So I finally decided to do some Googling on the kind of electric stoves I’ve seen used here in China, since they’re something I’ve never seen before.

Jing Jing and I would fry up seven different dishes in a screamingly hot pan, then I’d pick up the pan, wipe a wet cloth across the cooking surface, and the water left behind would barely steam. Oil, water, and sauces spilled on the cooking surface just sat there while you cooked, not smoking or smoldering, until wiped away.

This thing will boil water almost as fast as a microwave and heat oil to the smoking point within seconds, and you can dial in an exact temperature (fuck this “high,” “medium-high“ or “low” bullshit, it’s all about seeing 120C on the display and getting exactly that heat in your pan) and have instant response. Coming from a normal electric cooktop and then gas, the precision, responsiveness, and power of this thing is almost scary.

Since we haven’t done much cooking lately, I’ve only gotten around to looking up the technology today. This was triggered by a long and fruitless search for a good hard-anodized aluminum pan, because I want to start cooking again, I want one of these stoves, I hate having to use gallons of oil just for a simple stir-fry in a normal iron wok, and the kitchen at the hostel is… well, let’s just say I don’t like to spend a lot of time in it.

So I started looking for aluminum pans on Taobao, China’s version of eBay mixed with Amazon. No dice, except for some Calphalon models that were going for well over $200.

Then I started thinking, okay, there has to be something behind this, and it’s certainly not a health concern or aluminum shortage — let’s figure out what it is. Google to the rescue.

I kind of want to know where they got these f-ed up pots and pans.

Turns out it’s the stove, which is an induction cooker. Who knew that aside from giving us electric toothbrush charging stations, wind-up or jack-off charging LED flashlights, and a promising start to actually viable wireless power, magnetic induction can also be used to accidentally make a crunchy brown omelet for breakfast in about fifteen seconds?

I guess plenty of people, but this is the first time I’ve seen it in action, or even heard of it. More info on induction cooking advantages and drawbacks here — do your own fact checking, the source is clearly biased, but it seems pretty solid to me.

Never had someone ask for an egg cooked half well-done, half completely raw, but I guess this is a plus for induction cookers.

For you non-nerds out there, this kind of stove basically uses a copper coil to put a rapidly alternating magnetic field just above its surface, which shakes the (note) magnetically responsive atoms of anything of sufficient mass and density (various sensors are built in for this) above it to make it very hot, very fast. So it heats the pot/pan instead of itself, which seems like a fairly sensible approach. Kind of like a microwave, except much safer, and far more useful for everyday cooking. Thankfully I don’t have a pacemaker, else the bacon sizzling on the stove would have been less of a cardiac hazard than the stove itself.

I like my bacon as deadly as possible.

Back on topic.

Since:

- Aluminum isn’t magnetic
and
- Electricity in China is expensive
and
- People here have less money than people in the States (yes, even you Han)
and
- This is by far the most cost and energy-efficient method for heating a pan that’s readily available (90% energy transfer, versus 71% for standard smooth-top electric stoves and 40% for gas)

I can see why everyone’s been giving me baffled stares when I start talking about anodized aluminum pans.

The good news is, I can just buy a good iron flat-bottomed wok like everyone else for five to ten bucks. Also, the cheapest “good” induction unit I can find on Amazon is this Circulon, for $200, and has poor reliability ratings … the fanciest one I can buy at the supermarket across the street is about $73 (i.e. rather less than one Hong Kong bowel movement); the same brand as Jing Jing’s, which she’s been using for years and is still going strong.

The bad news is, until I find a decent ferrous non/low-stick pan, I have to keep using massive amounts of oil to keep from having to plate with steel wool instead of a spatula, and my favorite pan of all time, which I was considering asking my parents to bring over when they visit, is useless to me here.

It’s only 2:30pm, and I already feel like I’ve had a long day. Arriving in Shenzhen this morning at 7:20 on the night train from Wuhan, I cheerfully crossed the border into Hong Kong, did my business, and came right back.

Crossing the border itself is something of an unsettling experience, something I noticed the first time I visited Hong Kong from the mainland (that time making the crossing by bus).

It felt very much like walking through a mirror; on China’s side of the border, I disembarked from my bus on the right side, then walked up to the Chinese border controls. Greeted entirely by pretty girls wearing dark blue uniforms, white caps, and almost universally grim expressions, I was guided to a lane marked “Foreigners,” and ushered through the gates quickly and efficiently.

