Birthday Bêtises & Classic Chinese Poetry

I turned 22 yesterday!

Like many other 22 year olds, I celebrated by going out with my friends and, as my eloquent brother put it, got totally shitfaced, which led to spending the first half of today completely stationary in bed, willing my stomach to settle. How "klassy", I know.

It's not that I have a penchant for sauce (although I do appreciate a good brandy and a good whisky) or that I'm fond of drinking to the point of sickness. My birthday aside, I'll shamefully admit that I was actually trying to drown my sorrows because I just got the most memorable birthday present to date: a broken heart.

Like my girl Amra says, "Les mecs, ils sont tous des connards!"

I relayed this to my indignant and very irritated mother, who responded shrilly, "That's so stupid!!! Why do you have to drink to celebrate? Why would you drink when you're sad, when you know it would just make things worse?!"

I replied that, yes, in the back of my mind I was aware that drinking wouldn't make me feel any better, but I definitely wasn't the first to whom getting hammered to drown out my dolor appeared an inexplicably excellent idea. I then surprised even myself by quoting two lines of classical Chinese poetry written by 李白 (Li Bai), one of the greatest Chinese poets in history:

"抽刀斷水水更流，舉杯銷愁愁更愁"

Paula Varsano translated these two phrases beautifully as

"Plunge a knife in to break the water
the water flows but faster.
Raise a cup to quell the pain
the pain grows but deeper."

It's interesting to note that many of the most revered Chinese poets in history were notorious alcoholics. In fact, they even have a nice name for the eight most famous ones - 飲中八仙 (Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup, according to Wikipedia).

Anyway, after this conversation, I grew curious of what made up the rest of this poem, so I did some research online and found it. However, because the Chinese language is so intricate, I couldn't really understand what the poem was saying even though I could read the words, so I called up my mom to ask her to explain it to me, since she's the best teacher I've ever had.

The poem and the best translation I could find go:

棄我去者，昨日之日不可留﹔
亂我心者，今日之日多煩憂。
長風萬里送秋雁，對此可以酣高樓。
蓬萊文章建安骨，中間小謝又清發﹔
俱懷逸興壯思飛，欲上青天覽明月。
抽刀斷水水更流，舉杯銷愁愁更愁﹔
人生在世不稱意，明朝散髮弄扁舟。

What left me yesterday
Can be retained no more;
What worries me today
Are the times for which I feel sore.
In autumn wind for miles and miles the wild geese fly.
Let's follow them with eyes and drink in tower high.
Your writing's forcible, like ancient poets, while
Mine is in Junior Xie's direct and easy style.
Both of us have ambitions high;
We'd bring the moon down from the sky.
Cut running water with a sword, it will faster flow;
Drink wine to drown your sorrow, it will heavier grow.
If we despair in our lifetime of all affairs,
Tomorrow let us sail away with loosened hairs.

My mom summarized it to me as: What has happened is the past. There might be things that bother you right now, but take some time to look at how beautiful the world is - there's nature and there's literature to inspire us. You might want to drown your sorrows by drinking yourself silly, but in reality, that doesn't help at all. Instead, why not take a carefree trip and enjoy the world and to forget about the things that are making you unhappy?

Nicely done, Mom.

And it just stunned me all over again how brilliant classic Chinese poetry is, especially because of how much meaning and imagery can be captured in so few words, and with so much structure. Beautiful. I think I'm going to look into taking some Chinese lit classes when I go home.

Melted Chocolate Seduction

Is there anything more seductive than melted chocolate? (Besides, of course, a beautiful person drizzled in it.) It’s smooth, sweet, fragrant and robust. Satisfying. Best of all, it’s bad for you. How can anyone resist?

I sure can’t. Chocolate fountains and fondues get me every time. I don’t have regular access to either of those things, but luckily, I’ve found a worthy substitute: Chocolate “Muffins” from Le Chant du Pain, on the NW corner of Andrioli and Rue de France, in Nice.

