups sat on spindly wooden stools. Once we were all seated, the man and the girl started to play. The song was called “Woman Are As Beautiful As The Moon.”  

It was like traditional Vietnamese music and classical music mixed together. It was beautiful and the funkiest music I had ever heard. While we were listening, I looked around at all the instruments. I saw a long object that looked like a banjo with two strings and a bow. 

I saw some hollow, oval-shaped objects that were, for some unknown reason, painted to look like eggplants. Each had a crack in the side to let the sound out.

The song ended. We all applauded happily. The girl and father asked if anyone wanted to try to play the instruments. We eagerly agreed.  I got to play the daughter’s instrument that had one string that was pulled between a bamboo stick on one side and a sliver of a water buffalo horn on the other side.  You put your finger on one of the markings on the shaft of the instrument and with a little piece of flat bamboo, you twanged the string to make a note.  You could make the note go higher or lower by bending the water buffalo horn.  The instrument had a battery in the bottom to project the sound.  We thought that was funny because we didn’t think a battery would be inside an instrument that had been played for more than one thousand years.  The sound a thousand years ago would not have been as loud or as nice because they didn’t have batteries or modern tools.

After everyone had had a turn, we walked out of the main room and into a tiny storage room. There were a whole lot of drums and a bamboo xylophone that slanted downward so if a squirrel wanted to it could slide  down it and have a nice, powerful back massage.   I wish there were bigger ones for people!  There was also a wooden frog with a hole in the middle and a spikey line down its back.  You use a wooden stick and run it down the spikey back to make a croaking sound. We banged and goofed around for a while, of course not damaging anything, and then, when everyone was ready, we said thank you and stepped back into the Vietnam sun.       

Baked Babas and Lard in Xizhou, Yunnan

Xizhou Babas - mmm, mmm good!

by Ashley

While you might think that after five months my palate would have had enough of Chinese food, in fact my infatuation with the dishes of this region continues.  We are presented daily with new street foods to taste, new spices to smell and new textures to experience.  Some of the tastes are so delicious that we talk about them for hours, plan restaurants around them, dream about them.  Xizhou, the small town that houses the Linden Centre, our home base for the past two weeks, is famous for its Baba, a flaky, round bread that is made with either scallions, garlic and ground pork or sweet bean paste, rose jam and brown sugar.  During out time in Xizhou in 2010/11, our family had become fans of the bread, and upon our return, Perrin declared that she was going to eat one every day!  I had talked to the folks at the Linden Centre about working with some local food makers as a way to help in the community, and, while the idea didn’t pan out completely as planned, for our first two days here, I worked with a Baba maker just off the town square. 

The production and cooking of babas was performed like a fine ballet piece by a husband and wife team with the surnames Zhang and Ya.  The speed and ease with which the couple cranked out those babas was astounding.  All of this took place in and in front of an open, tiny, very basic and not-at-all clean space.  Zhang manned the griddle-oven on the street outside while Ya and I sat at a desk-sized table at the right side of the shop.  The left side of the table was cluttered with bowls of ingredients – a massive bowl of ground pork, a bowl of brilliant scallion greens, a container of sticky, stringy brown rose jam, a mound of red bean paste, a small container of salt, a metal canister filled with melted lard and a paintbrush, and, most horrifyingly, a massive bowl of pork lard.  The mountain of lard dominated the table.  Never had I seen anything like it and very quickly I understood why those babas were so delicious.  In the same way that Americans use lard in apple pie crusts to offer a crust a flaky, light quality, so too were the babas enhanced with lard…and I had yet to discover just how much!

To the right side and back of the table was the layer of dough.  Imagine rising pizza dough spread to cover an entire table the size of an average office desk.  That was our dough, and as we worked, we chopped pieces off of it, pushed it back when it encroached on our space, and periodically, Ya roughly tamed its rise with a handful of water.  At the furthest right end of our table was a round piece of wood akin to a pizza board onto which we placed the prepared babas when they were ready to go into the “oven”.  The dough sat atop a thick layer of flour that served the dual purpose of keeping the dough from sticking to the table and offering us a source of flour when we needed to flour our rolling pins, our hands or the baba board.

