Monthly Archives: March 2015

Xiangchun 香椿 vegetable, which tell you spring has come

Hi,

It’s been so warm until yesterday, but after the rain, it got a bit chilly.

But I guess spring is going to be finished very soon here in Beijing.

I like shopping in the super-market or local market when the season is changing because I can find new seasonal vegetables I’ve never seen or tried.

There have been some vegetables in the corner of a supermarket I often go to, for a while, with shiny young green leaves, deep purple leaves that would obviously taste a little bit bitter like other spring sprouts vegetables.

This really looks like spring sprouts vegetable.

And I’ve never seen this in a supermarket in Japan.

I didn’t buy it the first day because I didn’t know how to cook it, but my curiosity brought me to buy it today.

It’s only 8RMB. (=153 JPY. Oh but now JPY is so cheap!)

springfood2

When I opened the package, I found there were a lot more sprouts than I thought.

And it looks like spring!

I googled the vegetable’s name on the sticker, ‘Xiangchun 香椿’. It means fragrant camellia. Pretty name.

‘Xiangchun is a food which tells you spring has come to Northern China.’ I see.

(I checked this page, thank you very much. It’s a very nice blog with so much info about restaurants in Beijing. It’s all written in Japanese.)

’The color would turn into bright green if you boil it in hot water.’

Ok. it sounds similar to a vegetable I’ve tried to cook and FAILED before.

(Before I cooked brassica campestris, 红菜苔(hongcaitai)without boiling it in hot water beforehand and the food turned into a weird purple color and tasted very nasty bitter…)

I learned from that experience that I should boil some spring vegetables before I use them for cooking to avoid having too much bitterness.)

After boiling in water, it turned into light green like tea leaves.

And then, I pan fried the vegetables with tofu, sesame oil and salt.

Simple.

Ohhh, it taste like spring!

It’s like spring vegetables from the mountain. I feel deep taste.

And well, it still has some nasty taste. I could soak the vegetable in cold water more after I boiled it.

But ok, I could feel spring has come with this food!

My husband also ate a lot of it without any bad comment. Good.

It’s fun to try new seasonal ingredients I’ve never tried~.

Got asked for help to write Chinese character.

Hi,

I’m back in Beijing after a short stay in Japan.

Now it’s warmer than Japan during the daytime. But in Beijing, all central heating for buildings/apartments stopped in the middle of March, so I feel cold when I’m in my apartment…

On Saturday, my husband had to go out, so I was home alone.

When I was home, the woman who cleans the community space and garden cleaning woman (阿姨 ayi) knocked on our door.

She visits my husband sometimes to ask for stuff, for instance, fixing her cellphone or something. (Sometimes he can help her, sometimes he can’t.)

She works outside every day whether it’s hot or cold. Cheerful ayi.

Ayi : ‘Hey, can you write Chinese?’

Me : ‘Well, It’s similar to Japanese, but (grammar is different)…

        but I can write down Chinese characters.’

‘Good! Could you copy this?’

She gave me a postal package invoice that was already filled out and two blank ones.

‘Oh, ok, sure.’

If it’s only writing Chinese characters, I’m sure I can do better than my Taiwanese-American husband, because Japanese also use them in everyday life. (But my speaking skill is way lower than my husband. He’s been here for seven years.)

IMG_1495

So, I see, this ayi doesn’t know how to write.

Even though she is working in a big city like Beijing, and is not old, maybe in her 40s, she doesn’t know how to write/read Chinese so well.

It was actually a bit of a shock to me.

Was she from a farming village?

Speaking of farming villages, the kind woman upstairs is from a village, but she can write and read. When we chat toegether, sometimes we write Chinese characters on paper for better understanding when I can’t speak well in Chinese.

And I know a girl in her twenties who speaks very good English. Even though she is from a farmer’s village where education levels are still behind of the city, she studied hard and graduated from a university and found a job here. But she said it’s still kind of rare.

‘Ok.’

When I finished writing the postal invoices, Ayi gave me a piece of white cloth.

’This, ○$△≪※…’

‘What?’

She was pointing at the invoice and the piece of cloth.

‘What? …Oh, do you mean you want me to write on this piece of cloth too?’

‘Yes.’

Really? Wow, it’s very interesting…

Anyway I started writing as she asked.

‘Write with bigger letters!’

‘I got it! …But, why on a cloth? Can’t you use paper?’

‘The paper one is for the post office, but I need the cloth to put on my two baggages.’

‘Oh really. I see~~~.’

’So write two please.’

‘Here you are. Is this address your home town?’

‘Yes, it’s Hebei province. It takes about three hours or more by train.’

It was not easy to write on cloth with a regular pointed pen.

But it was a very interesting experience.

Now I feel I should’ve written bigger. I hope her packages arrive

to her home safely.