I walked in one day, intending to get a chocolate croissant for my chocolate fix, when I noticed this beautiful concoction, seated in a perforated paper cup, with melted chocolate oozing all over the top. It was pretty much love at first sight. And not the sweet, romantic kind like I felt for my Spanish doctor, but the aggressive, dirty, animalistic, I-must-devour-you-right-now kind.

So I did. And it was amazing! Really fulfilling, just like I’d imagined.

What I especially appreciate about it is the fact that it’s milk chocolate – my favourite. The cocoa flavour is not as strong, but it’s creamy and very easy on the palate. And in addition to the lovely crown of the muffin, there are milk chocolate chips floating around inside, too. It’s so yummy!

But then I got a little confused - what’s the difference between a cupcake and a muffin? I always thought that cupcakes=sweeter=tastier=worse for you=far superior. And cupcakes are iced. But I’ve done some research, and apparently the answer can get quite complicated and involved. Some people say that it has to do with how it’s made, some say it has to do with the nutritional value, while others say it’s completely subjective.

Me? I don’t care. A rose by any other name, right? I’m just going to keep buying and eating my sweet, luscious treat.

Love Stories

I have a thing for love stories. Besides chocolate, they're probably my nourishment of choice.

I also have a habit of making up love stories for absolute strangers. For example, there’s a bakery very close to where I live, that I always pass by when I go to the bus stop in the morning. Last semester, whenever I had an early class, I’d convince myself to get up and make it to school on time by promising myself a pain au chocolat from there.

More often than not, this sweet, young lady works the counter. She’s very courteous, always smiling, and very down-to-earth. I once saw her kissing goodbye this young chap (the baker?) who came out of the kitchen. I imagined that that bakery was their baby, that running one together was what they always wanted to do and that they were living out their dream together. Perhaps they grew up together, were best friends all throughout their childhoods and saw each other differently in high school. Or maybe they had to go through a million obstacles to get to be together (feuding families, possibly?) and now they have everything they always dreamed of, and are living a happy life together. Or perhaps they met by chance when one of them was vacationing here in Nice, but the other decided to stay here for love, because being apart was just absolutely unbearable and unacceptable...

Living my own great love story has always been on my To Do List. I got to live a pretty good love story in Amsterdam during my spring break trip last week. It wasn’t in Japan or with a Taiwanese boy like I might have imagined, and even though it was brief, it was also intense and memorable. And I feel really fortunate, because it was with someone who was everything I could ever hope for. Really and truly a wonderful guy who will be a huge gift to an incredibly lucky girl one day. I still think the world of him even though we’re apart, and I wish all the best for him.

The day we said goodbye, I was, naturally, very sad. I saw pure heartbreak whenever I caught sight of my own reflection in windows we passed on our way back to my aunt’s apartment to pack up. So I sent a little prayer up to his God, because he’s Catholic and I don’t have a religion, myself. It went a little something like this:

Dear God,

Please take very good care of him. Please ensure that he gets to enjoy good health, and a long, happy, fulfilling life. Because he really is one of your finest pieces of work to date, and he deserves it all. And please make sure that when he eventually finds someone he decides to love forever, that she is as wonderful as he is, if not more.

But I hope he remembers me fondly for the rest of his life, as I will him.

Amen

I hope He got my message...

Politics, "Owning School," Culture and the Commercialization of Education

I have a professor who loves to predict the death of many of my classmates whenever they tell her about their travel plans, particularly if they are going to places she deems unsafe, like Africa, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East.

I’m not a brave person. With the exception of Prague, I don’t have a very keen interest in going anywhere that might fall in those three regions. But when I signed up to come here to France on exchange, I never imagined that I would be in the thick of political unrest.

Many people here are very upset with the government because of a set of proposed reforms. The universities in Nice have been on strike for three weeks and counting; I hear that the momentum is still going strong, and that the strike will even continue beyond our reading week (the last week of February). As a result, I’m freaking out because I got conditional acceptance into a postgraduate program, and I need to have a degree before it starts in September.

