Confertzel Cookbook: 拉题卡

So thin...Eat! Eat!

The "Confertzel Cookbook" should serve as documentation of one Jew-in-China's attempts to make "soul food" using what is available at local Chinese wet markets and corner stores. I intend to keep the recipes fairly low budget and to use methods that most people in China (or with limited resources and kitchen facilities) could accommodate. If I offend anyone with how heinously I drift from traditional recipes, let me apologize preemptively. Specifically, I apologize to my Jewish grandmother.

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Debut

I thought that those who care should know that I made my Chinese television debut this past Friday. For the Nanjing government's Mid-Autumn Moon Festival..."gala," I guess you could call it...The Nanjing government demanded my presence alongside the Brit who lives in my building--as well as alongside a Congolese student studying at Nanjing University. We sang "Purple Mountain," a song written by a Canadian and in honor of the Nanjing people's stand against the Japanese. The song was in English, and it had a bit of a Memphis feel to it.

Playing for the drummers in our shared dressing room

As my colleagues were instructed to lip synch, I was instructed to pretend to play guitar. All this Ashlee Simpson-ing is so that there are no mistakes. Harmony must be maintained--in regards to musical performance and quality of entertainment. The only entertainers who weren't faking during the evenings proceedings were the scantily clad Chinese dancers (who wore bunny ears and tails but zebra stockings) and the absurdly talented children playing in a traditional Chinese drumline--one kid totally wailed in a solo...would have kicked Nick Cannon's ass.

Anyways, I spent much of the day drinking free kumquat-and-lemon juice (weirdly good) and joking around on guitar with the children who played traditional Chinese drums--whenever, of course, they were allowed a break from their homework.

The show ended with cannons shooting golden glitter over all of us, with us smiling and waving to a packed auditorium and to the cameras telecasting us live to the city, with some handshaking with who I assume to be the significant governmental officials of the city, with our contacts gifting us a couple bottles of wine, and with the television offices rewarding us a three-hour salary for about four minutes of work.

This was easily one of the silliest things I have been a part of since coming to China, but I am in no way surprised. It feels like a rite of passage as a waiguoren (foreigner). Out of the evening, I was approached to help a teaching center as an English teacher and foreign model. Obviously, I am not sure really how this will pan out.

After scouring the Internet, I cannot find video (yet). I will keep searching, but I hope that these pictures will whet thine pallets for more on my rising stardom in China:

2nd pic--check that professional lip bite

And these women were one of my favorite acts--they came on about 15 minutes before us (same routine, though this footage is from some other absurd proceeding).

Shorts

I am writing this post as I peel super glue off of my fingers. I bought the super glue to fix one of my cuff links. I bought the cuff links to match the bow ties that I have worn daily until the weather recently reached too uncomfortably high of a temperature and too dense of a barometric pressure--sweet sweet humidity. I even bought a set of cuff links to match the "Chinese-lucky-red" bow tie that I bought to match the lining of my custom made black suit which I wore to see Hilary Hahn and the English Chamber Orchestra at the Shenzhen Concert Hall.

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A few weeks ago, several friends and I motorbiked our way up one of the local mountains. At the peak, we casually ambled through a Buddhist temple that was adorned with bright pink Japanese maples and mist machines enshrouding a network of small canals that provided shelter for hundreds of turtles. Beyond the peak's fifty-foot-tall golden Buddha, an expansive valley stretched into the hazy distance of factory smog originating beyond the far-side-of-the-valley's mountains. A small locomotive (in the fashion of a Wild West coal train) chugged around the peaks' sides and stopped at a water park on a lake, at a garden with millions of flowers categorized by color and not species, at a golf course that climbed the side of a mountain (seems like a difficult obstacle), and at a few stations in a village of alpine-looking buildings constituting a secret neighborhood called "Interlaken."

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I Would Pay For Some of This

3/23: Eager eyes

In its 48th year, Ann Arbor Film Festival is the longest running experimental film festival in the world--or so they claim, and I am disinclined to investigate. I am generally intrigued by the ways that people use moving media to convey the human experience or the human imagination, so I am generally intrigued by the films at the festival. As many of you may or may not know, I tend to take advantage of freebies and have a good ear for good deals. So, I am volunteering 15 hours for the festival this weekend in exchange for a free weekend pass. I prepare my eyes for the avant garde and abstract.

(N.B. I am not preparing my eyes for the avant garde as Bunuel and Dali would:



Ew. I am sorry. Though the rest of "Un Chien Andalou" is strange and occasionally funny in its absurdity. Deemed a "classic" by many, I would hesitate to actually recommend unless you plan on partaking in a dialogue about cinema, theory, genre, and the avant garde in film. Basically, that film would be a crucial part of the primer for the AA Filmfest.)