Dressing for the emperor

May 14, 2010

It is 6:30 am, and I’m writing in the midst of cacophony. I’ve opened my window to let it all in: the percussions of workers pounding a building into existence; the music blaring from a loudspeaker positioned somewhere on the grounds of the primary school outside the university wall; the birds I wrote of last time, who have made their homes in the trees and bushes just beyond my balcony; and now the choreographed cheers of college students chanting during their morning calisthenics. In China, there is no shortage of auditory stimulation.

But this morning what I first woke to was my olfactory senses. As I began to let the world in through the hazy light I became aware of a smell in my room. Not necessarily a bad smell, but an odd smell. After considering it for a bit, I decided that it was, indeed, an unpleasant smell because it wasn’t a smell that belonged in my bedroom at this early hour of the morning: the smell of Chongqing hotpot. I rose from my bed, opened my balcony door, and hung the offending fleece jacket and slacks on the long metal bar that serves as a clothesline.

Last night, after an astounding afternoon of Sports Activities organized by Chongqing Business and Technology University’s (CTBU) student volunteers, we were feted by our hosts at a hotpot restaurant above the Yangtze River. Chongqing denizens are proud of their hotpot, and hotpot is fun to eat. Diners sit around a huge bubbly gas-fueled pot and they order all varieties of meats, seafood, vegetables, bean curd, fungi and noodles and set about cooking these together. In Chongqing, the hotpots are divided into two sections with two different kinds of seasoned sauces, referred to as “yin” and “yang”: at the center of the pot is the white broth (“mild”, but savory yin), and in the larger outer circumference is the spicy red broth, filled with hot red peppers, Sichuan pepper corns, and other spices. Chongqing locals usually cook a variety of internal organs in these pots, such as pig stomach, intestines and liver. But our hosts know American tastes well enough now to exclude these from our menu. Instead, our table had stacks of raw beef, slabs of river fish, many varieties of sprouts and greens, tofu skin, quail eggs, fish balls, small cubes of glutinous rice, potatoes, lotus root, several varieties of mushroom, and a few stray tomatoes. Participants collectively place the foods in the pot (though the hosts and the lower ranked guests are expected to do more of the “cooking” and serving) and everyone periodically dips their chopsticks or a serving ladle into the cauldron to test what is cooked and to fish out favorites for themselves or others. Besides the obvious communal feelings one generates by partaking in hotpot, the food itself is believed to have medicinal benefits. Chongqing is extremely hot in the summer (one of China’s “three furnaces”) and the air can be heavy and humid. Locals believe that eating spicy hot pot is an essential way to purge one’s body of the moisture that may accumulate in these humid climes. The heat of the spices is believed to dry out one’s internal organs, and be released through the sweating that inevitably occurs when eating hotpot.

And one does indeed sweat when eating hotpot. Well, more than sweat. As I looked around the tables of students I noticed more than a handful were trying to discreetly wipe or blow their noses. I was fighting the same battle, fingering the small package of tissue paper provided with each place setting, worrying that my pack was growing thinner and thinner. Somewhere early in the meal I realized I was almost through it and that I had accumulated a small stack of wadded tissues in the little shelf beneath the table. I glanced at one of our hostesses sitting next to me, Grace, a beautiful and elegant Chongqing woman who is the embodiment of her name. I was relieved to catch Grace dabbing the corners of her nose with a tissue, her normally pale face flushed and shining, and the stack of tissues above her lap growing.

Our students had dressed up for this evening. I hadn’t told them to, I simply told them to wear something decent, not too fancy. But they had, upon faculty suggestion, lugged suit coats, ties, skirts, and heels from the States for a few anticipated more formal dinners and presentations. I suspect they were ready to shed their sweaty clothes from our earlier sports activities and show our hosts, and each other, their cleaner selves. I think they also wanted to express their respect and gratitude towards our hosts for their dinner invitation with the attire that communicates respect (they are those kinds of kids…good kids, hao haizimen!). I had been genuinely moved to see them show up five minutes early outside the dorm, all dolled up in their Sunday best. When we arrived at the restaurant venue I was the first to step off the bus and climb the long staircase to the restaurant entrance and was greeted warmly at the top by Nancy, one of the program officers for the International Cooperation and Exchange Office at CTBU. But her smile suddenly shifted to wide-eyed astonishment and then brow-furrowed confusion as she looked beyond me. “Colette!”, she cried, grabbing my elbow, “I see some of your boys are wearing suits!” “Yes,” I replied, quickly sifting through possible interpretations for her concerns. Clearly we have done something inappropriate. Was she concerned she had inconvenienced us, unnecessarily putting us through the bother of dressing up when it was unnecessary? Was she concerned that she, as the hostess, was now underdressed, along with her student volunteers who, I was now observing, were all wearing the same red t-shirts they had played in a few hours ago at the sporting events? I scrambled for a reply to ease the discomfort of the situation, “They wanted to look nice for you,” I found myself saying, “They are so appreciative of all the efforts your student volunteers put into organizing the sports events, and they want to express their gratitude so they put on their best clothes for them. Like going to see the emperor!” Nancy nodded her head, “Oh I see”….but her wide smile still indicated something was worrying her. Finally she said, “I am just concerned. Maybe their clothes will smell funny afterwards? And maybe the boys will sweat a great deal.”

The students did not appear to notice anything was amiss. As the platters arrived, they smiled graciously, bravely trying the oddities presented to them: the wood-ear fungus, the “gold-needle-sprouts”, and the slippery, un-skinned chunks of fish. They sweated and dabbed discreetly, and complimented their hosts and hostesses on the variety of flavors. The boys eventually removed their suit coats and loosened their ties. Standing outside the restaurant afterwards, the air was cool in the spring air. Things have not yet heated up in Chongqing, and though our hosts were eager to escort us back to campus in the bus, the students lingered on the sidewalk, mesmerized by the barges and boats passing on the river, some alight with flashing advertisements. Someone suggested a stroll, others agreed, and they set off in the night with two of our faculty, cognizant of this morning’s eight o’clock start time for their class on Chinese paper cutting. They really are hao haizimen!

This afternoon we head for Chengdu by bus for two days of sightseeing: pandas and Du Fu’s cottage. I’ll be rushing around the dormitory soon, reminding students to bring their passports (Where is mine? In my small green satchel?), then rushing to the China Mobile store to purchase a chongzhika to add minutes to my Beijing phone number and troubleshoot a colleague’s defective SIM card (thank you, Jazz, for that Skype-facilitated vocabulary lesson). Rain is forecast and I’ve made a note to retrieve my fleece from the balcony and pack it, hoping the hotpot smells eventually leave the fabric.