Would you ever do a takeaway?

Note these kinds of boxes are an American thing. I've never seen them in Europe or Asia they tend to use foil or styrofoam boxes instead

Hi CG.

I've been reading your blog for a while. I have a question for you fellow Chinese guy, if you ever had the chance to go back to doing the take away type thing which invariably most Chinese peoples' parents tended to do would you ever do it again?

I mean I had to work during my teenage years to help out and the hours were crap and I never got to see my mates but my parents retired pretty rich.

Alex W


Dear Alex

Give then chance TCG would go and snag a takeout place and be terrifically stereotypical of Chinese people (in the past). This is probably because it was easy to get into, required very little start up capital and there were few Chinese take out places back in the 1980s and 1990s the 1960s and 1970s were even better. Though there was the Bruce Lee effect I will explain tomorrow.

In fact I very nearly snagged one quite recently but the person selling it got greedy. For HPCers he tried to sell it screwing me in the process out of a fair wedge of money. The buyer then screwed him back and ruined his own reputation. Therefore nobody wants to buy it off him anymore. He has a crippling overhead on the shop and I yet again am laughing at his short sightedness.

Anyway back on the topic. If given the chance TCG would give it serious consideration. The white collar route hasn't worked out for many people. For instance the traditional avenues of which Chinese children are pushed into such as:

• Accountancy.
• Medicine
• Law

All three sectors are being done over by the economic climate and government. I do not know about the USA or Canada but it is like this in the UK.

Accountancy - this is being outsourced to death, people in Karachi will do these jobs for £3 an hour. When I was an accountant I would be sent out and do jobs for £300 an hour (my firm would charge the company this amount) I saw barely 3% of this per hour! Automation is also taking its toll meaning people who went into this are not doing as well as those in the 1990s before the outsourcing revolution.

Medicine - the UK government trained too many doctors, hence my two cousins who are both medical grads can't find a placement they both decided to leave the UK.

Law as with accountancy lots of it is getting outsourced or done via home packs. Like draw up your own will for £15 type books you find in bookshops.


Anyway I would give it serious consideration because although it is shitty on your social life due to anti social hours there is a nice side effect to this. Uber early retirement. TCG believed the hype about education when he was 16 and went all the way (twice). While his peers went and took over their parents shops. They are now home owners (no mortgage) have fat retirement funds and are near retirement at 35 years old. Bastards.

While TCG's owns zilch property, has a pension pot (a 401K) worth precisely £0.00 and will probably never retire. By 2035 TCG will be cyborgised like the video below



A funnier version of Ghost in the shell is here note this link is NOT SAFE for work but it is the only place I could find it hosted online.


Back on topic, anyway if I had the chance I'd definitely think about it because there is so much money in it. More than any white collar profession anyways. However all is not as cushy in Takeout land. Back in the 1980s and 1990s it was sweet. BTW TCG's dad did not dabble in hot food until the early 1990s. He was a van driver who delivered supplies to hot food places. Except he stopped one day when he had a sawn off shot gun pulled on him. 2000s less so. Simply because it is one of those industries where anybody can enter into it easily meaning the pie gets split into smaller and smaller pieces.

Which is funny really because while working in such hot food places people would always look down on me as if I were scum, same with my family and extended family too. And yet its like hookers it is the one who is in the shitty situation which ends up in the best position of all...

Funny old world isn't it?

Cheung Chau Bung festival

Another festival for the fishermen.

The Bun Festival is local to the island of Cheung Chau only. Pak Tai, the Taoist God of the Sea is worshipped and evil spirits are scared away by loud gongs and drums during the procession.

The celebration includes Taoist praying, opera performances and ends with processions performed by children dressed in colorful costumes.

Bun towers USED to be built 60 foot high piled with sweet buns normally outside the Pak Tai temple. These buns are supposed to be blessed and people would climb them to grab buns off them at midnight on the first day of the festival. This was supposed to pay homage and appease the ghosts of those who died in the 19th century plague that attacked Cheung Chau.

Except in 1978 a tower collapsed and injured 96 people. Since then the towers are built but for display only and are made in shops and delivered to the people who participate. But this is Hong Kong where you can buy them instead.