Ahead of me, through the No-Man’s-Land, was the Hong Kong border controls. I was directed to series of lanes marked “Foreign Guests” — a significant, if not literal, distinction — which were all staffed by men in their thirties, dressed in crisp white uniforms with dark blue caps. Smiles weren’t exactly abundant there, either, but they seemed somewhat less grudgingly given. Once I was checked through (again, efficiently), I walked out to the parking lot and boarded my bus… from the left side.

The distinctions don’t stop there, but they get even more boring, so I’ll spare you the details. Suffice it to say, Hong Kong seems vastly different from neighbouring Shenzhen and mainland China in general — and at least for emigration/visa purposes, it is still a different country altogether.

This brings up the reason why I’m in Shenzhen today, when I’d rather be getting some work done, writing a different weblog entry, or (and this is very much more likely) massacring zombies in Wuhan. Thanks to the comparatively frosty relations between China and the U.S., my visa is good for a year, but only allows me to stay in the country for 30 days at a time. Fine for a vacation or even a backpacking trip, but things get a little more complicated if you want to stay here a little longer, like me. It boils down to requiring me to exit and re-enter mainland China every 30 days.

Fun.

Wuhan being in central China, the options for convenient exit/re-entry are limited at best, and when you add in the fact that I’d like to do it on the cheap, that just leaves Hong Kong. After a trial run by air which proved to be a huge and expensive hassle, I figured out that the most efficient way was to take a night train to Shenzhen, walk across the border to Hong Kong from Shenzhen station, walk back into Shenzhen, spend the day in Shenzhen proper, and then take the night train back to Wuhan. Total cost: about 500RMB/$73, cab fare to and from the Wuhan train station, plus a day’s entertainment and some duty-free liquor and candy.

With the timing of the trains and my bowels as they are, I essentially pay $75 a month to take a dump on Hong Kong.

This is my third trip out. The last two times I’ve done this, I’ve had other things to occupy my time — getting ripped off for a camera in Kowloon, meeting an uncle in Shenzhen — but this time I figured I’d have a nice, relaxing day off. I’d bring my laptop, spend a little time in a cafe somewhere writing and/or killing zombies, have a little dim sum and maybe a massage before hopping my train back.

Yeah… not so much.

First, the massage. There were plenty to be had. In fact, I couldn’t walk more than two steps within a three-block radius of the train station without being offered one in sotto voce, usually by a woman, while having a sheaf of photos of semi-nude “masseuses” waved at me.

I quickly learned the effectiveness of the “talk to the hand” gesture. You can say “No!” as many times as you want, they’ll still follow you for a block or so, yammering about how hot their masseuses are the whole way. But one “talk to the hand” and boom… peace and quiet.

Still, it only took being confronted by about five of these women before I became heartily sick of the idea of massages altogether, and fled to the relative safety of a McDonald’s.

So that was lunch. At 11am. After a double cheeseburger and Coke, I took a deep breath, charged out through the throngs of flesh merchants, and took refuge in an eerily empty mall, where I wandered around aimlessly for about half an hour before being told it was actually a housing development, and could I please leave because I was probably disturbing the residents.

Red-faced, I headed back out to the street, where I explored a couple alleyways, quickly turning back to the main roads every time because they were all jammed with massage touts, I suppose on their lunch break.

Now, after about an hour and a half of that, I’m back at the train station sitting in a Japanese fast-food noodle shop because they have wi-fi, and filling up on barley tea and Aleve because the trains idling three floors are making the entire building tremble, giving me a headache and making me nauseous. So much for the dim sum.

I should do a little planning next time.

I’m coming up on 30 days in China — I know this, because I’m about to go to Hong Kong on my monthly visa pilgrimage — and one thing I’ve learned about myself, is that I can get used to much more than I originally thought. I have no doubt that many aspects of my life here would be strange, and probably more than a little gross, to almost everyone I know back in the States — including myself, were it not for the last few weeks.

For instance, I haven’t used (nor seen) a western style toilet in about 3 weeks, ever since the one toilet here was plugged one too many times (not my fault, honest). The cleaning staff, sick of having to fix it without a plunger, took the logical step of padlocking the stall shut.

One might wonder why they didn’t just go buy a plunger, but this would be missing the essentially Chinese nature of this solution: it’s immediately effective, simple, free, saves you hassle down the road, and doesn’t involve going across the street to the supermarket. The fact that others may be inconvenienced can be dealt with later, if and when they complain.

