Feisty Shrimp and Missing Mushrooms ... Happy Chinese New Year!

The year of the monkey wiggled in on Monday, February 8th, signaling the first day of the Chinese lunar calendar and Chinese New Year! Xiannian kuaile! (Pronounced sshin-nyen kwhy-ler). Happy New Year, Mandarin style!

Donna, Bryan, and I in China
on Chinese New Year.

Celebrating the new year in China is as easy as pulling your chair up to the table. It's all about eating with family and friends. "Hot pot" is the usual fare of the season. It reminds me of fondue, only trickier. The hot pot, or a boiling pot of water, sits on a portable burner and dominates the center of the table. The table must be circular as it's an equal opportunity conversation setting. Nothing goes better with hot pot than relationships.

The universal rule is "you don't eat hot pot with people you don't like." That could have something to do with the double dipping and lavish exchange of saliva that takes place in the group pot. Everyone cooks and eats out of that one bubbling mix. Nothing spells unity like hot pot.

Bowls of just about anything surround the hot pot: mussels, greenery (of every shade and texture), chicken feet, rice noodles, oysters, squid, eel, fish balls, tofu, mushrooms, vegetables, and shrimp, all raw and fresh from the street market. Since my city in China is a coastal city, hot pot is always heavy in seafood. Shrimp are usually the most difficult to control on the table. Everything is "directly from the sea this afternoon" fresh, and the shrimp, alive and kicking, make a feisty delicacy.

During one new year's hot pot I attended, the shrimp took to jumping out of the boiling water on to the table whenever they were thrown in. Cooking them seemed almost barbaric, especially when they slapped you in the face in their attempts to escape. The chop sticks would start clicking and dunking around the table, and the shrimp never had a chance.

Once you throw your tofu into the pot, the next problem is finding it. Perhaps it sinks under a sea of bok choy and buries itself beneath the rice noodles. The natural impulse is to do a little "chopstick washing," swishing your chopsticks about in the broth to find your tofu. I tried that approach at first, but it appeared that rather than wash my chopsticks in the mutual eating pot, it was easier to just take whatever floated to the top and was handy. After all, you're among friends. Your fish ball is my fish ball.

Eastern culture values time around the table. Talking, eating, cooking, enjoying each other's company for several hours. These are the joys of the East. No rush. Another cup of tea. This is the essence of a Chinese New Year celebration.

The Eastern culture of Jesus' day was much the same. In fact, the Hebrews would even recline around their tables, allowing for hours of relaxed talking and sharing. Although hot pot was probably not on the menu, there were mutual dipping dishes, and with all those fishermen friends, Jesus probably ate plenty of fish. And He loved to share a meal with anyone - short tax collectors who sat in trees, good friends just off their boats, big crowds, tax collectors, wedding guests, families. Meal times were for relationship building. Dinners were a place to meet God.

How are meal times at your house? Hurried? Pressured? Eat and run? TV dinners or boxed mac and cheese? Mobile phones dominating the attention of everyone at the table?

MAYBE A HOT POT IS IN ORDER!

Cook together around a gurgling pot. Laugh about missing mushrooms and feisty shrimp. Engage in a chop stick battle over the last noodle. Get to know each other a little better.

A hot pot dinner reminds me of one of those times God talked about for teaching our children the command to love Him with all our hearts, souls, and strength. He said to impress this command on the children when we sit at home, when we walk along the road, when we lie down or get up, or ...

when we have family hot pot night!

Happy Chinese New Year!

How to Travel the World Without Leaving Layton . . . Or Wherever You Live!

"Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all people cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends."     -Maya Angelou

Travel . . . the soul of adventure, magic, escape, discovery.

And who isn't thinking escape as the temps drop to toe-curling lows, the mailbox wallows into oblivion, and the car gasps for breath beneath endless drifts? The Caribbean comes to mind, Florida at the very least. Pipe dreams. For local responsibilities demand, the value of the dollar drops, terrorism runs rampant.

Locked tightly in my Layton cocoon, hands to the fire, blankets to the rescue, I settle down for a long winter's nap like the peonies by the front walk. Wake me in late April.

Cousin Bill from Glasgow, Scotland,
connects weekly with Layton vis Skype.

But last week the siren song of travel sang its sweet melody and called me from my hibernation to points . . . near. . . . Scranton and Wilkes Barre. No bathing suits, no sunshine, no aircraft and taxis.

For travel's glory is not only the monuments and mountains of foreign soil. It is people - their food, traditions, music, language, and culture. By this definition travel can happen even to our local city, where coal was king, if foreigners are involved.

And foreigners were the prime focus in last week's travel adventure.

First stop, Marywood College - for "Conversation Corner" with English language learners from around the world who are studying at the school. Afternoon conversation took me to Asia and the Middle East.

My first conversation partner was Zhicheng Zhang (also called Frank). Frank came to the U.S. just two months ago. "Fresh off the boat," eager, and enthusiastic about all things American,  he chose instead to walk the streets of Beijing with me, to remember favorite dishes, to practice his English and my Mandarin, and to reminisce about Chinese holiday celebrations. Frank's studies in health care will prepare him to return to China to "help his country."

Without the aid of technology or transportation, I left China for Kurdistan-Iraq, a Middle Eastern location which I will probably never visit. But Mr. Mohammed brought the country he loves to Northeast Pennsylvania. He, his wife, and children came to the U.S.two years ago so he could obtain a master's degree in public administration. Mohammed will return to Kurdistan at the end of the year to work for his government. War-torn and beleaguered, the Kurds have fought bravely for their country against Muslim extremists. My first Kurdish friend left me with a sweet taste of the courage, strength, and character of the people of Kurdistan-Iraq.

An avid traveler himself, Mark Twain once said, "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness." May I amend your thought, Mr. Twain? "Befriending people from around the world is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness." Our world is a hot bed of seething war and strife. What can one person do to make a difference in such a world, especially when travel to some countries is impossible? I suggest that the way to make a difference in the world is to make friends with the foreigners in our own backyards.

These trips to China and Kurdistan were early in last week's travel adventures. Sans jet lag and luggage, I hustled back to China again for the Chinese New Year celebrations. The holiday fell this year on February 18th.

Dr. Youyu Phillips, Keystone College

We heralded the year of the sheep with the Northeastern Pennsylvania Chinese-American Association at the King's Buffet in Wilkes Barre to do what all good Chinese and Americans do on a holiday - eat. Dr. Youyu Phillips, a professor of mathematics at Keystone College, is the president of the association to which I now proudly belong. Dr. Phillips and I met last week for the first time, but we talk every Friday on the phone as she is the Mandarin translator for our "Voice of Hope," blogtalk radio program to Chinese around the world:  www.blogtalkradio.com/voiceofhope

Shiyong Liang and Xiangni Wang,
Keystone students

Another Chinese dinner last week with American friends who have worked with me in China plus a Skype call to cousins near Glasgow, Scotland, and yet another continent, completed a week of rich cross-cultural interaction and friendship. I traveled continents last week, and the only expense was the Chinese buffet. I experienced countries because I experienced people. "My destination was not a place, but it was a new way of seeing things" (Henry Miller).

Passports and visas were  moot issues. 

Flight delays and cancellations, non-existent. 

Food, language, culture, and friendship, abundant and rich,

during the week I traveled around the world

without leaving

Layton.