Cheung Chau before hand will go vegetarian for 3 days before the procession, no meat none at all will be eaten served on the island not even the McD's you see immediately off the ferry. Nothing none nada (it often closes).

The procession is the biggest most important part of the festival and each sort of group of houses on the island will build a float of some kind and children will sit atop of them TCG does not know the significance of this.

You can find more videos here again TCG is not from Cheung Chau or from a family of fishermen and therefore does not observe this holiday.

Fried rice

Dear TCG

[EDITED lots of waffle]

How come my fried rice always sticks badly to the wok?


Anon




Dear No fried rice cooking person.


The secret to a good fried rice is to use slighty dehyrdrated rice, typically this means you cook rice the night before and allow it to cool and thus dry out for 12 hours. You must be incredibly careful about this as when reheating rice it has spores in it which release heat resistant toxins which will cause lots of puking and shitting for days if you do not heat it properly. The preferred heating reference of TCG (even though TCG is more of an instant noodle man) is that the rice grains dance on the bottle and crackle with quite a loud intensity.

Adding water can soften the rice and help transmit the heat but puts water back into the rice.

The old technique of underusing water in cooking your rice also works (using a pot people use 1 cup of water to one cup of rice) too wet and you get congee, too dry and you can get insta rice which you can use in the wok immediately. But it still isn't as good as rice from the night before.

Also note again rice isn't widely eaten in China, the damn stuff doesn't grow very well in the north, and thus going to a restaurant in Beijing and asking for rice people will look at you and say huh?

TCG

1000 year old eggs

Dear TCG

I was invited to a party at a Chinese frien'd house he had the usual Chinese things as snacks deep fried pastry things buns and crispy fried shredded meats. But one strange thing he offered was something he called paydan these green egg looking things.

I didn't want to try them as they looked kind of gross and the host was busy so I couldn't ask him. What are paydans? They look like eggs to me.

Mason




Dear Mason

Payday or Pidan 皮蛋 quite litterly means skin egg, or leather egg, they are as you guessed eggs I don't actually know how to make these things, the months required to make them would test my patience and the fact I am always moving around meaning they would probably be too well done. My dad used to make them though. Essentially a duck or a chicken egg is sealed up with clay ash and tea and left somewhere. This seals up the egg so it does not become rotten like normal eggs but the wihte of the egg breaks down into a jelly like substance that can be salty or once I was surprised was sweet. It is usually safe to eat, I say usually as some shysters will use dangerous chemicals to speed up the curing process, although the look of them isn't great.

It is popular in congee rice soup and actually fairly expensive compared to outer street snacks probably due to the long curing times of at least a couple of months.

If you think it is gross have a look at balut




Or this:

Self delusion

Hi, I saw your blog as I was searching for the answer to this question. I have a Chinese friend who once told me about something she called "aku spirit." I don't know how to spell it, and accordingly I haven't been able to find an in-depth description of what it is. She told me it was a Chinese way of thinking, in order to deal with loss of an opportunity. For example, say you lost $20 dollars; the "aku spirit" (sp) way of thinking might include telling yourself that you spent the $20 on a nice meal and you thoroughly enjoyed it, in order to cope with losing the $20 and not worrying excessively about it.

Are you familiar with this? And if so, can you describe the correct spelling/saying?

Thanks




Dear Tobias

You don't give me much to work here, but I'll try.

This has been troubling me all week, in that I know how to pronounce this in Hakka and it shares a commonness (sp) with Cantonese too. This is familiar as language as my dad castigated me throughout life using this phrase but I can't actually remember the Chinese for it. And my dad isn't much help as he speaks to me in 4 different ways switching from Mandarin, to Hakka, to Cantonese to English often in single sentences.

The first thing I thought about was the work Ak, as you said Aku ~ Ak~ Ngak? 握 which isn't correct as 握 means to shake, hold or grip. It sounds a bloodly lot like Ak anyway but it is wrong as its usage in verbal form sounds correct but in written form isn't. 握 手 ak - shau ~ to shake hands.