As far as the process itself goes, I’ll admit there’s a certain visceral quality to using a squat toilet as opposed to a Western style toilet. With a little balance, practice, and good aim, you eventually start hitting the poop flap dead-on. There’s a gratifying little “thwap” sound, the plastic cover springs back into place, and you don’t have a turd staring back at you for the rest of your visit, which can only be considered a plus.

The standard of hygiene in kitchens here is undeniably lower than what I was used to in the US, even considering the fairly lackluster way I took care of mine. I haven’t actually seen any physical repercussions yet, and oddly enough I don’t really expect to. Lately, most of my meals have been home-cooked in Jing Jing’s apartment — we’ve started a you-cook-one, I-cook-one rotation — and this has given me an up close and personal look at how typical (lower?) middle-class kitchens operate in Wuhan.

It’s been an interesting experience, and there are a few things that I’ve decided absolutely had to change, but it’s still an incredibly remote departure from what I’m used to.

Most of the things I normally identify with a kitchen are nowhere in evidence here; there’s no fridge, freezer, microwave, dishwasher, hot-water tap, disposal, stove, or oven. There’s one cutting board and one knife, neither of which are typically scrubbed between cutting meat, fish, and vegetables (unless I’m doing the cutting, anyway). Initially, there weren’t even any cups, bowls, or plates, but Man Ni and I fixed that with a trip to the local department store.

All of the cooking (aside from the rice cooker) is done with a flat-bottom wok on an electric hot plate, which is actually shockingly effective, and far more responsive than any gas or electric stove I’ve used before. It’s also surprisingly versatile; with this setup we’ve made braised pork, fried fish, oatmeal, soups, noodles (fried and in soup), fried rice, sweet potato fries,  omelets, and a huge variety of Chinese dishes that in English essentially just become different kinds of stir-fry, which glosses over the bewildering array of techniques I’ve already seen used.

Not having a fridge means that we’re often sniffing leftovers, seeing if they’re still okay to eat. One point of contention between me and Jing Jing is our individual interpretation of when something’s gone bad. We spent about twenty minutes one night chopping, frying, braising, and stewing before she would admit, much to my relief, that the pork spareribs we were trying to cook had long passed the point of edibility.

It eventually struck me that this, really, is “greener,” more sustainable living. We talk about triple-paned windows, recirculating air conditioning, and solar water heaters, but in the end, for most of the world what it really comes down to is doing without. That essentially means you live closer to the outdoors; your food spoils faster, your home is colder in the winter and hotter in the summer, and the timing of your showers often depends as much on the schedule of the water heater as your own. It also means you’ll see more poo, eat wilted greens, and start making distinctions between “spoiled” and “too spoiled to eat.”

Despite all this, or perhaps even because of it, I haven’t had a single regret about coming here. Yes, there have been difficulties; poop and rotten food aside, there are my visa hassles, the sub-zero weather, social drama, and of course I miss my family and friends Stateside.

But there are always compensations.

It might be two degrees below, but the scarf Tan Yin gave me keeps my ears and neck warm. I have to board a train or flight to Shenzhen every month to step across the Hong Kong border for my exit/entry stamp, but this gives me a chance to connect — for the first time, really — with an enormous extended family I barely even knew existed. I may struggle with the occasional social difficulty, but through it all Jing Jing and Yang Guang are there to knock me back on track. And I may feel homesick once in a while, but there’s the sure knowledge that my friends and family in the U.S. will always be my friends and family.

But my god, do I want a carne asada burrito.

I was up and about at 4am this morning. Not because I had anything in particular to do — my contracts seem like they’re either dormant or complete, and my flight to Hong Kong isn’t until 3pm — but because, for the first time during the four and a half months I’ve spent in China, I was actually afraid for my life.

Having been in China for this long, I have developed a slightly higher tolerance for risk than before. This took some time, and started innocuously enough. Staying at a youth hostel instead of a Marriott… ooh! Buying a hard sleeper train ticket instead of a soft sleeper… goodness!

Eventually I moved on to more moderate risks; say, crossing the street in Shanghai, where traffic signals are often taken as suggestions rather than actual rules, or having my breakfast scooped out of a wooden bucket by the side of the road by someone whose appearance could fairly be described as hag-like.

