Category: Culture

  • San Francisco COVID-19 Vaccine Order

    On August 12, 2021, the Health Officer of the City and County of San Francisco ordered certain businesses to check patrons 12 years and older and staff for proof of full vaccination before allowing them to enter an indoor portion of the business. In the United States, the COVID-19 vaccines available include the Pfizer and Moderna two-dose vaccines as well as the Johnson & Johnson/Janssen one-dose vaccine. Full vaccination occurs two weeks after completing the vaccination regimen.

    For people who were vaccinated in China, would proof of vaccination with a Chinese COVID-19 vaccine qualify? The Order of the Health Officer No. C19-07y states that vaccines authorized by the FDA, including under emergency use authorization, as well as by the World Health Organization (WHO) qualify. Currently, the the following Chinese vaccines appear on the WHO’s Emergency Use Listing.

    Sinopharm/BIBP SARS-CoV-w Vaccine

    Sinovac COVID-19 Vaccine (Vero Cell), Inactivated – Coronavac

    Other Chinese vaccines are undergoing the WHO EUL/prequalification evaluation process and may be added to the list. If you received one of the two vaccines listed above, your proof of vaccination would be sufficient.

  • Lantern Festival

    Snow Moon Lantern Festival

    The Lantern Festival (元宵節) marks the conclusion of Chinese New Year celebrations. When it falls in February, it coincides with the arrival of the Snow Moon.

  • Beef Roll 牛肉捲餅

    My version of the beef roll 牛肉捲餅 is a marriage of two recipes: sous vide beef shank and green onion pancakes. While I can prepare the beef shank in the Instant Pot, I find the process a lot simpler with sous vide. It just requires some advance planning.

    Once the beef shank is done, I place the shank into the strained sauce and refrigerate. When I need to make a beef roll, I proceed with the green onion pancake recipe. As each pancake is done, I add a touch of Hoisin sauce, followed by thin slices of the cooked beef shank. Roll it up, slice in half, and I have a quick and delicious treat.

  • National SRMK18N Rice Cooker Pan

    My 17-year-old National SRMK18N rice cooker still works. I had already replaced the inner pan twice. Unfortunately, there will not be a third time since the replacement pan is no longer available. I was a bit devastated by this unplanned obsolescence. Panasonic still sells replacement parts for the SRMK18N, but none of them include the inner pan.

    I’m going to give the Instant Pot a chance to serve as the daily rice cooker to see if it is up to the task.

  • Lima, Peru Chinatown

    I’m not a purist when it comes to Chinese food. Having grown up in America in the 1970s, I am accustomed to food that doesn’t taste quite like it does in China or Hong Kong. However, nowadays, the options are plentiful and the quality is much improved. When dining out in Chinese restaurants, we even have a selection of different regional cuisines. Yet, old school Chinese restaurants still have a place in my heart.

    In a recent adventure to Peru, I could not pass up the opportunity to see the Lima Chinatown. A traditional gate marks the entrance to Chinatown. On it are the characters 中華坊 China Square.

    Lima, Peru Chinatown

    Although the guide books refer to the neighborhood as Chinatown, that would be a term foreign to taxi drivers. The sign posts call this place Barrio Chino.

    Barrio Chino

    Without a fast data signal, I had to pick a restaurant for lunch by appearances. I saw a lot of ground-level cafes that seemed to offer fast food; i.e., fried rice or noodle plus one protein. Not what I was looking for. Instead, we ended up at Restaurante Salón China (中華樓), which is located on the second floor above a small street-facing bakery. On one side was the buffet offering and on the other side were the few people who were ordering off the menu. Of course, we opted for the traditional restaurant service.

    I often joke that I know restaurant Chinese. After all, outside of the house, ordering food at a Chinese restaurant is the only time I ever use Chinese. Well, my restaurant Chinese skills were put to the test because the menu was in Chinese and Spanish. Usually, the fastest way for me to order is to read the English translation and then confirm with the Chinese text to make sure I’ve ordered the correct entrée. No such luck here.

    This was the first Chinese restaurant that I’ve been to where the waiter did not speak Chinese. Fortunately, he did speak English, and even knew the names of the dishes in Cantonese. In fact, at first, I had ordered a different beef and noodle dish, but he suggested the beef chow fun (乾炒牛河) dish instead, which came out remarkably well. The flavors were spot on.

