Cooking with Steven is a Chinese cooking program for college students by college students. We show you how to make economical, healthy and authentic Chinese dishes that you can easily prepare in your dorm kitchens.
Well, we made it despite the weather. A few friends and I were having a barbecue on Stone Hill last Saturday. We built our own grill out of rock where we placed the grill grid. The weather had been fickle for the past weekend. Fortunately, by the time we were ready with the grill, the downpour had stopped. The fire was good, the food was good—everything was good for two hours until a dozen of cows and horses paid us a surprise visit around 9 pm at the camp site.
They certainly looked huge, though not aggressive. Yet the sheer presence of a large number of large animals did make us flinch a bit. They were probably attracted to the corn we were grilling. Or honey-coated chicken wings. Or the fresh grass that we had been sitting on. Whatever the case, they couldn’t be stopped. They trampled across the camp site. They kicked our backpacks. They rolled the coke bottles with their pink noses. They salivated on our crispy chicken-wings. They urinated on our shoes. They ate our nicely-grilled steamy-hot golden corn—while we were watching, at a respectful distance, as if a group of villagers had been watching their houses set ablaze by invaders. But it was not entirely fury or desperation that filled our empty, hungry guts. We were taking pictures, laughing as we shook our heads, in awe, in amusement, trying to figure out from various religious perspectives why, if God had given us good weather, He would give us curious cows.
It was getting dark. We had to leave the still cow-ridden campsite without clearing up or eating much of the corn and the perfectly marinated chicken wings. The next morning we returned. Cow dungs and some sticky fluid spread across the ravaged campsite. Utensils were half-smeared with cow dungs. “This is bullshit,” I hissed under my breath. The clean-up work was definitely less amusing. The Sunday afternoon was mostly for washing the utensils and backpacks, which in the current economic situations I decided to keep instead of discarding them. But other than a dozen of chicken wings and corn, nothing was lost. This is always a story to be cherished. It is to be retold again and again. It is meant to be remembered as one of the craziest thing I’d ever done as a Williams sophomore. (The craziest thing in freshman year was biking to Pittsfield, tired punctured, hitchhiking with two sisters, one deaf, to Pittsfield to get tired fixed, then biking back.)
I suggested to my friends that we should barbecue on Stone Hill again on Independence Day. “Oh, no,” they replied, without hesitation.
I guess we’ll have to grill some chicken wings at Greylock Quad* then.
* Greylock Quad: a popular barbecue area just 20 ft away from the Greylock student dorms.
Taken at 200 mm with an old Nikon telephoto lens, though I’m not really a big fan of telephotos.
Rainy day in Williamstown. Reminds me of New York City.
This picture was taken as my friend and I were taking a driving break in Rockland, Maine. We were en route to Port Clyde from Waterville, when we caught sight of the eye of the storm around 5pm. It had been pouring for the past 30 minutes, and the sky, too, was taking a brief rest. I was at a jetty not so far from Rt 1 South, trying to make some photographs of the calm sea after the thunderstorm. When I looked back, a flock of seagulls were soaring into the sun. I didn’t think much. I grabbed my Nikon D70.
The contrast was increased in Picasa 3.0. I cropped away some negative space in the image, as I didn’t have time to frame properly during the shooting. But other than that, nothing was changed.
After this image was taken, I stayed for a while, hoping that another bird may come for another magical shot. It never did.
Of Milk Powder and Mao
November, 2006
When you get off the plane at Shenzhen Airport, do not be too surprised if you meet him. He dresses neatly in a well-tailored suit, looks fascinatingly good and speaks fluent English; and he is a beggar. He will tell you how he is out of job and needs money to buy milk powder for his child – not money for alcohol or private vices – milk powder for his infant son. Being a crafty and seasoned traveler, you might offer to buy him some milk powder rather than surrender hard cash. He follows you to the airport mart – you might buy him something extra for his wife, because you rarely see such “noble” beggars. You leave, having done some good, smug and philanthropic. But all the airport staff knows he carts home a bundle of stuff each day, sometimes with hard cash included, and resells these goods to marts in the city for less than the rack rate.
Surprised? Not unless you have seen hordes of them roaming about, disguised in all possible forms. Once you’ve passed the stage of being cheated a few times, you will be just like most urban Chinese: when a construction worker from rural China asks you for only 5 yuan for lunch – because his Hong Kong boss has not paid him for two months – you’ll simply shrug off, walk away, feeling not even indifferent.
Whenever people ask me where I am from, I would utter “Shenzhen” with mixed emotions. Pride? Yes, because it’s the first Special Economic Zone when the Chinese first broke open the prison of Cultural Revolution. Shame? Yes, because most people don’t even know who their neighbors are. When we were kids, almost all of us were told a Golden Survival Rule: don’t talk to strangers for whatever reason. When we grow up and have children, we will tell them the same thing. It is a vicious cycle. Time or Newsweek talk about the repercussions of an over-heating economy. Forget about repercussions; it’s a big word; you see it right in your face: distrust.
Three decades ago, when my mother was my age, she saw peace: in her village people didn’t need to close the doors at night; she saw persecutions: her uncle tried to sell his extra potatoes but was arrested and beaten in public. She may not even realize it was persecution; her entire family subsequently disliked the uncle for being “capitalist”. “Entrepreneurship” or “individualism” was definitely not in the dictionary.
It was 1979. A small hole was drilled in the wall of the prison cell, letting in light and fresh air: Shenzhen became China’s first window to the world. My parents came to this new city – a fishing village that had only dirt – and smelled freedom, just like many others who rushed to this Hong Kong’s Closest Neighbor. In my parents’ old album, I see blue-tinted colored photos of them posing proudly with a new TV set, or in the backdrop of cranes and skyscrapers in scaffolds. “It was a good camera,” my father reminisced, “amongst the first batch of Japanese imports.”
Gradually Zhuhai opened up. Shanghai opened up. The whole nation opened up. For the first time, people realized that they had been imprisoned. Now they saw the hole, they saw light, they crushed the wall, they rushed through the opening, they were shrouded in dirt and dust, they were caught in a stampede. They were freed, but without the Great Leader to instruct them, they cringed yet nonetheless charged forward like flies flinging themselves against the windowpane. Ten years back they followed the Little Red Book; now with Toshiba TV sets, Mitsubishi washing machines, Nikon cameras, which mantra should they follow? Gone were Mao’s teachings. Gone were Confucius’ principles of ren, or universal kindness. Struggling. Bewildered. Lost in the hazy daze of neon lights.
See a construction worker asking you for lunch money even if it is only 5 yuan? Who cares? He may just be another conman. Donate to charity? No, thank you, donate to me first; my company’s restructuring and I may be the next to leave.
In this turbulence of conflicting values and goals – if people still have clear values and goals – it takes only one event to break out of this prison of distrust, just like how once the Chinese were set free: you may see a stranger chasing a pickpocket, a taxi sending a pregnant lady to hospital for free. All these happen every day. You see them in newspapers. And you’ll see more. People begin to reflect. Though there are still groans and moans on distrust, as well as practical tips to fend off conmen, you start seeing more anecdotes, more photos of little touches of kindness. It’s a slow process, but you can definitely see the progress. You begin to appreciate others. Perhaps next time you come to Shenzhen again, you’ll give 5 yuan to the construction worker; you’ll buy that airport beggar milk powder. You will leave, happy and philanthropic.