Which is wrong i.e. 你 (you) 握 (shake) 我 (me). You go to a Mahjong den and somebody cheats if you say 你 (Lee) 握 (Ak) 我 (Knor), they will understand, but if you wrote it down they would laugh at you and correct you. The word I was looking for was 阨 (ngak) which means to deceive, this is a pain in the arse word as it is a borrowed word which actually comes from 呃. which again is (ngak) which means the same thing.

Hence initially I wrote: 握 (ak) 自(chee)己 (kay) ~ to trick oneself. But I know this is wrong, damned similar sounding words, the word I was looking for 阨 (ak)

阨 (ak) 自(chee)己 (kay) ~ deceive oneself.


I have no idea what the spirit bit refers to I've never heard it before there is also:

對…作出解釋；為 自己- which means to justify it to yourself which is more closer to what you were looking. I.e. I justified the spending to myself which isn't quite right again.

I've got to be doing something right now so this post may well be altered and updated shortly. However I am fairly confidence that 阨 (ak) 自(chee)己 (kay) ~ deceive oneself. Is what you are looking for my dad often said 不(bat)阨 (ak) 自(chee)己 (kay) ~ don't lie to yourself.


Continued the spirit issue, is tricky in that again subject to interpretation but what you posted to me earlier I think attitude is the correct saying

心态 psychology (sort of) (sam lay)
or
态度 or attitude (tai dough)

So

阨 自己态度

HTH (for now anyway)

Rusty Woks

Dear Chinese Guy

I cook quite alot [sic] for my wife as she loves stir fry, and I find a wok good for cooking these things. The big arse problem is that it always turns to rust real quick, what is wrong with my wok?.

Scott W.


Dear Scott W



This is a common complaint I hear when I worked in catering, on come on almost ALL chinese people have worked in catering at some point its just the way it is. Anyway, the issue is that you are not seasoning your wok and keeping it oiled. Woks are made from mild steel, stainless is too brittle for when chefs toss the food or clang the wok to clear it of food debris after cooking something. Or when chefs frequently lose their temper (it happens everywhere just look at Gordon Ramsey).

Stainless will shatter and thus we use mild steel woks. Mild Steel rusts like a bugger, with heat and moisture the process of rusting is acclerated as these act as a catalyst . Thus your shiny new wok from the shop turns into a bucket of rust before your eyes. Also as a side Stainless steel oddly enough things stick to stainless steel easier than mild steel thus needing more oil, more oil = more fat and more costs.

If you ever go to a take away place right at before they close you will probably piss the chef off immensely as he will have seasoned his woks meaning he has to do it all over again. You will see bright yellow flame reflections on the walls if the kitchen is nearby.

Essentially they do two things, they keep the wok oiled ALWAYS which means that once you wash it with detergent which carries away the oil the surface is exposed to the elements. To prevent this after washing scrubbing with detergent with a steel scouring pad we heat them up, so they go all blue let them cool a little then put some oil and pan it around so that the inside is covered with a thin layer of oil.

Some people will suggest having a small amount of water in the wok as you heat it up until it cooks off into dancing beads of water and thus cooks off, I don't like to do this as it takes longer and I am incredibly impatient. Also it costs more gas as well as the fact that the water has been known to vaporise into steam burning your face off.

An alternative method is to use some kitchen towel soaked in oil and rub it in but because the wok is hot you may burn yourself.

The back of the wok should be covered in a thin layer of carbon which seals the back of the wok too. Hence it is not exposed to the air from either side and therefore it should not rust if you do it properly. You then leave it somewhere until the next use.

There is another technique that says stick the wok in the oven, which takes ages, is dangerous costs lots of gas or electricity and requires a big oven. While my hob technique is fast and works.

Somebody might ask why not use teflon woks? The problem is teflon pans are cooler than steel woks. With steel woks I have seen oil spontanously combust and burn somebody's face off while a teflon pan I can keep on the hob for hours and the oil never bursts into flames. Also that teflon even the modern kitchen implement resistent type is no match for the cooking and the teflon will peel off and go into the food which as you may imagine would be bad.


The Chinese Guy accepts NO liability for the advice given above and if you set yourself on fire its your own fault.