Genuine Fakes, Anyone?

       A few months ago, as we were lazing in the U.S., a news story broke and achieved some international notoriety.  Apparently an American blogger had turned up a fake Apple Store in Kunming, China.  He publicized his discovery by writing of it and posting pictures of the store and its workers on his blog.  The BBC, NPR, and other international news organizations picked up on the story, and shortly the local authorities in Kunming were shocked, shocked to find more than a dozen other fake Apple Stores.  Reportedly, these were all closed down. I found the story fascinating, not because someone had found an ersatz Apple Store in China, but because the media considered it newsworthy.

        This is the land of the genuine fake, be it remembered.  I doubt there is a legitimate product (or an illegitimate one, come to that) available anywhere in the world that does not have a fake twin made in China.  As exhibit A I offer this photo of my neighbor’s flip-flops, parked outside his front door:

        For exhibits B through Z and beyond, I encourage you to enquire of Microsoft, Apple, Calvin Klein, Rolex, Gucci, KFC, or any music or film distributor you care to name.  Or really, just pick any company that has tried to sell anything in China and ask if they have had their products copied without their permission.

        This phenomenon really is the greatest hindrance to innovation and entrepreneurship in this country.  There is absolutely no incentive to tinker and toil in your workshop to produce a better mousetrap, because it is a given that if you do come up with something clever, unique, and useful, there will be a dozen competitors undercutting you with cheap knock-offs before you can say “Intellectual pr-”. And unless you have some serious “guanxi” (connections), good luck in getting the competitors shut down.  The legal system here offers no succor to the wronged entrepreneur without connections.

        So, as I say, the amazing thing to me about the saga of the fake Apple Stores was not that they existed; rather that anyone got excited about their existence.  I would have been far more interested if someone had made a tour of China and found no fake Apple Stores.

One for the Foodies

dedicated to my friend Chris, an unrepentant foodie

God bless you, you’ve finally looked us up!  Our first visitor, what a treat!  Have you eaten yet?  That’s the traditional greeting for a visitor around here, you know—the Cantonese are really proud of their cuisine.  You’re hungry, you say?  Splendid—let’s go get a bite!  Come on with me, we’ll walk on over—It won’t take ten minutes.  Mostly, we eat at the student canteens because it’s convenient, and also because the Fiance Minister decided it’s better for the treasury to do so.  But no sense in slumming it today—this is an occasion, having a guest!

Now we could go down that way to dumpling man.  No idea what his real name is, but we go there once or twice a week.  He’s a jolly guy—an owner and waiter all in one.  He usually wanders around shirtless in flip-flops and shorts, and I like him because he helps me correct my Chinese pronunciation.  He’s got good dumplings, too, but the flies can sometimes be a bit too cordial.  So unless you’re really fond of them, I think I know a better place.  Yes?  Good, let’s press on.  Be careful crossing the street here, and pay no attention to the signal light—purely for decorative purposes.  Just wait till there’s a break in the traffic and step lively.  That’s the ticket, and here we are at restaurant row.  What do you mean, “Where are they?” These are all restaurants along here.  Yes, I know they all look like a bunch of oil-change shops, but that’s just the way they build ‘em.  The insides have all the charm of oil-change shops, too, but the food’s pretty good.

Damned if I know what they serve in most of these places—Chinese food, I expect—but you’ll notice that it’s all written in Chinese, too, so we’re pretty clueless once we walk in.  Usually, we select restaurants that have pictures of their dishes on the walls.  I’ve had an idea for a restaurant chain here in China catering to ex-pats.  I could call it Point ‘n’ Eat, with pictures of everything, since that’s what we foreigners tend to do anyway.  Anyway, let’s go in here—they know us and they’re terribly patient.  “Ni hao, ladies!  A table for san, please!”  That means three.  Making great strides with the language, see?

So, you’ll see you’ve got a little bowl, a little plate, a tea cup, chopsticks and not much else.  Well, right, there’s a roll of toilet paper too, but we’ll get to that later.  Ah, and here’s the lady with our jug of tea.  Now, watch this.  It’s the custom here in Guangdong, and not really anywhere else in China, I’m told.  You half fill your bowl with the tea and put in your tea cup—that’s right, into the bowl.  Now roll it around a bit and take it out, slosh the tea around the bowl, then pour it out over your chopsticks into this plastic tub here in the middle of the table.  The Cantonese think everything’s dirty and dusty, see, so they wash all their utensils at the table—wash it in tea—to make sure it’s done right.  Wouldn’t think of eating without doing that first.  No, we don’t do the little plate—you’ll see why later.  Now, I’ll order, and I promise you a pretty tasty meal.

