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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Confertzel: Interfaith Love and Marriage in Relation to Parents

In a recent conversation with two students I tutor, one student, John, bluntly asked: "Do you believe in--" He then paused to look-up a word on his phone's dictionary, "--God?"

This is a difficult topic to address regardless of a language barrier; to explain one's conceptions of "God" to someone who does not even know the word for "God" is a mental exercise in its own right.

John did not intend for the conversation to veer into philosophy, though. He quickly followed my simplistic answer with a story. John had recently proposed to his girlfriend: He showed me a silver band as validation and explained that modern Chinese custom is to use the engagement ring as an opportunity to exchange what Westerners might view as a "Promise Ring"--a non-diamond ring that signifies commitment but carries substantially less gravity. And given different economic standards, I am not surprised that the practice of giving a diamond ring (much less a three-months-salary-worth ring) is a rare occurence in China.

In any case, John's parents were not nearly as thrilled with his decision to propose to his girlfriend of fourteen months. According to John's mother, John "must" marry someone who believes in "God." John's girlfriend does not. (On a saddening side note, John's grandmother disapproves of John's girlfriend because she is not as pretty as John's cousin's wife. Therefore, John's grandmother and the rest of the family will "lose face" if he marries his girlfriend.)

"What can I do to change my mother's mind?"

Obviously, I advised honesty about his love. But I cautioned him that there are many details about the situation that make it so only he can truly find the "right" answer. I advised him to take into account the balance of tradition, legacy, familial love, independence, his own love, and his girlfriend's love. Then I asked him if he believed in "God": "No."

An Introduction (new series)

I was recently clicking through Wikipedia articles (an act of procrastination related to a lack of direction in writing a blog post about how my students revealed their hierarchy of values during a class activity about societal pressure). In my distracted efforts to hone my now rusty pub-trivia-oriented mind, I continued through Wiki pages for at least an hour. I landed upon "Felix Mendelssohn" and was delighted to follow a link to an external page about Mendelssohn's decision to embrace Lutheranism over Judaism.

Despite being born a Jew, Mendelssohn was baptized in accordance with his parents wishes--his parents, however, were not baptized until Mendelssohn was a teenager. These conversions are now widely interpreted to have been indicative of a general shift away from shtetl life in 19th century Germany: In 1812, Germany guaranteed German Jews full civil equality if they converted from Judaism. Theoretically seeing an opportunity for socio-economic advancement, the Mendelssohns became some of the more famous converts from Judaism.

Taking It To Heart

Serenity now!

In the wake of my National Day vacation to emei shan (Mt. Emei, the holiest of Taoist mountains and located two hours southwest of Chengdu, China) and Leshan (home of the world's tallest seated buddha with toenails bigger than me) I am left reflecting on the balance of life. This seems appropriate and obvious (perhaps appropriately obvious) given the spiritually Buddhist sights I visited. Emei shan rejuvenated me with how it challenged me, with its beauty, with its spiritual essence that enveloped each of its hiking pilgrims much like the low-lying clouds that wrapped and permeated the mountain's sloping and sub-tropical forest; I returned lightened and having come to terms with pressing questions in my life--more on these questions later--only to encounter a burdening pain.

That is waterfall fresh laundry

I know I would fail in describing the climb up the mountain; I know as much because of how complexly beautiful Emei is. Since I feel like this excuse is more a cop-out disguising laziness, I will not use this lame reasoning to withhold  details of my experience on Emei. Instead, I will ask for your understanding given my struggle to find words while my thoughts are so helplessly scattered in the face of some personal and heavy-hearted trials.

A few stray descriptions and reflections will, I hope, suffice.

Battling thousands of Chinese people for a seat on a bus from Chengdu to Emei redefines "holiday travel." Imagine going to O'Hare airport on the busiest travel days surrounding Thanksgiving or Christmas; now, imagine that your airline has issued you a ticket to a destination but has not specified the time of your flight, the number of your flight, or your seat on the flight. The airline just sells tickets to passengers, thus allowing them to do whatever they feel is necessary to make sure that they get to their destinations in a timely manner.

I waited five hours with other sardines in Chengdu's bus station; it took me four hours to move twenty feet. I was elated that I did not have to use the restroom at any time during this experience. I was not elated that many Chinese people firmly believe that body odor is a "western problem."

Haiti Earthquake Relief: Help

The Haitians that know how to write jot down their prayers and cries for help. They place these in an empty water jug that looks like it has been dry for too long. The jug sits in the middle of an unfinished and crumbling sanctuary that should have stood three stories tall and should have been built to metaphorically burst with the shouts of sermons and the reverberations of a community coming together in choir. Where will these prayers go? What will happen to that water jug?

How do families handle the still missing loved ones? Do survivors consider the missing ones as buried in rubble or as buried in the communal graves?

Why do we bother putting estimates like 100,000 fatalities when we only overturn them for double that amount two weeks later? When will the estimates stop rising?

Do the impending deaths in displaced person camps during the rainy season fall into the death toll for the earthquake?

Haiti has never been known to have a strong sense of leadership. Recently, many articles and blog-posts have been written expressing socio-political solutions for Haiti. I have read about how Haiti's debts need to be forgiven; furthermore, the world (read "The West") is in debt to Haiti for slavery, coups, deforestation, and the general destruction of the socio-economic viability of the nation.