Finally, one proceeds to the final stages of risk adoption. This would involve things like crossing the street in Wuhan where, unlike Shanghai, everyone driving a motorized vehicle is determined to leave a tire track across the heel of your shoe. You also might, as I did in Fenghuang, conclude that the shady-looking guy at the bus stop who essentially says “Hey, you look like a wealthy out-of-towner. I know a good guesthouse; hop on the back of my scooter, and let me drive you through two miles of unlit, winding alleyways in the middle of the night to a nondescript doorway” has made some fairly persuasive arguments.

I’ve been through all of this and more without really having had my fear response triggered; even what I jokingly described as my crucible — having to use a squat toilet — was more of an annoyance than anything else.

But last night, the reason I got up at 4am and went down to the hostel common area to sleep, walked into my room.

Let’s call him Gigantor. Or, since I think he’s French, let’s call him Gigantois.

He is Caucasian, weighs somewhere in the vicinity of 300 pounds, and was accompanied by two friends. They were pushing even the fairly loose boundaries of common courtesy observed in China, talking, farting, and laughing at full volume at 3am, in a room where 3 people were already asleep, jumping on bunks and throwing their dirty clothes around the room as they stripped for bed. This in itself was annoying, but soon enough I knew they’d settle in for bed and I could get back to sleep.

Then, to my horror, my Gigantois started to climb up to the bunk directly above me. The whole structure leaned perilously over, then settled back with an ominous groan as he flopped over the railing into bed.

Given the questionable sturdiness of the hostel beds, I was already pretty worried. Couple that with the fact that, once established, Gigantois wouldn’t stop moving around. I won’t wonder why; in fact, I am actively trying to block any possibilities from my mind in order to protect the fragile shreds of sanity that still exist.

In the end, after suffering through a series of visions of being crushed by 400 pounds of bedding, gelatinous Frenchman, and body odor (trust me, it was a physical entity where he was concerned), I decided that this time — finally — China had me beat.

When I explained to Yu Fei, at the front desk, why I was up so early, he knew who I was talking about; he was just surprised it took me this long to come downstairs.

I now have 3 phone numbers, all of which have a disturbingly incestual relationship. This is by necessity, since I live in China, still have friends, family, and colleagues in the US who might need to get ahold of me, and want to make things as easy as possible for everyone involved (except me, apparently).

So I have:
1) A China Mobile cell phone number (China).
2) A SkypeIn number (US).
3) A Google Voice number (US).

When someone calls my Chinese cell phone, it rings. Yes, just like a normal cell phone. It doesn’t play the Asian Riff, or “Chopsticks,” or summon a dragon to deliver a message from my ancestors, it just plays the default Nokia ring tone.

Problem number one, of course, is that anyone calling this phone from the US is going to get hit with all kinds of charges.

Hence the SkypeIn number, which is a local US number. It has two purposes: when I’m signed into Skype, anyone calling the number will ring my PC, which I can then pick up and talk to them for free; and when I’m offline, it will automatically forward to my Chinese cell phone, which I can then pick up and talk to them for 2.8 cents a minute.

Not bad, and one would think my problems end here. Naturally, this is not the case.

Enter problem number two, which is actually twofold: my Chinese cell phone has no voicemail service (I actually don’t know if any Chinese cell phones do), and Skype’s voicemail does not work properly, specifically in that it does not work.

So I also have a Google Voice number, which is also local to the US. The only purpose this number has, is to forward calls to my Skype number… which in turn forwards calls to my PC or Chinese cell phone. Then, if I don’t pick up, either because I’m busy or because you dweebs forgot how to work out the time difference and tried to call me at 4am again, Google’s voicemail will pick up.

I’m just a little confused why all these VoIP companies can’t get their shit together. Skype has been in the business for ages, and has by far the most robust feature set. Yet they can’t get voicemail to work right; regardless of what settings you change in your control panel, nothing actually gets controlled, and nobody gets their voicemail recorded. Google Voice is fairly new, discounting its history as GrandCentral, and is (prematurely) being hailed as a “Skype-killer,” yet Google has decided to nix the international call forwarding option, for reasons unknown. And knowing Google’s history of eternally beta-state software, I’m not holding out hope that the feature will be added back any time soon.

I hate jumping through hoops, especially unnecessary ones. This does beg the question why I decided to move to China, where the bureaucracy is even more impenetrable and labyrinthine than the US, but that’s human nature for you.

Working on posts that are actually related to stuff going on here in China, but, you know. I’m lazy.