Outside, on the street, was the “oven” where Zhang turned the dough from flaccid, greasy disks into the delicious, crispy items beloved by locals and visitors alike.  The oven was ingenious.  It consisted of an enormous cast iron frying pan, about two feet in diameter, that sat on a stand above a simple wood fire.  Zhang oiled the inside of the pan with a small amount of melted pork lard, swished the lard around with a well-used, straw hand broom, and then, with one quick movement, deftly shook all 7 baba from the board into the pan.  He then covered the pan with an enormous lid, on which he placed a collection of hot coals, thus delivering heat to the babas from the top as well as the bottom.  After about four or five minutes, Zhang opened the lid, shook the babas about to make sure they were not burning, replaced the lid and continued “baking” for another 4 minutes, until the babas were golden brown.

The oven pan

Heat from the top and bottom

My first question upon joining Ya and Zhang at the baba stand on Monday morning, was where to wash my hands.  They looked at me quizzically and replied that there was no need, but when I insisted, they motioned to the back courtyard where I found a sink.  No soap.  This is common in China.  Sinks with no soap.  Having taught elementary and preschool for years and having conducted various experiments with my students to illustrate the importance of hand washing to hygiene and health, I was more than a bit disturbed, but, as I had been eating the babas and everything else in this country for two weeks with not a stomach problem, I pushed the issue from my mind, reminded myself that I hadn’t visited the toilet recently, wiped my wet hands on my pants, and eagerly joined Ya at the table to make the babas.

To make a baba:

• ·            Use a cleaver to cut seven pieces of dough from the slab  (or whatever number fit your oven)
•        Grab a handful of lard and top each rough piece of dough with about 2T of lard
•        Pinch the top of the dough down over the lard and then fold the dough over again so the lard is tucked inside the dough
•        Flip the little package so the seam is down and use a small rolling pin to roll it a few times so you have a long, flat piece
•        Turn the piece so it is vertical and fold the top third down and the bottom third up, turn it over and roll it again (this stage reminds me of making croissants…add fat, fold, flatten, fold, flatten, etc.)
•        Fold it a third time, but this time smash the resulting folded package with your hand to flatten it a bit
•        On top of the package of dough, add another 2T of lard (Yes, I am not kidding), a sprinkle of salt and about 2T of ground pork
•        Take a handful of scallion greens and smash them down with your palm onto the pile of ingredients.  It’s ok if they overflow.
•        Bring the top of the dough down over the ingredients, then fold then entire thing over again so that the dough conceals everything and the resulting shape is like an omelet that is lying horizontally in front of you
•        Flip the omelet so the seam is down
•        With a cleaver, whack a series of cuts the length of the omelet-sized package of meat-filled dough. Do not cut all the way through.  The ingredients within should be visible along the cuts but not gushing out.  It takes more pressure than one might think.
•        This is the tough part: with the cut omelet-shaped package of baba in front of you horizontally, use your hands to pull it a bit longer to the sides.  Then use your right palm to begin rolling the dough toward the left at a slight downward angle. 
•        The dough should now look almost like a croissant in the vertical position
•        Turn the dough so that it is horizontal again, pinch both ends with your fingers, keep the left hand still and use the right hand to twist the dough toward you while pushing the dough into itself. If you do it right, you’ll end up with something that looks like a cinnamon roll stacked against your left hand
•        Plop it with the spiral side up onto the table
•        Place a small pile of scallions on the table, place the cinnamon roll on top of the scallions, smash it down with your hand and roll it out a few times, turning it as you roll until it is a circle about 6” in diameter.
•        Flip the dough over so the scallions are on top and place it on the floured baba board
•        Grab the can of melted lard and brush the dough with a layer of lard
•        Take another handful of lard (YUP!) and top each baba with another T+ of lard
•        If you like pork, take another bit of ground pork and crumble it around the top of the bread
•        Voila! Zuo wan le!  It’s done!
•        Pop that sucker and its six companions into the oven and let them cook for about 4 minutes
•        Open the oven, turn the babas so they don’t burn, and replace the lid
•        When they are golden brown and the meat is cooked, after about 8 minutes, they should be done
•        Eat that beauty and don’t think about the vast quantity of LARD that is in it!