One of these days I’m going to learn to say “The usual, Gladys,” but since I haven’t got that down yet, I’ve had some friends write the names of a few dishes on this notecard—I just hand that to the waitress and we’re all set.  Now, everything is communal here, see?  They’ll bring out a big bowl of rice and more food than we can possibly eat, and put it all on the lazy-susan here.  Then we dig in and help ourselves.  Put some rice in the bowl and add in the other stuff, then repeat as you finish it off.  Not terribly hygenic, with everybody scooping stuff out with their chopsticks, but I’m afraid that’s how it’s done.  They’ll bring a spoon for the dishes if you ask, but I’m dipped if I can pronounce it right.  Last time I tried, they were gone a while and eventually brought me a spark plug.  So I hope you’re not catchy or anything.

Ah, here’s the first set of dishes, the rice and the chicken.  Now the first thing you’ll notice is—well, actually you’re right, the first thing you’ll notice is that the chicken’s head is right there on the dish with a pretty astonished look on his face.  A friend once told me they do that because Chinese diners like to see “the whole animal.” No, I don’t get it, either.  As if you might think you were being served a macaque or something unless you saw that chicken head.  Funny how the comb and wattles don’t stay red once he’s cooked—go a kind of sepia color, don’t they?  Ah, but I see you’re going kind of sepia yourself.  Here, I’ll take the head away. 

No, what I meant to say is that the chicken hasn’t been disassembled as we’re used to seeing in the west.  This poor fellow has been cut top to bottom into a bunch of quarter-inch slices, bones and all.  You should see the chicken we get at the canteen—some of it looks as if it’s been shoved through a wood-chipper.  But it’s got to be easy to pick up with chopsticks, you see, because we don’t have any knives and forks.  But it also means that you chew your food very carefully and slowly, just like mom always told you to do.   And here’s what you use that little plate for—you spit out the bone fragments onto it.  Yes, yes, you can take them out with your fingers if you wish, but really, even the well-mannered Chinese diners just spit them onto the plate.  Sometimes there isn’t a plate, so people will spit out the bones gristle right onto the table.  When I told a Chinese friend that westerners find that odd, she told me that they use the toilet paper to wipe stuff off their hands, rather than licking their fingers the way we do when we get a tasty sauce on them.  Well, fair enough.  I wonder how KFC got such a foothold here in Asia. 

Ah, but speaking of feet, yes, those are the chicken’s feet there on the platter, too.  I told you:  the whole animal.  No, please, help yourself—you’re the guest here.  I’ve had one, which is my lifetime’s quota of chicken feet.  Taste?  Well, I guess it tasted about like you’d expect a chicken’s foot to taste.

Oh, but now here’s something more like—mutton ribs.  Ironic, no?  We lived two years in Australia, spent a month in New Zealand, and had to come to China for mutton.  Here, just slip on these disposable gloves and tuck in.  You’ll love ‘em.  And now here’s a real treat.  I’m going to steal this recipe and use it next time I have to bring the yams for Thanksgiving.  It’s peeled and cooked sweet potatoes, but instead of butter and brown sugar on them, the cook has drizzled over some caramelized cane sugar.  Magnificent!  You pick up a few with your chopsticks, so, but then make sure you dip them in the bowl of water here to cool down the melted sugar first—give you a nasty burn otherwise.  And say, this is good—a cold salad with cilantro and no, not noodles—those are strips of cooked tofu, actually.  It’s got a delicious dressing of some sort with vinegar, and I’m not sure what else.  And the dumplings, of course.  These have a mutton filling, and on these here are filled with  some sort of chives.  Dip them in this sauce and enjoy.  Yeah, we eat pretty darned well here.

Now here’s the phrase I have to practice.  I asked my Chinese tutor why the waitress never understood when I asked to pay the bill, and it turns out I was actually saying, “I want to buy eggs.”  Who knew?  Ah but as I say, they‘re used to me here.  So here we go—no, no, it’s on me today.  You treat me when I get to your place.  The total for all three of us was just 100 RMB, or just about $15—nothing!  Let’s walk back this way, past my favorite little shop—another place where I’ve established a certain rapport with the inmates.  Did I tell you we went to Taiwan a few weeks ago?  The food was very good there—definitely lived up to its billing.  There was an especially nice beef noodle soup that we found everywhere, and I had a wonderful steak and a shrimp the size of a lobster one night.  But I have to say they haven’t quite figured out the tomato yet.  There was a quote I read a while back that fit pretty well:  “Intelligence is knowing the tomato is a fruit.  Wisdom is knowing not to put them in a fruit salad.”  That’s where the Taiwanese fell down a bit—I bought a stick of what I thought were candied fruits only to find that in addition to the strawberries and plums there were two cherry tomatoes.  And Kathryn did actually get some tomatoes in a fruit salad with yogurt.  But apart from the tomato faux pas, top marks.

Ah, and here’s my shop!  Allow me to present you with a couple of these frosty green beauties.  This, my friend, is Tsingtao, the finest Chinese product I’ve yet come across.  This superb beer is just $0.70 for a 20-ounce bottle—nearly 2/3 of a liter.  And how gorgeous it is on a hot day!  Let’s get on home and have these on the balcony.  I can’t tell you how pleased I am that you stopped by!