    Beef Chow Fun

    At this point, we were very optimistic. The shrimp cheong fun 蝦腸粉 looked exactly the same as you would get in America.

    cheong-fun_1657

    The egg tart 蛋撻 could have been better. That’s not to say that the kids turned it down, but I’ve had and seen better on many occasions.

    egg-tart_1660

    The glutinous rice 糯米雞­ was popular with the kids.

    sticky-rice_1664

    The bean curd skin roll 腐皮卷 was popular with the adults.

    bean-curd_1665

    The least liked item was the Shanghai dumpling 小籠包 which was really off in terms of size. There was nothing 小 (small) about the 小籠包. Maybe that was my fault for ordering a Shanghai dish in a Cantonese restaurant.

    XLB_1663

    Overall, I was very impressed with the restaurant. It had its highlights, service was attentive, and the exquisite beef chow fun made me feel at home. I didn’t stay in Lima long enough to fully explore the city and see if the best Chinese restaurants are outside of Chinatown, like they are in California. Considering our location, it was a pleasant surprise, and we even received a free Chinese calendar at the end of our meal.

  • Let It Go in Chinese

    If your child has already watched Frozen several times and has already memorized the lyrics to Let It Go, here’s a challenge. Learn the song in Chinese. Disney has a Cantonese, Mandarin and Taiwanese Mandarin version.

    I like 随它吧 by Bella Yao the best of all the Chinese versions.

  • Where the Mountain Meets the Moon

    I have long been a fan of books by Grace Lin. Her children books feature a Chinese theme and include delightful illustrations. I’ve checked out all her picture books from the library and read them to my children.

    Now that my children are school age, we have moved on to her novel Where the Mountain Meets the Moon. Set in China, the novel tells the story of a young girl named Minli and her adventures as she seeks to change the fortune of her family. The chapters pass by quickly in this page turner. There was a constant element of suspense that compelled us to keep reading even when we already knew it was pass time to go to sleep. But, what is summer for if not to let the schedule slide a bit.

    When the Mountain Meets the Moon is a great summer reading book.

  • What A Monkey Dad Learned From Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother


    The Internet has been abuzz ever since the Wall Street Journal published Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior, an excerpt from Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. If you want a more balanced preview, listen to an interview of the author from KQED’s Forum. Also, both Amazon and Apple offer a free sample from the book, if you want to browse the first few chapters to get a taste of her writing style.

    I purchased the Kindle version of the book this afternoon to read on my iPad and promptly finished it four hours later. It’s an easy and fast read.

    The book is more of a memoir than a how-to manual on raising successful children. At best, it shows one of the many paths that a parent can take when raising their children—not the only way and not necessarily the best way. If you have children, I would highly recommend the book, just so you fully understand who you and your children are competing against. Seriously, I could not imagine that this type of parent even existed beforehand.

    First off, Amy Chua is intense in a way I cannot relate. Three hours of piano practice? On one hand, I understand her determination. There are no short cuts to mastering a musical instrument. You simply have to practice. The more the better. And, if you are practicing three hours a day and someone else (like me) is only practicing 30 minutes a day, that pretty much explains why her daughter performed at Carnegie Hall and I did not. So, the number one lesson I got from her book is that even when you think you are working hard, someone else may be working even harder than you—not just a little harder, but a LOT harder. If nothing else, giving your children an appreciation for hard work will benefit them throughout their lives.

    As for Tiger Mother making her children practice even while on vacation, I could relate to that. When I first read it, it sounded obsessive, if not bizarre. But, her motivation was that her children would not fall behind while on vacation. For me, I can recall the numerous assignments that I got from my dad during what was supposed to be summer vacation. The principle is the same. Work during your break so that you don’t waste all that you’ve learned.

    Secondly, I can understand why Amy Chua’s book evokes such strong emotions. If you look at the customer ratings on Amazon, 43% (76 out of 175) gave her 5 stars and 33% (57 out of 175) gave her 1 star. In other words, 76% of the reviews were at the opposite ends of the spectrum. My explanation is that parenting is a funny thing. We don’t take classes in parenting, like we do for history, math, english and science. You don’t study different approaches to parenting or whether one approach works better than the others. So, all we are left with is how we were raised and how we wished we were raised, and our own experience as children or parents then colors how each of us views her book. People with overzealous parents and bad memories of childhood probably did not appreciate the lessons that her book imparted. On the other hand, people who experienced an academically challenging childhood and have found success because of their upbringing probably have a different outlook.

