Thursday, December 22, 2011

The Thirty Little Pigs

We all know the tale of the three little pigs who, in their bid for independence struck out on their own and, using various building materials built themselves houses that, in two of the three cases, could not withstand the wolf’s harsh breath. As all the buildings in China are concrete that point is moot: no wolf would be able to blow down Chinese houses.

And we’re not talking about those pigs anyway.

What about those other pigs? The ones that 1. went to market, 2. stayed home, 3. ate roast beef… ect? You know… the ‘piggy’ chant your parents used to play with your toes that, in turn you use to elicit delighted giggles out of your own kids and/or grandkids.

No, I don’t mean those pigs either. Although, if you multiply the number of pigs that went to market, ate roast beef and went ‘wee, wee, wee all the way home’ by the number of pigs that built houses, you would get the exact number of pigs that were at my house last night.

OK, erase from your mind the picture of my house suddenly being turned into a pen by a pack of pigs. And… what is the proper measure word for pigs? A pack of dogs, a pride of lions, a gaggle of geese, a troupe of monkeys, a ____ of pigs? C’mon, help me out here! Let me know at teamkrejados@gmail.com

No these little piggies were of the human variety, and they stood around with bowls in hand and chopsticks at the ready, waiting for me to finish cooking Cola Chicken.

I decided this year to only host two Christmas parties, one for each of my sophomore classes. I will celebrate Christmas with my freshmen in class because our last day of class is the day after Christmas. I might have a party for the English department faculty on Wednesday afternoon. Everybody will be one building over, attending the weekly staff meeting and I’ve long said I wanted to have everyone over for a party. Maybe after their meeting would be a good time to do so, if everyone is amenable to it.

But in the meantime, what about those sophomore piggies, and the Cola Chicken?

Being as my students are always so helpful, and being as I always want to be a gracious hostess, I enlisted a few volunteers to come by and help decorate my apartment last weekend. While they were here we discussed the menu. I decided to make this more of a Chinese menu. I’ve found some – OK, make that MOST Chinese are not necessarily open to Western type foods. So, on the menu: meatballs in sweet and sour sauce, congee, tomato/egg soup and Cola Chicken. Carol, my class monitor, had sampled my brownies before and she wanted brownies.

Not only did the kids help decorate the house but they also helped with the shopping and were going to help with the cooking, but I had all that done by the time they arrived. I’m very particular about my kitchen, I believe I’ve told you already. The only thing that I delayed preparing was the Cola Chicken. With every other dish I had a way of keeping it hot till my guests arrive: meatballs in the crock pot, congee in the rice steamer, soup on the electronic hotplate, brownies on top of the oven. Cola chicken has to be served hot and freshly cooked or it is no good.

So, the table laden with hot, steamy goodness and the house full of happy, eager students I set to cooking Cola Chicken. Suddenly my kitchen was packed with more people than should rightly be in a room that size and I found I barely had elbow room to cook in. It seems everyone wanted to watch me make Cola Chicken! Well, watch me and wait for the chicken to come, hot out of the wok.

Picture it: about 10 girls, clicking their chopsticks in anticipation and jockeying for position. Whoever was closest would get the first morsel. As I sautéed the chicken, and then added garlic and onions I heard moans from my audience. “Oh, it already looks so good!” one exclaimed when I dashed soy sauce over the golden meat. They were audibly sucking up their drool. Kid you not. Can’t really blame them; it did look good.

“If you’re hungry you can go eat some meatballs or have some soup. Go eat some food that is already prepared; this will be ready in about 15 minutes” I tell them.

“No!” One exclaims. “We are waiting for Cola Chicken! It smells so good!”

I can tell you I was a bit aggravated at that. I spent all day cooking, after all. The menu had been agreed on beforehand. And now, all anyone wants to eat is Cola Chicken? Why didn’t they just tell me all they wanted was Cola Chicken in the first place? I would have bought more chicken and fewer meatballs.

Those meatballs were pricey, too: 85Yuan for 3 kilos. By comparison, chicken is cheap.

My wok being big enough to handle only so much chicken I had to cook in batches. It takes about 20 minutes to prepare Cola chicken and it took only 2 minutes for my little piggies to devour it. I wasn’t really surprised at how quickly the chicken went down their gullets though. I had to shoo them out of my kitchen because I feared slipping on their drool while I cooked so I knew the finished product would be gone in a matter of seconds.

What did surprise me was how fast ALL the food disappeared. I’m telling you that EVERYTHING was gone in the blink of an eye: congee, soup, meatballs, brownies, sweet potato chips and sesame crackers and puffed corn snacks. It appears that these kids were far too polite to help themselves to food before I gave them the official OK. When I enlisted my ‘kitchen staff’ to serve up the food already prepared, they sounded the cry and everyone left the living room and crowded into the dining room en masse for their bowlful.

You remember the size of my dining room, right? It is not a big area. Some were elbowing and clamoring to get closer to the table, which I had turned longways and pushed to the balcony door. Others were standing on chairs, reaching for their portion. I have to tell you: if these kids were that hungry, it is a wonder that the combined smells of meatballs, soup and brownies didn’t drive them out of their minds while they waited to be given license to partake.

And that is how we get to all those piggies in my house. Adorable little piglets, all of them.

After the food was gone, say… 5 minutes, the kids started on their fun. Lin brought her music so a contingent of kids set up housekeeping in my office, listening and dancing to music. The other group decided to explore my movie cabinet and selected a comedy to watch in the living room. And then there was a third group: the cleaning crew. Stephanie did dishes and Claire dried them. Aron J. took over the broom and Martin took out the trash. At the end of the night, Pamela ran the mop.

I was not allowed to clean anything. What I was allowed to do was go enjoy the party. And I did. I bounced back and forth between all three groups, even wowing the dance crowd with my moves.

These kids have a special place in my heart. They were freshmen last year; we started at this university together. We shared our fears and our hopes and our joys and, through it all, became friends.

They’ll move on next year. Next semester they’ll be Victor’s students and next year they will be Juniors: no Oral English in their curriculum. They are not happy about being Victor’s students again. They are really not happy at me not ever being their teacher again.

Incidentally, you might wonder, with all the gobbling going on: did I get anything to eat last night? Well, yes but in a strange turnabout. Being as I had lost my tooth earlier in the day (see previous post) I was wearing a surgical mask all night to hide my ‘deformity’. The Chinese are very particular about being sick and I easily explained my wearing a mask as being sick. It was automatically accepted and no one clamored for me to remove the mask, not even for picture taking. Claire, Carol and Stephanie made sure I got a fair portion of food, which I ate in the kitchen with virtually no witnesses.

WHEW!!! So far only Sam knows I’m actually toothless!

No comments:

Post a Comment