               As you can imagine, our family’s plan to eat a baba every day changed dramatically after I calculated the quantity of lard in every baba, but don’t worry, we still managed to put away a number of them over our few weeks in Xizhou, and Zhang and Ya’s business was all the better for it.

35 Kids in a Room

BY PERRIN

Kindergartens are rowdy places... this one's rowdier.  Kindergartens are noisy places... this one's noisier.  Kindergartens are places with toys and colors... this one doesn't have any.  What does this one have?  It has books, pencils, backpacks, desks, chairs, and a loud teacher in a room of 35 five-year-olds... to whom we had to teach English.

We are in Xizhou, a village about 20 minutes away from Dali, in southwestern Yunnan province, a popular tourist destination with streets full of buyers and sellers.  We are here for two weeks so we wanted to do something to help the community.  We decided to volunteer at a local kindergarten/preschool right down the road from where we are staying.  We didn't know what we were in for.

The first day, as we walked to the school with my mom, Andrew, who helped us set up the teaching, told us that the teacher was "super nice" and would help us for the first day and tell us what to do.  I was happy about that and expected to see a room full of toys and kids playing.  I was in for a big surprise.

When we got there Andrew introduced the teacher to us and I looked around.  All the kids were in their classrooms and I could see that the ages ranged from 3-6, depending on the class.  The children were all crammed at desks or wandering around aimlessly.  Some were practicing their Chinese characters while others stared at us like we were aliens.  Andrew and my mom left and the teacher ushered us into the older kids' classroom (5-6 year olds) and gave us a bucket of plastic fruits and tiny animal figurines.  My sister and I stood there in the front of the class speechless and confused.  We were supposed to stand there for an hour and make 30 kids say fruit names?  The teacher looked at us expectantly as the kids' chatting grew louder, so I did the only thing that made sense.  I took the apple out of the bucket, held my hand up and said, "APP-PLE."  The class quieted down somewhat and about half of it echoed, "AP-PLE."  I said it a few more times and then took out the banana and taught them BA-NA-NA.  After about half an hour of that, the kids understandably started to get restless and some started wandering around in and out of the classroom.  Two kids at the back of the classroom actually walked out the door and then climbed back in through the window onto a desk!  The teacher was in the back picking her wart with a needle and ever ten minutes soured, "AN JING!" which means QUIET!  We got through the whole hour, though not very gracefully, and knew that we needed a lesson plan for the next day.

That night, our mom, a Montessori teacher, and Andrew, who had taught English to kids before though in a much easier environment, helped us plan a lesson and Andrew taught with us the next day.  We played a few games and only the ones that we attempted to do outside totally failed. All the other kids came out of their classrooms to watch us and there was too much noise and distraction.  However, it went much better than the day before.

The rest of the week went reasonably well and so did the next week, but it surprised us how hard it was to find games that would work with that many kids in such a tiny room.  We looked at a website that Andrew had used when he taught English to kids in China, but most of them required more space than we had, so we only found about 5 games that would work.  Andrew was surprised at how hard the teaching was and what a contrast it was to his prior experience teaching in Hangzhou.  There, he had only ten well-behaved kids in a big room.

It was useful to learn what the hardest kind of teaching is like.  After this, any other teaching will be simple.  I am glad that we did the hardest teaching first so whenever we're in another challenging teaching situation, we can always say, "We've had worse!"

The Amazing Life of the Linden Centre

The Linden Centre

BY CARLY

I walk out of my room at the Linden Center and the door creaks closed behind me.  I inspect my surroundings.  There are two courtyards that I can see as well as an exercise room, and a bar.  Where to go first?  I will start at the entrance and give you a tour.