But beyond the economic situation, Haiti is desperate for a leader who is just uncorrupted enough to symbolize stability, vision, solidarity, and strength. Based on opinions on the ground, Rene Preval is not that man. The Haitian president was widely criticized for coming into the limelight to deliver a public message far too late after the quake: “He made us focus on the dead, how much we have lost and what sorry shape this country is in...And he interrupted us right in the middle of our own prayer service, which was actually joyous.”

But Haitians are still uniting. Typically this unity and this strength in solidarity happens in faith-based communities. There is buzz around JR Bataille, a pastor and an articulate US University alum who is writing a position paper for the United Nations on how to rebuild a more sustainable Port-au-Prince.

P-a-P, Haiti, and the Haitians need optimistic and ambitious visionaries with pragmatic conceptions of how to proceed. Leaders with knowledge (of how to proceed sustainably and about living as a Haitian) need to assume leadership positions--regardless of whether these positions are political or not. And these leaders are doing so. These are the leaders that need international support as liaisons: These leaders need to demand sustained support in at least the strength (if not stronger) that the initial earthquake response elicited.

These leaders need to continue sponsoring youth development in a country with a suddenly diminished capacity to serve their own future.

These leaders need to continue the strictly supervised distribution of resources to the women, children, and families that need food, water, and shelter. Something needs to happen to ensure that 55 tons of rice that can create over 300,000 meals does not slip into the black market.

Haiti has the spirit and strength in its peoples to create a responsible nation. Even if leaders (like the Batailles) struggle to monitor every facet of being a liaison between international support and local communities, there are educated individuals with the heart to help their own people.

After a long day of transporting patients to different hospitals around P-a-P and reallocating baby formula to hospitals surrounded by thousands of starving tent city dwellers, a dehydrated and exhausted translator expects nothing more than a bottle of water, a handful of beef jerky, and a picture. He draws a doodle in my personal journal: Though it looks like any stick figure, he labels it as "Ron" (his name). He does not ask for my contact information in the ominous or guilt-inducing way that many contacts in "developing countries" would so that they can work on their escape routes. He is proud to be a Haitian helping other Haitians he knows, loves, and lives with.

And we need to continue pressuring our leaders to support the recovery, rebuilding, and restructuring of a more sustainable, livable, and healthy Haiti.

We need to continue enduring the difficulties of traveling to P-a-P because we have the knowledge that every day of delay compares not to every minute of hands-on help we can offer.

We must work with Haitians and not for them.

Though our team, donned in scrubs, worked to serve a specific, specialized need amongst the Haitians, no one needed a degree to understand how to move baby formula, organize patient flow, or even understand the basics of triage.

Just because you do not have a degree does not mean that you will not be able to help with recovery. Haiti will need childcare workers, teachers, movers, organizers, supporters, hand-holders, idea-generators, innovators, frugal initiative takers, etc.

But adjusting standards of living is not so easy.

And I am not entirely sure about how to treat my experience in Haiti. How am I to do the people justice? How am I to pay adequate tribute? How am I to incorporate the knowledge of the tragedies in P-a-P into my life? 

I am not sure, really, what to take from our team's experience. I find myself feeling so pessimistic about the dire situation in P-a-P: The Haitians were in a tough spot before the quake, and now they are facing what seem to be insurmountable obstacles--economically, politically, health-wise, community-wise, on an infrastructural level, etc. I tell stories and praise the impressive University of Miami hospital and the strength and graciousness of the Haitian people, but I find I always return to the tragic elements that I witnessed:

Divided families

Homelessness

Displacement

Misdirection

Futility

Filth

Disease

Insufficient support

Inadequate relief

Disorganized relief

Reduction in relief workers (by the time we left)

Fading of media coverage

Hunger

Destruction

Lack of leadership

And so on. I go about my daily life conscious of the experience but always wondering what I am supposed to take from it, what I am to learn, how I am to integrate Haiti into my life. 

I do not have a link to a website or a cause that you should support with direct intent of donating to Haiti.

Go.

Help fix the mess.

Even if you are like me and without any specialized training, there is a storage facility at a hospital that needs your help with organizing so that the doctors do not waste five minutes looking for a specific size scalpel while a patient waits in pain. There is no good reason why the tons of donated food in that storage facility is rotting in the sun.

I met a 22-year-old Harvard alum who was starting an N.G.O. with the aim of assisting community centers in creating child development courses (e.g. art, karate, dance, soccer, etc.) during and after earthquake recovery.

I met two young men who started an N.G.O. with the aim of scouting out communities that had yet to receive aid, the aim of finding aid and relief workers, and the aim of connecting the two.

And I met a 26-year-old college drop-out who spent his days struggling to learn Haitian Creole while he drove trucks around P-a-P pursuing rumors of water and food aid so that he could claim it for a particular orphanage.

There are still buildings down throughout P-a-P, and I can only imagine what the rest of the country looks like. A man swinging a pickaxe at a fallen slab of concrete catches his son's head on the back-swing; though the child retains the majority of his motor functions, his father now has another emotional burden and physical restriction to uncovering whatever is underneath that concrete slab.

Find a way to get there.

Here was mine.

And just because Haiti is not the news' top story and just because many relief workers are returning (if not returned) does not mean the country does not remain cracked and broken.