circumventing legal adoption laws

have i really not posted a picture of a fantastic fat baby's adorable face yet?

i now pronouce you Barb and Nick

I spent the better part of yesterday morning in a wedding photo studio slash salon as my host sister's boyfriend's cousin got her makeup done. The shop is filled with books (above) that serve as samples for the kinds of photos you can take with your newly-husband that will later hang all over your newly-house walls and become two oversized glossy albums on your newly-coffee table. Most of them have truncated and mangled strains of english song lyrics or things that are supposed to pass as poetry and decoration. The wedding pictures are all very similar to the girlied up portraits that every single 20-ish city-lass in china has had done. I flipped through the book of shots of the bridesmaid while we sat around her house later, and will never forget her "Bland Smile".

"just when you thought it couldn't get any stinkier"

eli, i challenge your manhood.

this is what a water chestnut looks like pre-showing up in your stir fry at Double Happiness Golden Jade Garden Dragon Palace! did you have any idea? The literal translation of the name (mati) means horse-hoof. eaten raw (sold on the street from big carts peeled and bagged by the hawker) they taste chalky and gross, but host mom boiled them and you can eat the outer skin also and they are crisp and sweet.

i don't think these are for eating, but i wouldn't bet money on it.

Man with double sided bunny rack.

Koreans aren't the only ones

who appreciate a lean slice of dog loin. Bring the whole fam down to "Guizhou Dog Meat Chain Restaurant", set - as truth in advertising insists - by a serene lake in the pastoral Swiss Alps.

how many partners have *you* had?

Finding my lunch

and then losing it, at the free specialty ear "scooping" stand on the street.

if ever my blog did have a mission statement

fashion corner

matchy matchersons, Hair McBalloonpants, Dancing Santa-Mixed Race, and all the cropped pants + tall boots combinations you could ever wish for. also popular in china: anything shaped like a balloon in the sleeve or knee region.

My friend has been trying to get me to try these fried rice noodles (the extra gummy kind, in a thin but exciting large triangluar shape) forever, and I only wish she had tried harder and earlier so that i could have added them to my regimen. they have more of a -what I imagine to be, in my limited asian outside of china travels - malaysian flavor, and they kick ass. we were an awful addition to their clientele as we shouted in our meager explanatory chinese that one dish wanted no meat, yes spice, one wanted yes meat, no spice, and one wanted both (unless the meat was pork) and wanted the strip-like noodles instead of the triangles. we had to send one back to get the spice that was left out in the confusion, but then it was almost unbearably salty and just got picked at. we forgot to ask for light on the oil, but it still was awesome.

comfort foods

that should have been more delicious than they look, but since they were purchased at a food court, it's understandable:

"fresh milk rice (powder) pudding", actual rice pudding made with condensed milk posing as coconut milk and goji berries, and tapioca with large chunks of taro and a stingy dash of real coconut milk.

where you go after you Eat Kunming

This is a pay toilet. I did you the courtesy of not photographing directly into the poo canyon or the waste paper basket.

thanksgiving is the same in every nation

a few variables change, like, say, trade a large plate of fried thing with some corn kernels in it and topped with sugar for a turkey, but then you basically have it. everyone is irritable and sickeningly full, and the leftover fried thing comes home in a plastic bag that sits on the counter, from which host mom dutifully eats every morning and tries to rally support for.

Kunming Second Dog Show

This was the boringest 4 dollars I have ever spent. It's a good reminder that the things that China makes you buy a ticket for are usually way less interesting than what happens on the street. As I listened to the MIDI strains of "Havah Nagilah" being piped into the warehouse every four songs, I couldn't help but daydream about the things I could have spent my money on: An hour and a half blind man full body massage. An hour long foot massage in a room with a topless lady clock. 2-3 haircuts (include massage and deep ear hole cleansing). 30 mung bean peanut treats. 6 pappa roti. Or maybe a small down payment on this personal sweat machine.

What lies beneath.

Kunming's underground city:

two treats

I'm making the most of my time abroad by eating dessert after every meal. I have two new favorites.

1) "green-bean and peanut cake"

tastes like cookie dough but is made (what isn't here?) of powdered mung bean and oil.

2) Pappa roti

tastes like a delicate raised maple bar, only it's not glazed, and instead has a small crunchy sugary ring around the base (shaped and sized like a 3-D yarmulke), and the outside is the slightest slightest bit crispy. there's also a secret pocket of melted margarine somewhere. It's outrageously expensive by chinese standards (it cost as much as my lunch for one), but it was warm and gave me a priceless sugar high.

"I have a new cool favorite food that's probably too exotic for you to have tried before"

It's one of the specialties of Heijing, a salt manufacturing town a few hours outside of Kunming, and it's the poky part of the fruit commonly known as a pomegranate. It was more like my consolation prize for not being able to eat the real specialties, which were salt-something chicken and stone fish.

Good point, China

and then maybe some more jelly

with surprise ingredients, and surprising food methods

and then, in the interest of blogging, I ate some things made of jelly

I really thought this was a DIY jelly making machine cup, but it was just a catchy disguise for wasteful packaging. The little jelly cups were fine tasting, the only thing that seemed to be an excuse for the packaging decadence was the addition of "jellymate", which might as well have been desiccant for all the good it did the flavor.

Aisle 1995

The chinese year of the Orbitz.

nothing whets the appetite

this kind of post feels so dull by now

But here are some Chinese dishes that we ate for my friend's birthday at a restaurant that had fake grapes hanging from the ceiling. At the end of the meal, they gifted us (since we spent more than 50 yuan, approximately $6) a box of kleenex. "japanese tofu" is, I think, made with fish and tofu mixed together, but I've given up on thinking about it. It's very silky and shaped like a scallop and fried with a very light crispy exterior. the sauce at this particular restaurant was sweet and salty and full of pinenuts and mushrooms. In the background is a big flaky pancake that was filled with mushrooms (a yunnan special variety, I think) that gave me pause for the second time that evening as a meat scare. The other dish (not pictured) was basically octopus, except that it was a mushroom of the sea. Next is spring roll shaped crispy deep fried bundles filled with - an amatuer's guess - slightly sweetened purple taro paste. Dip in another slightly sweet and slightly sour sauce, which was the color of every chinese take-out sweet and sour sauce ever made. We also got a free fruit platter which was ornate, but vague and maybe lazy. It gave me the impression of a swan, but without all the effort.