Hhhemm.  Hello folks!  My name is Carly, and I will be your tour guide today.  First of all, this is The Linden Centre, a beautiful, old courtyard house located in Xizhou, Yunnan province, China.  This house was built in 1948, just before the Chinese revolution.  It was built by the Yang family, one of the four wealthy families that lived in the town.  Only one year after it was built, the Communist government came and kicked the merchant and his family out and made the house into government offices.  This turned out to be a good thing because it would have been destroyed by the Red Guards if the government hadn't been stationed there.  (The Red Guards destroyed almost everything that was "old", wealthy or religious during the 1960s and 70s.)  Finally, in 2008, the Lindens, an American family that now runs the Linden Centre, signed a contract with the government to lease it for 20 years (everyone leases everything because the government owns it all.)

The Buddha Pool

Let's get back to the present.  We are now in the first courtyard that you walk into every time you enter.  When you walk in through the main doors, to your immediate left you get to take a look at the Buddha pool with a large white wall behind it that, in the old days, was supposed to reflect the last few hours of sun into the rooms directly across from it.  Today the space on the bottom floor is the front desk.  Above the front desk is the old family altar room.  I can see why they wanted to have extra light in there, otherwise, when they were meeting a guest, it would have been dark and gloomy.  The room that is now the front desk used to be  the elders' room.  They got that room because it had more light and was in the first courtyard that was for some reason considered the best.

To the left of the front desk there is the game room and to the right there is a library and yet further to the right there is the dining room, kitchen and a staircase.  As you walk up the stairs, take a minute to look at the swallow's nest that is perched on a light.  The best time to see the baby swallows in the next is when their parents fly by and they open their beaks and squeak in their high-pitched voices, pleading for food.  At the top of the stairs turn left to go to the playroom, which has many toys and games, such as LIFE or LEGOs.  Past the playroom is the Mahjong room.  Mahjong is a traditional Chinese game.  If you saw town folks playing, you would think it was the hardest game in the world because their hands move like lightning, but once you learn it, it is not difficult at all.

If you were to go straight at the top of the stairs you would find yourself passing the movie room and the conference room and then you could keep going straight, down the second staircase, or left, to the gift shop.  Let's go down the stairs.

Welcome to the second courtyard :) !!  At the bottom of the stairs take a sharp left and walk a few paces and you will find yourself in front of a bamboo shade.  If you lift that up you are standing in the doorway of the bar and across from you there is another door that connects to the first courtyard.  Let's not go back there!  The bar used to be Mr. Yang's office.  Right outside the bar there are some columns holding up the second floor gift shop.  One of the columns is partly hollow and is thought to have been used for storing valuables.

Facing away from the bar there is another white wall that reflects the light into the bar.  There is a reflecting wall here that reflected light into the old office.  There is a doorway five feet to the left of the reflective wall and another five feet to the right.  Go through either because they both end up in the third courtyard!

This courtyard has only guestrooms.  There is a bamboo shade in the middle of the section on the right side and another on the left side.  There are two rooms on both of the first floors and two rooms on the top floor of both sides.  There is a large garden in the middle of this courtyard and a small coffee table in front of it.  The garden is full of antique, stone Chinese lions that Brian Linden collected along with many other antiques such as a 1,000 year-old Buddhist tombstone that is also in the garden.  He bought this for a very low price because the person who sold it to him said it was bad luck, but in America, who wouldn't buy a 1,000 year-old tombstone for such a good price?!

Stone lions in the garden

There is one last garden beyond the doorways at the end of courtyard #3.  This garden also has a small porch that overlooks a small portion of the many rice patties that exist outside of the Linden Centre walls.  At the right end of the porch there is a metal spiral staircase that connects to the terrace.

The terrace has three tables and one swinging char that looks somewhat like a giant egg that someone cut in half.  This chair provides shade and much pleasure.  While relaxing in this chair or by sitting at a table you can see the rice fields and you can also get a fabulous view of the mountains in the distance.  I expect some of you to be eating dinner up here because it is a lovely place to relax and enjoy food.

View from the terrace

Ok everyone!!  That is the end of our tour!  If you are stopping by Dali or better, Xizhou itself, the Linden Centre is one fabulous place to stay!!