My friends in this program are completely confident that I’ll get all the credits I need. “We PAID TUITION, so the school owes us marks. It’s not our fault that they’re on strike here. There’s nothing we can do about it. They can’t deny us our marks or our credits because we paid for them and we were prepared to do all the work necessary to earn them,” I’ve been told.

However, I’m not used to of feeling like anyone owes me anything. I’m entitled to nothing. While I appreciate their efforts to comfort me, I still think that it’s up to our school. We don’t really call the shots here. So I’m still really worried and am hoping, hoping, hoping for the best.

But this conversation really made me wonder: What kind of relationship am I in with my school? The way my classmates see it, it’s almost like they view themselves as the patrons, and the school as their employee. They paid for the academic institution to provide them with the service of teaching them, grading them and awarding them degrees. So they’re the ones who are in charge. They (we?) call the shots.

This is completely at odds with the attitude about school that was instilled in me. Modern Chinese culture is still pretty Confucian. Even as non-traditional as my family is, I was raised with many of those values. We’re all about filial piety and respecting our elders...sometimes to a point I don’t agree with, but regardless of the divergence of opinion that exists in me because I grew up in Canada, this is still The Right Way to Be in the back of my mind.

School is supposed to be where a person’s mind is cultivated, so teachers deserve our utmost respect, and we don’t question them. Consequently, the Chinese values of pedagogy are also very serious. Teachers have almost an equal responsibility to their students as their parents do because they play a vital part in how they turn out. Teachers were traditionally called 師父 (“sifu”), which is comprised of the words “si” (師), meaning teacher, and “fu” (父), meaning father – because, of course, back in the day all teachers were men. You’re supposed to respect your teachers as much as you respect the knowledge or the art they pass on to you.

Now, this would work very nicely if we were living in a Confucian utopia, where the lowest common denominator for every teacher in the world is, virtually (and impossibly), perfection - completely fair, super qualified, super intelligent, super ethical, very accomplished, etc. In that case, of course we wouldn’t ever question our teachers.

Unfortunately for us, it’s not the situation we’re in, or even a realistic one, so I think that to maintain this viewpoint about school and teachers requires a lot of faith on the part of everyone who has ever been a student, or who has entrusted the intellectual development of their child to an instructor. For those who are raised to have this attitude, they respect their teachers as much as they do because they trust that they will be completely fair, that they are qualified, intelligent, ethical and accomplished enough (that is to say, way more so than the average person) to merit their utmost respect. But the fact of the matter is, while there must be plenty of teachers who are this amazing and deserving, there are also lots of crummy teachers out there because, well, we can, essentially, purchase our qualifications, and we all do. Just like I’m doing right now. And I’m lucky to be Canadian, but there are countries in the world, like our neighbour down south, where the credibility, status and usefulness of our qualifications depend on how much money we can shell out.

So what happened to the noble pursuit of knowledge known as education? How did it become all about money?

Photo of the Carlone Campus (Fac de Lettres) of the Université de Nice Sophia-Antipolis, taken by the lovely Ms. Lesley Oosterman

In Honour of Valentine's Day

Being in love – or believing that one is in love – has very interesting effects on people. Every moment and every emotion seems magnified, to the point that people speak in hyperbole and they tell each other all kinds of beautiful lies. They may not be intentionally deceiving, but the giddy feeling of being twitterpated tends to inspire people to say things that are impossible, untrue or both.

“It was love at first sight.”
“We’re all we need.”

You get the idea.

Take one of my favourites in my harem, Takeshi Kaneshiro, often heralded as the Asian Johnny Depp. He began his career modelling and then singing before becoming a “serious actor”, and he actually tried to compose his own music for a while. Of his hits, there’s one in particular that he wrote both the music and the lyrics for. I think this is especially interesting because the lyrics really provide a look into his attitude about love – he has an infamously private and mysterious personality. One of the lines is:

天塌下來有我頂
Translation: If the sky falls, I’ll hold it up.

How sweet and romantic! How dreamy and heartrending! Would you fall for that one? I think I’d fall for that one. Especially if it came from him, or anyone as good-looking as he is – I’m notoriously superficial.

