From my Tingzijian

Today is Duan Wu Jie, the 5th day of the 5th lunar month, a holiday we westerners usually call Dragon Boat Festival. I suppose once upon a time dragon boats must have been raced on this day, and maybe they still are somewhere in the Chinese diaspora. But this traditional holiday has only been officially revived here in Shanghai in the last few years and it seems that much of the old way of celebrating must have been extinguished for good. On this day a couple of years ago, we set off in search of dragon boat racing on a nearby lake. It was a total bust: the races ended earlier than advertised, and when we arrived we found a bunch of foreigners like us (except younger) just rowing in and eager to get cracking a case of Bud. So I’m still not sure what this holiday means for local Chinese people.

Except for Wang ayi, our housekeeper. For her, it means making zongzi, traditional little steamed pyramids of sticky rice and fillings. Since they keep well in the freezer anyhow, she made ours a little early this year.

Here are the basics: some kind of leaf  (some say lotus, but aren’t lotus leaves round? these look like palm fronds to me) and a sack of nuomi, short grains of sticky rice, which your digestive system either likes or decidedly doesn’t.

Sitting on the kitchen floor with the fixings spread out around her,  Wang ayi first teases a nice, long frond out of the pile,then makes a little cup into which she spoons rice and pork that she slow-cooked at home and brought to work, or rice and red bean paste.

Then she quickly twists and rolls the thing up — no matter how many times I’ve seen her make them, I can’t quite nail down the movement — into a perfect tetrahedron. She grabs the string and ties it up. Teeth are an important tool.

And then she does it all over again.

When she makes the ones with bean paste, instead of tying them with string, she sews the zongzi together with a thin strip of the leaf. (If I ever understood why this works for bean paste and not for pork, I have forgotten.) This is, of course, my favorite part:  she uses her mother’s old needle, which she brings to my house and shows me every year and tells me has much smaller it has worn with use.

At last, two pots are set on the stove to steam for at least four hours.

All the while I sit upstairs, purporting to work, tantalized by the aromas that crawl all the way up to my tingzijian. Finally, in the late afternoon, I descend to ask how long they have to cool, before I can unwind the long frond and reveal the little mountain of gushy fragrant rice and dig into its buried treasure.

Our instincts were right. Giving a proper welcome to the god of money/fortune/prosperity turned out to be huge in Shanghai, as momentous  a bang as greeting the new year itself.  I do wonder how overwhelming bursts of firecrackers can be counted on both to drive away evil spirits and welcome the desirable god, but so far no Chinese friends have explained why the evil ones aren’t welcomed and prosperity driven away….

On the afternoon of Day Five of the New Year,  the day prosperity arrives, we headed to the Jade Buddha Temple. We expected to find a hubbub, but not the line we encountered to buy tickets to get in. It moved quickly. Inside, the courtyard was crowded.  The incense vendors were doing a brisk business.Some people lit the long sticks,while others burned pieces of paper with writing on them (prayers?).Elsewhere, some people were attempting to boost their good luck by trying to get coins to stick to the surface of various carvings and other adornments,and were, of course, offering prayers to the divinities.I sometimes hear that, in modern China, nobody believes in “those old superstitions” any more, but you could have fooled me. Anyhow, when it comes to prosperity, why take chances?

As we walked away, I noticed that my purse and our jackets were lightly covered with fine cinders, sprinkled by the light breeze. Oddly appropriate since, where I come from, it was Ash Wednesday.

Here’s how you can tell American Thanksgiving is upon us: in the City Shopper, an expensive western supermarket with branches around Shanghai, a young Indonesian woman approaches you bearing a box of something labeled Starkemehl and politely asks whether this can be used to make cornbread. From past experience in this area, you know that this is a very fine German corn flour, so you shake your head no and lead her over to the organic section of the store, where you know that they now carry Arrowhead Mills’ line of stone ground corn meal. As you suspected, she confirms that she has been invited to an American home for Thanksgiving and is hoping to get her contribution right.

Last year, I recall a similar situation with a sweet German girl, who held up lingonberries and wanted to know whether they could substitute for cranberries. Thinking back to the sauce in IKEA cafeterias from Shanghai to Virginia, I told her she should be okay. But afterward I found Ocean Spray in a can in another aisle and went hunting for her.

Then there were the charming and flirtatious Italian guys in Carrefour who asked me where they could find a pumpkin pie. You’ll have to make it yourself! I joked back. But then they found me again in the vegetable section and dangled a pumpkin in front of me. How many does it take? And how to make the pastry? They were delighted when I steered them to the house brand’s surprisingly good pate brisee in a box. They were pretty sure that they had a friend with an oven — rare in a Shanghai kitchen — so I was hopeful about their pie.

The hardest part is the turkey. The first time that I attempted a Thanksgiving dinner in Shanghai, I boought a large expensive imported Butterball at a Singaporean grocery store and persuaded them to keep it in their freezer until just before I needed it. Fortunately, it was very cool that year, so I was able to thaw the thing outside on the balcony sealed up in a plastic bin safe from marauding cats. (It wouldn’t fit into my fridge.) The alternative to roasting your own is to order a turkey from one of the big western hotels, but then it wouldn’t be stuffed with my own special stuffing… And I’ve heard at least one horror story of a turkey arriving beautifully browned but raw in the middle!

Of course, the other alternative is to go to the buffet at the Hilton, and we have done that, too. The gravy doesn’t taste right — how could it? It’s not my grandmother’s/mother’s recipe — but it’s where, on a Thursday night after a regular workday in Shanghai, you’ll find our fellow citizens — teachers from the Shanghai American School and many other friends and acquaintances from around town. All thinking about what we have to be grateful for in China.

How to spend Easter in Shanghai? For a couple of years, we have attended mass in Chinese at the old Jesuit Cathedral. We recognize bits of the liturgy and enjoy the moment when the whole congregation jumps up and rushes the altar to receive the eucharist, kind of like rush hour on the subway.

But this year, we opted to attend mass in English at St. Francis Xavier Church. Although I can’t find much information about the building, a local architectural historian told me that it’s probably the oldest building in Shanghai.  It’s a Spanish-style church, hidden inside a walled courtyard

in an old Chinese neighborhood that’s slowly being demolished.(This Sunday morning it was hopping.)

My family is Episcopalian, but there aren’t any such churches here. Besides, the Chinese Catholic Church doesn’t exactly report to Rome. In any event, it was great to be able to participate in the liturgy, to sing some familiar hymns, and to exchange the peace with such a truly international congregation.

After the service, we were pleasantly surprised to discover an international food fair in the courtyard. We joined in, sampling nasi goreng at Singapore’s booth, and had a drink at the Malaysian stall.By far the longest line was for Filipino adobo and lumpia!

Which got us to thinking: maybe next year Easter in Manila? If we’re in Shanghai, though, I suspect we’ll be back at St. Francis Xavier.

Thanks be to God!