North Korea

SECTIONCODE: 36-food- UTT
SECTION: food
SUBSECTION: Under the table
HED:
SUBHED:
STARS:
P/Q: A culture is best experienced through its food I’m told. But I’m still miles away from understanding, and miles away from Pyongyang.
W/C:
TEXT:
A funny thing happened on the way to North Korea. Two American journos were caught sneaking into the Hermit Kingdom and sentenced to 12 years in a hard labour camp. I have a slight obsession with North Korea and these idiots were the reason why my visa was revoked. Like a spoilt child, I wanted to throw something.
I was looking forward to a weekend of feasting on small abalone from the East Sea of Korea –while the rest of the country starves; I wanted to stuff my face with pine needle mushroom – picked by hard labour prisoners; I wanted to eat dog. But most of all, I wanted to indulge in commie kitsch.
So with purchased tickets to my departure city of Beijing, I go for some solo commie fun. In BJ, I decide to stay clear from Peking Duck, boiled dumplings and all those delicious red bean pan cakes that have upped my pants size on previous trips, instead I contact the North Korea embassy for a list of North Korean restaurants in the Red Capital. A list of three names reverted to me, diners all owned by the embassy itself. The internet turned up a half-dozen more.
Pyongyang Haedanghwa is the most well-known of the bunch, and I thought I’d start my commie 101 class there. Inside, my cellphone was not blocked, but calls would cut off after the first words were spoken. It was so comical I would multi-call my friend to split out one word each time. My itinerary of restaurants tucked inside a plain manila folder was pulled out of my hand and examined upon entry by pretty hostesses in traditional hot pink robes. “Where are you from?” one host asked me in three languages.
The thing you need to know about these girls is that they are spies. Ok, those are incriminating words. These government officials’ daughters and nieces are hand-picked, given intelligence training and the pretty ones get shipped out to Beijing on a three-year rotation to work in their restaurants. A bus drops them off in the morning, and a bus picks them up at night. They live together. Once in a while, they take group excursions around the city, but they are never to interact with foreigners except when working. They are the lucky ones.
“I’m from Hong Kong,” I reply. “You skin is very tan. Hong Kong women like white skin, you are really from Hong Kong? You look like ABC, a little bit,” she says right on. “Say something Chinese,” my dinner companion urged. It slipped my mind that North Koreans are not very friendly with Americans, just Bill Clinton. But I just smile.
There was the dining room, and there was the state’s dining room. The positioning of each table tells a story of where on the important scale you rank. We were sat by the kitchen entrance, how does that translate?
Two men in grey boxy suits with mandarin collars sporting the fashionable cut of the day, the Kim Jong Il, strolled by and I whipped out my camera. Before I could even position myself, it was ripped from my hands. “No photo,” our hostess said sternly, smiling. I assume I’ll get that back.
They uncomfortably surround me as I jot thoughts in my notebook. “Personal space is not exercised here” I write in BIG letters. My companion was thoroughly embarrassed or scared, I couldn’t tell from his facial expression.
A seashell came out on a flame. Sliced Korea turbo fish and shitake cooked in a fragrant broth boiled inside and we were instructed to eat it very quickly. Our host was never far from the table. She knew I was up to no good. An assortment of kim chee came out. This looked like kim chee served at any Korean meal, but its taste was more sour than heat, more fresh then pickled. And when the mild-tasting kalbi came out I understood why. They don’t use MSG. Since they don’t trade much with foreign purveyors, MSG is probably not a common kitchen item like it is in South Korea.
In the next room, I heard singing, spinning Korean girls entertain dignities. They get the full show of dancing, piri (Korean flute) playing, and who knows what else. I didn’t see a picture of Kim Jong Il anywhere, and as if my dining companion read my mind, he said as a deal with Beijing, they cannot put up a mural of their leader here. But they did have pleasant oil paintings of vistas and happy families by the winter lake. It was all the commie fun I had wished for and more. The dog meat and steamed dog trotters were not the highlight. This was a cross of The List; this was a one-bite curiosity—satisfied.
There were lots of pine nuts, pine tree mushroom and corn noodles served. This special corn and soybean noodle is said to delay hunger, a gift from the Japanese. After one bowl of cold noodles I was still left hankering to taste more of what North Korea had to offer. And when I asked for the menu for round two, the waitress looked at our table dotted with half-eaten plates and said, “No waste.”
That was when I was reminded of the people of North Korea and its leader who threatens the world with nukes –all for a bag of potato to feed his happy, dancing, singing people. Who was this wasteful American who infiltrated their dining room, whose presence in this restaurants challenged their commie ways, and what rights does she have to comment on their way of life without having faced hardship herself? A culture is best experienced through its food I’m told. But I’m still miles away from understanding, and miles away from Pyongyang. And with complimentary bowls of sweeten red bean congee, I thanked the host in my most gracious Cantonese.

Chapters-revised

Thesis of my book-- edible women
Movement, a movement.

When I finish this book, one of two things will happen. I will find love or something that resembles love, or I will move out of Asia.

I made a pact like this four years ago. I said to my friends in New York “If this monkey (former president George W Bush) gets reelected, I'm outta here.” Then move out to Asia on Nov 3, 2004 the day after he was reelected.