Swoon, swoon, swoon.

I read that as “I will take care of you in the event of an apocalypse.” Okay, maybe I’m being too literal. But he’s saying that he will support you when you’re absolutely desolate. Is there anything more romantic in the world?

Honey, that is a BIG promise. Huge. On the same scale as vowing to love, cherish and honour someone for better or for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, forever and ever...and we all know that that particular promise only works out and is upheld literally half the time.

But I think that if everyone were as cynical as I am, especially at such a young age, the world would be a bleak place. So let’s galvanize ourselves into action, yes? Let’s restore some measure of hope in the world. The next time you’re fortunate enough to have someone utter such sweet nonsense to you, just realize how lucky you are, suspend your disbelief and believe them! I promise I will if you do, too. :)

Love,
Me
XOXOXO

Yan San's Wafuu Pasta

You know that I absolutely love "Italian" pasta that is adapted to the Japanese palate, but I equally love Japanese-style pasta, otherwise known as wafuu pasuta (pasta) - wafuu = 和風 = Japanese style. In fact, it was the first meal I had in the country.

Basically, it's like topping pasta with ingredients and sauces you'd put over rice. I find that the texture of the pasta is of utmost importance - it has to be perfectly al dente, maybe even veering on a little hard - and the kinds I had always seemed to be tossed in a bit of butter before being added to the sauce. Maki from Just Hungry explains the concept well.

I've been scrounging around the net for wafuu pasta recipes in English to switch things up a bit from my diet of fruit and ice cream bars (if there's any good food in Nice, I can't afford it), but there aren't many, and most feature ingredients that I can't get because I live in the middle of nowhere.

So! I took to my culinary laboratory and produced the following, which I'm proud to say turned out quite well and is very tasty. A bunch of the ingredients are optional, in case you are even more unfortunate than I am and are living even more deeply entrenched in Nowhere, in which case you wouldn't even be able to find stuff like mirin. But I know I'm taking a leap of faith in assuming that soy sauce is pretty widely available and universal.

I like my wafuu pasta sauce a little watery because it's more faithful to the samples I tasted in Japan and because they make great dips if you're in the habit of cleaning your plates with bread after consuming the main course. If you prefer thicker sauces, there are instructions in the recipe on how you could achieve that.

Finally, this recipe serves four, but I actually ate about half of the sauce (2 servings, and I made the pasta accordingly) the night I made it and saved the other half to eat with rice. It's super easy, so I hope you give it a try!

XOXOXO


Yan San’s Wafuu Pasta

Ingredients:
200g ground pork
1 small onion, diced OR half a large onion, diced
1 stalk green onion, finely chopped
1 or 2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped OR 2 tsp minced garlic
2 large mushrooms diced OR 4 small mushrooms, diced
4 tbsp soy sauce
¾ cup white wine
dash of garlic powder
dash of dried shallot flakes
dash of ground pepper

dash of fish sauce (optional)
dash of mirin (optional)
1 tsp dashi powder (optional)
1 tsp Japanese garlic paste (optional)

500g spaghetti
1 tbsp butter

1.) Cook spaghetti until perfectly al dente and toss in butter.
2.) Heat some olive oil in a deep skillet and stir-fry the garlic and garlic paste on medium heat until it smells yummy.
3.) Add chopped onions and green onion to the skillet and stir-fry until the onions become translucent.
4.) Add mushrooms and stir around some more, until they become coated with oil.
5.) Add pork, soy sauce, dashi, garlic powder and shallot flakes – try to break up the pork while browning it.
6.) When the pork is just about cooked through, add white wine and mirin. Turn up the heat until it boils to reduce the alcohol.
7.) Do a taste test! I prefer it to be a little bit too salty on its own so that it makes a really flavourful pasta sauce. Add some fish sauce for extra flavour.
8.) I like my sauce watery, but if you prefer a creamier, thicker sauce, add either a touch of cream or corn starch diluted in cold water to the mix.
9.) Spoon over pasta and enjoy!

Serves 4