Round Three: Wufan!

I have no doubt that Beijing has lunch-places with as much character as Fontana's. However, I have only been here a short time and it is also harder to get a sense of such things in a foreign language. I decided to settle on a place that at least gave a sense of its history and origins. The place is called Gou Bu Li 狗不理, on Suzhou Street.*

According to the little signs on their tables, the name goes back to 1858. There was a peasant family in Hebei's Wuqing county. When they were around forty years old, they had a son, and because they were seeking a peaceful life, they called him "Little Dog" (Gouzi 狗子) in the hopes that he could have a good life like a dog does. (I guess Chinese doesn't have the saying, "a dog's life." A parenthetical note adds that according to the customs of the place the name implies simplicity and good family relations.) When Gouzi was 14, he went to Tianjin to (I think this is what it means) become an apprentice. He got a job working in a dumpling restaurant, and proved to be very good at it, finding better and better ways to make dumplings. In the end, he got his own shop, and customers came from miles around to eat his dumplings. In fact, he became so busy that he no longer had any time to chat with his customers. Thus, people who came to eat his dumplings would say, "Little dog sells dumplings pays no attention to people." Later it was shortened to, "Dog pays no attention" (Gou Bu Li).

The story goes on to tell that Gouzi was taken by Yuan Shikai and brought to the Empress Dowager's palace, where she sampled his dumplings and praised them. With this, his reputation was made.

Now, Gou Bu Li--most unlike Fontana's--is certainly a chain. After all, it is called "Gou Bu Li of Tianjin." And no doubt its origin story has a hefty dose of self-mythologizing. Still, I thought the story was worth mentioning. Now for the food.

I was trying to get a pretty comparable meal, so I got vegetarian dumplings. They came with a sort of mung bean soup and pickled brown bits. And I also got a spicy cucumber salad. The total came out to 18 RMB, or about $2.25 (my second most expensive meal here so far, that I actually paid for myself). And it was MUCH more than I could eat. I left one dumpling and half the soup--though I much regretted it--and still went away absolutely stuffed!

* As far as I can see, NO streets here are named after people. I think it's just too political. Even after people are long-dead, their reputations can go up and down and become the subject of discomfort. Streets as far as I can tell all seemed to be named after 1) other places or 2) miscellaneous abstract happy sounding names.

Round Three: Lunch!

Yeah, I know what you're thinking. "Surely, there are plenty of places that review food. I don't tune in to Chicago vs. Beijing to get some watered-down Michelin guide!" But today's comparison is something a little more special. You see, anyone can go to Ye Olde Tourist Guide to Chicago/Beijing and find out where to go to have a fancy, chic lunch on a high-falutin' budget. But what about ordinary folks? What do the visiting students and junior professors have for lunch? Clearly a burning question.


With a mind towards that, dear readers, I set out for lunch today. And not just any lunch, no. I'm sure you're familiar with my main options: Subway, Wendy's, etc. And I'm sure you're familiar with at least the type of food you'd get at the UIC cafeteria. So instead, I set out to that tastiest of nearby lunch destinations, Fontano's.

Fontano's and UIC have been linked from the start.* When UIC was being built on a corner of Little Italy in the early 60s, Aniello Fontano, a nearby laborer, and Gilda, his wife and the shortest, cutest old woman I've ever seen**, decided quite reasonably that the nearby students would need food. Starting as an italian grocery and then expanding to make tasty subs, Fontanos grew to a neighborhood institution. Today, Polk Street is proudly known as "Honorary Gilda and Aniello Fontano Way", honoring their contributions to the neighborhood.***


Jeesh. I should totally work for the Chamber of Commerce, shouldn't I? Fontanos is seriously awesome, though. It's one of these old neighborhood places that can afford to be inexpensive because of high volume. Their homemade hot pepper relish is delicious, and everything is cheap. And oily. I think it's a function of always getting the veggie sub, which is mainly cheese, some lettuce, some pepper relish, and then some mix of olives and artichoke hearts in oil. It's deliciously, artery-clogging, take-a-stack-of-napkins-with-you good. You can tell that the people behind the counter are all related (including the aforementioned Gilda, who's about quite often)---they bicker and joke and shout just like real families do! Once when I was at the counter, the daughter offered me some pickles covered in some sort of delicious dill sauce. She had just made them, and they were crisp and cold and good. I asked for the recipe, and she responded with something like "Hell no! They're good, and so we're going to sell them! Now the recipe is a secret!". Then she gave me a free tub of them to have with my lunch. That sort of place.