Four years later I'm still wondering what kind of life I could have here in Asia.

I will either fall in love with a man or with Asia, maybe both. But the four years I've spent here has produced neither.
I am giving myself twelve chapters. When this book is done, I might as well be.


Chapter index

HONG KONG
The Arrest
Boob recipes for flat-chested girls and their mothers
The more sorrow you have, the deeper you love
Home; Dinner parties
Hoad collects media girls
A question of salt
My housekeeper
Ben's dinner
my first crush
Why is Hong Kong obsessed with Japanese culture? Do we think they are the superior Asians?


TOKYO
Man with a plan: mistress please
Oak Door: Thomas
Morgan Stanley run annual fireworks and fugu on the streets
Bike ride / picnic in the park

CHINA
Shenzhen: Anti-Japanese restaurant and the kids who love them
Guangzhou: mango fed duck// white swan hotel adoption
Beijing: Ass sandwich
Kiss kiss bang bang
Shanghai: Thomas, again
Hangzhou : in search of loong ching
Sanya; Hainan chicken

ASIA
Taipei: 97 dumplings to go Din Fung Tin
Singapore: Clara stop please oh god stop
Bali: som soup
Sri Lanka: black and white ball
Seoul: Green tea from DMZ
koh Samui: dead blow fish in the sand as we eat




Okinawa?

Vietnam?

Hong Kong Signature drink

I’m really sorry to hear that.
How come Hong Kong does not have a signature drink?

Singapore’s got the Singapore Sling, Russia’s got vodka and the white Russian, and black Russian for that matter. Ireland’s got Guniness; Japan- sake, Mexico, margarita’s though Texan’s will dispute this and say they’ve invented. So how come Hong Kong missed this international definition?

So I went searching, well, not that hard. For a drink that represents Hong Kong. Nada. There are some crossbreds and rip-off mutins such as the Hogn Kogn mule, Kowloon Sling, nine dragon martini, but come on. The more I looked, the more ridiculous the drinsk got.

Then I remembered something Karen Mok told me, “Hogn Kong people think things that are imported are better than homegrown.” Where is the national prided in that? I don’t want to agree with her, but all the evidence I have, that I’ve seen, she might be right.

But without national pride, what have we got? Shopping malls filled with international brands?
I’m not saying a drink is the answer, but it’s an easy first step to start with?

If Hong Kong is a first tier international city, we should have a drink that symbolize us, on an international scale. A drink that one can get in a shitty bar in an airport hotel, or a fancy lounge at the Peninsula or something.

So since we don’t have a drink that represents us, I, in a hurried afternoon, thought up of what would best represent Hong Kong in a glass. One and a half part gin for its colonial past, one part rum because of it’s subtropical heat and our tendancy for all things sweet, and a drink Hong Konger grew up with—the boxed lemon iced tea found at your local Circle K.

A friend who showed up early to the tasting, had this to add: It is looked down upon real bartender to mix spirits in one drink. I’m not sure how much I want to take that into account.
At a conference (with those sitting closest to my desk), we came up with a name The Hong Kong Long. Rolls off the tongue nicely, sort of.

A combined effort between myself and Gandi the master bartender, the recipe became one and a half part Bombay or gordon’s gin, one part crème de ginger, one part Bols orange liquor, freshly crushed ginger (grated is fine) and a unknown measurement of boxed iced tea.

It was refreshing as icy pim’s lemonade of the hottest of Hong Kong days, slightly sweet.

The commonality running between most nationality drinks is this: sweetness. You see it in the fruit punch of signapore slings, the rim’s of margarita glasses. Sugar makes it easily drinkable. Anothertrait: the orginals of the main liquor is made in their home land. I really don’t want to use ricec wine, but that might be the closest thing to home-made liquor. I just personally don’t like it. But maybe I could wash the glass with it to give it that secret burn.

With straws, we tasted, more this, a bit more that, bitter maybe?

I don’t know who said it first, we were perfectly drunk, but someone slurred out “Wong Island Iced Tea”. And that became the name of the drink for the night. You say anything enough times, and it just stuck.

I’m not going to be this pompous and say that the Wong Island Iced Tea will become Hong Kong’s national drink. I just want their to be a national drink for no other reason than to see it on a menu in a shitty hotel bar by the airport.

So if not this one, than maybe another, created by someone who knows what they are talking about, who is actually a person of authority. I just don’t want it to be exclusive of one brand.

I’ve asked several bartender from top bar in Hogn kong to create what they think would be a candidate for a drink that would represent our city. And you can try them at the bars following.

So there is no stupid contest or casting of votes for Hogn kong’s signature drink. People will vote with their wallets and their tastebuds. And I’m hopeful, that one day, I’ll be sitting at a shitty bar in a hotel by the airport ordering this cocktail.

What pisses me off is that liquor labels are reintroducing classic drinks such as the sarac with their own brand suggesting it is made using their bottle.

Profile someone. Just because.

Travel, experiencing, reading, and, creating your own thoughts. That might be the only chance we get to really, truly, becoming our own person. A Real person, with thought not tainted by marketing campaigns, outdated thinking, but our own pure thought based on first hand experience and intuition.

Globs of people shaped by marketing campaigns.