    The most controversial aspect of her book is her approach to child discipline. And, I think this is an eternal problem that perplexes every new generation of parents. How do you deal with children that will not listen? You can opt for positive reinforcement, negative criticism, threats, bribes, timeouts, corporal punishment and everything else in between. Sometimes you have to combine the incentives and other times nothing works at all. I’m all in favor of hard work, but the question that Ms. Chua needs to ask herself is whether she could have helped her daughters realize the same degree of achievement without all the emotional collateral damage. The over-the-top threats and brinkmanship gets tiresome at some point. And, this approach definitely stops working when the child eventually calls your bluff.

    Overall, I think that Ms. Chua’s approach is valid. Hard work begets talent. Would her daughters have worked as hard without her micromanaging? I don’t know. No one is going to conduct a double-blind experiment on their kids, I hope. Even then, each child is different and what works for one may not be suitable for the other. Regardless, by the end of the book, you can see how her daughters have internalized the intensity and diligence even when their omnipresent mom is not hovering nearby, so her work is done.

    P.S. Many journalists have chimed in with their take on the book. I am troubled a bit by this line from David Brooks’ Amy Chua is a Wimp: “There’s a reason Asian-American women between the ages of 15 and 24 have such high suicide rates.” I have seen this statistic in a number of essays that attack the Tiger Mother approach, and have bookmarked the publication Health, United States, 2008 for further research. I want to fact-check this assertion. Also, note that correlation does not equal causation, which David Brooks’ article implies. If Asian-American women have a high suicide rate, of course there is a reason. There is a reason for everything, but it may not be because Asian-American women had problems dealing with their immigrant parents. Especially, since not all Chinese parents are like Amy Chua.

  • Chinese New Year Red Envelopes 新年红包

    This year, Chinese New Year falls on February 14, 2010. My regular source of red envelopes is the local bank or 99 Ranch supermarket. Many Chinese bookstores also have red envelopes available for purchase. If you want to make your own, you can find free Ni Hao Kai-Lan Chinese New Year Red Envelopes at the nickjr. website. Just print them out, and cut and paste to assemble. Since I do not have a color printer, I used the Find Edges filter on Photoshop to make a colorable version, which is probably more fun for the kids anyways.

  • Wei-Chuan Chinese Cookbooks

    After having some success with Wei-Chuan’s Chinese Cuisine (中国菜), I decided to pick some some of the other Wei-Chuan cookbooks to diversify, namely Chinese Snacks (點心專輯), Chinese Cuisine: Beijing Style (北京菜) and Chinese Cuisine: Shanghai Style (上海菜). I really like the bilingual cookbooks produced by Wei-Chuan. While I prefer to read through recipes in English, I like the title of the dishes to be in Chinese because I am more familiar with the Chinese names. I also like that I can consult with the Chinese recipe if the English directions are unclear.

    Last weekend, I made the 糖醋瓦塊魚, which was inartfully translated to Sweet and Sour Fish Tiles. Another reason why I like the Wei-Chuan cookbooks is because the recipes all include a color photo of the final dish. If I had to rely on the awkward English translation, I probably would not have attempted the dish. Anyways, the recipe called for 1 T. of brown vinegar. Since I was unsure what was brown vinegar, I looked at the Chinese recipe which listed 鎮江醋. The bottles I see at 99 Ranch are labeled Chinkiang Vinegar, not Brown Vinegar. So, having the Chinese recipe with the English translation really helped in this instance.

    I did notice that in some instances the Chinese and English recipes differed. Specifically, the Chinese recipe for 槽溜魚片called for 味精, but its English translation did not. I guess the translator was aware that Americans are not exactly fond of MSG. However, this cultural sensitivity theory fails if you look at all the dishes in the Chinese Snacks book that requires lard or shortening. I guess that’s the only way to make pastry dough light and flakey, but it’s definitely not a product I stock in the kitchen.