And the price? For $5.53, I got a 6-inch veggie sub, a can of 7UP, and a bag of off-brand pretzels. Not the healthiest lunch in the world, sure, but trust me---I can do a lot worse around here, and it would cost more to boot.



*Note that all of this is dimly remembered from a newspaper article hanging on their wall that I skimmed one day, so it may not be entirely accurate. But surely mostly accurate.
**Though she probably wasn't old then.
***I don't know if you noticed while you were here, dear E, but they do a lot of honorary naming of streets. Upon reflection, it makes sense. All of the streets, as we discovered, are already named after various people. You can't rightly rename a street. If nothing else, it destroys confidence in the whole system---the honoree wouldn't be sure that their street wouldn't just vanish too someday when they were gone and forgotten. But that only leaves unnamed streets in increasingly undesirable spots, and no one wants their name attached to the road that, I don't know, normally carries truckloads of crap to the waste disposal factory. Solution: honorary naming!

Round Two: Beijing wins by a longshot.

If Chicago actually had recycling, instead of the elaborate farce that is the current system, then I could separate my trash and it wouldn't look like this. If Chicago didn't have recycling, then maybe there would be roving recycling collectors on bikes, and I would still have a reason to separate my trash. But no, I'm just screwed. Sigh. The picture really says it all.

Round Two: Post-consumer solutions

Yesterday morning, while I was eating breakfast in the little courtyard of the hutong where my youth hostel was, I heard an eerie sound something like a bird-call but more human. Uuuuuuuuh, when the sound in a clear ringing tone. Uuuuuuuh. Or maybe there were words, but I didn't know what the words were. And then from a different direction: ooooooh.... oooooooh.

Later, while walking through the little maze of narrow alley-like streets, I saw one of these callers in person. It was a tiny, wizened old man on a tricycle trailer. A brief aside on these trike trailers: they are absolutely awesome. From the seat forward, the thing is a bicycle. But instead of a back wheel, it has a trailer box and two wheels. Very very cool. If it weren't so obviously the wave of the past (every single one I've seen has been ancient) I'd say it was the wave of the future. Sadly, the healthy importance of bicycles has diminished in this city and been replaced by a decidedly unhealthy car boom, with attendant problems. Well, sometimes you have to go back to go forward, and go forward to go back, if you see what I mean.

Anyway, I saw one of these ancient bike trailers peddled by an old man from whom these bird-call sounds were issuing. At this point I had a suspicion, which my newfound Chinese friend JZ verified: there are people who make their living going through these hutong neighborhoods collecting recyclables. Actually, there are people who try to do this in Eugene (OR) as well, so I felt nostalgic. But they usually do it by going through dumpsters, not calling out to residents in such an endearingly melodic way. JZ added that there was even one person she'd heard of who had become a millionaire through this line of work. "But in Chinese millions!" she added, seeing my surprise.

I suppose with the encroachment of high-rises upon these little neighborhoods, this type of recycling business will wither. But overall the city seems to be pretty recycle conscious, offering double trashcans in many places. I have yet to figure out exactly what is considered recylable, but then I haven't been throwing much away!

I'm really sorry I didn't get a picture of the old guy. If at some future point I manage it, I will post one here.

Round One: PEK vs ORD

I know I'm the PEK expert here, so I'll mostly talk about that. But a quick note and photo on ORD: you know how you always have to take off your shoes at security now? This time through was the first time I had ever seen disposable booties to be worn while the shoes are off. With apologies to the environment, I took a pair! Just for the humor value, you know?

As for PEK, the airport was pretty standard when we first got in from the plane. In no language is there the phrase, "as pretty as an airport." Who wrote that, Douglas Adams I think? He was on the mark. But Beijing wasn't the ugliest I have seen. It's hard to say much about an airport until you depart from it, but I will say a few words about arrival. Of course the walk for arriving international travelers is interminable. There were people-movers, but the very first one was incredibly slow--much slower than walking pace. A guy whose traveling companion had got on while he did not actually had to stop and wait. I believe if it hadn't been completely clogged with motionless people, I could have walked back, got off, and walked its entire length in less time than it took me to ride to the end. The other ones were normal speed, however.

The airport art was pretty neat: Ming vases, an interesting sculpture (black, of a startled and startling animal) that was either really modern or really primitive, a display of bronze bells--surely imitations, but really cool anyway--and farther down, along a branch I didn't take, some terra cotta horses and men from the Qin emperor's tomb, full size.


Of course all the signs were in Chinese, but it didn't have a particularly alienating effect on me as it had in Taiwan (2000) or even in Paris (2003)--er, the latter having signs in French. Neither did the sound of Chinese people chattering. I guess when you concentrate so much of your effort on something, even if it's a very foreign language, seeing or hearing it in a strange land can seem like coming home to a place you've never been before.

All the paperwork went very smoothly, not problem at all there. The lines were fast and efficient, even the foreigner ones. Nothing much to say about that, or perhaps it's a contrast to the US. Last time I crossed into the US (from Canada, Niagara Falls) the immigration official was awful to me, asking all kinds of questions about the car and whether Colin and I were married. I looked at the uniform of the Chinese immigration official. It said, POLICE. He looked very professional, young but not excessively young, not bored or beset, just a little bland.

I went to the bathroom and forgot to put the paper in the basket provided. (Another comparative peculiarity: you can't flush toilet paper in either China or Taiwan. You have to put it in a basket, usually a small plastic step-can.) That's a really hard habit to retrieve!! But the toilet did not immediately clog and overflow, so it was okay. I'll just have to remember in the future. There were two bored young bathroom attendants, much prettier than they usually are.

Not much else to say except that after the last bureaucratic hurdle, we went along a sort of exit run-way. Behind a rail, there was an absolute riot of faces--faces and signs and taxi drivers jostling for business. People packed three deep, all with different sorts of expressions on their faces. Holding up all sorts of names. If that happens in the US, I never notice it. I either train in immediately on the person I know will be meeting me or I ignore it all and go my own way because no one is meeting me.

I was expecting someone, but for all those faces and signs, no sign with my name on it and no face that seemed to recognize mine. I curtly refused the aggressive taxi drivers. They are illegals trying to rip you off. Legal ones wait at the cab-stand outside. I stood in front of a Starbucks, looking conspicuous on purpose. I also eyed the payphone signs. All the banks of payphones were recessed and blocked off by fully-staffed tables of pretty girls selling phone-cards. They spoke good English too. I was just about to buy one to try to call the person meeting me, when circumstances intervened. But she spoke to me with barely an accent. Clearly I look like a foreigner here. Good!

Not much else to say, except the line of cars to get out of the parking garage was intense! I was so glad it wasn't me driving.

Yeah, I know Pocket of Bolts' prose leaves mine in the dust (if we're comparing that too) but hey, I'm all jet-lagged and bewildered, and barely have time to think!

Round One: ORD vs PEK

The second time I ever flew--I was maybe 11 at the time--my sister and I flew sans parents to my Aunt's house in California. We had to change planes at O'Hare, and this caused my mother no small amount of anxiety. O'Hare was described to me as an almost mythically large airport. It was the sort of place where people get lost looking for their planes, and show up at their gate 30 years later with Rip van Winkle beards asking for their flight to Peking via Constantinople. At the very least, there was a strong chance that we'd miss our connection and then be stuck in Chicago. Probably forever.

In fact, a kind stewardess led us the 100 yards to our gate. In fact, I totally could've gotten us to the gate without her help. I was eleven, after all. And it was only O'Hare. In fact, every time I've been to O'Hare, I've found it pretty easy to get around in. Yes, the alveolar structure gets a bit complicated, but in general you're funneled towards your gate pretty effectively. And sometimes your gate can be pretty far away. But it's not like, say, Detroit 'It's actually a mile long tube' Metro Airport, which trades navigational ease for being insanely long and inefficient. And though people complain about the delays, I don't have the sort of loathing for it that I do for, say, San Francisco Airport, which fails both in the navigability category (To get from one gate to another, I once actually had to go through a door marked "do not enter" and ride a secret shuttle through the baggage area) and in the not-having-my-flight-cancelled-and-getting- me-stuck-there category. Seriously, I've spent like 23 hours of my life waiting for flights in SFO. Which, ok, isn't a lot, but enough to make you start disliking an airport.

Not so for O'Hare. Now, I realize that O'Hare may cause other people some delays. Whatever, man. I live here now, and I remain cautiously optimistic that those delays will never hurt me. You know those annoying signs they sometimes put for new subdivisions on the soundwall by the interstate, the ones that read "If you lived here, you'd be home by now"? That's what living in Chicago is like.


If that wasn't enough, O'Hare has murals. Probably more than two, but there are at least two on the way to the United terminal. Both are wonderfully chaotic. Without bothering to look it up, I'm going to guess that they were actually made by scores of artists, each told to paint what they liked about Chicago without talking to the others. Seriously. Look at it. I've also included the trippy perspective part of one mural that has what I take to be Chicago's chinatown on it. I'm really hoping that PEK has a similar mural of Chicago. I also hope that the Beijing airport Mural has a giant lake monster like the one on the right.

Of course, the downside of O'Hare is that it took E from me today, spiriting her away to Beijing for months and months. If I was a giant reptile, I would consider that cause enough to stomp on the buildings, crushing them in impotent rage. Failing that, I'll have to stay on good terms with O'Hare until December, in the hopes that it will deliver me across the sea to her.

Star-Crossing Lovers

Once upon a time, the king of heaven had a daughter, the Weaver Girl who weaves the colorful clouds at sunset. One night she was bathing in the river with her sisters and the mischievious Herdboy stole all their clothes. The Weaver Girl, being the youngest, is the one who has to go look for them. Tip-toeing down the river-bank in the dead of night, she comes upon the Herdboy. As the legend primly states, he saw her naked and so they had to marry. Fair enough, but I think the scene plays best if she's a lusty lass just waiting for someone to steal her clothes--if you know what I mean.

After getting together with the Herdboy, however, she is so wrapped up in bliss that unfortunately begins to neglect her dissertation--er, I mean, cloud-weaving. The king and queen of heaven gets annoyed about this. Also there's the problem of him being a lowly mortal while she's a princess in heaven. Hard words are exchanged. There may have been some maternal hairpin violence leading to the creation of the Milky Way (a.k.a. Heavenly River). Or maybe it was the river they bathed in in the first place. In any event, when the dust settled the Herdboy and Weaver girl had both been transformed into stars and exiled to opposite sides of the Heavenly River. She is the star we call Vega, and he is Altair.

She does her weaving. He takes care of the kids. . They only get to meet once a year, when all the magpies in the world fly up to to heaven and make a bridge for them. This happens on the seventh day of the seventh month by the lunar calendar, known as Chinese Valentine's day. That's why magpies get pretty baldy-looking around that time, because it's rough on them to be used as a bridge (don't believe any silly stuff about moulting).

This entire tale is a terrific cliche in Chinese culture, but then so is being separated from the one you love for months at a time. In fact, they call it "the Herdboy and Weaver Girl lifestyle" 牛郎織女的生活, which is far more colorful than "batching it,"* as far as I'm concerned.

Well, tomorrow we embark upon the Herdboy and Weaver Girl lifestyle. I will point out that this tale of "star-crossing lovers" is less tragic (well, he gets to be an immortal too, doesn't he?) and expresses what I think of as a typical Chinese sentiment, that with patience even happiness might be attainable. Right? At least we get to see each other more than once a year--a mere four months until we meet again. And we have this magpie blog to span the great water.


* And for those of you who might not know this inelegant bit of American slang, here are some amusing links for context: humble / fantastical / cranky-informative (maybe I misspelled it)!

Chicago and Beijing. Two bustling cities. Two cultural and economic dynamos. If not separated by 6500 miles, they might appear as two lovers, shining with municipal passion across the vast plains that surround them.

Alas, the cities are far, far apart. And similarly separated are two smaller, human lovers. The Fullbright Program and the Academic life have conspired to separate us for nine months: one in Beijing, the other in Chicago. If we cannot be together, we might as well make the most of being apart.

In that spirit, we present an extended comparison of Chicago vs Beijing. Ever wanted know how the CCP stacks up against the Daley Dynasty? Or Lake Michigan against the North China Plain? Or for that matter, how the pizza is in Beijing, or whether Chicago has enough of a wall to keep out the hordes of Mongols roaming the Illinois steppes? On Chicago vs Beijing, we'll answer these and other burning questions.