THOMAS PODVIN’S FREELANCE WORK
Freelance writer - translator - Editor

This column is a part of a monthly contribution to the national daily China Youth Daily. It was published on August 8, 2006 in the paper and in the China Youth Daily Website. Originally written in English, it was translated into simplified Chinese by Joy Shao Jie.

English version:

Spices are very common components of the Chinese cuisine. Most westerners are not used to the hot spicy dishes though. Let’s see how foreign friends react to the red spices when they arrive in China while Chinese are so accustomed to them.

From Xinjiang to Yunnan, passing by Hunan or Sichuan, Chinese food is very spicy. Actually abroad, the name “Sichuan” is synonymous with spicy food. It’ very famous and you can order a special “Sichuan spicy dish” from a Chinese restaurant when you are in England or in France. Yet the Sichuan spices there taste like candy floss compared to the real thing! Us foreigners, we are not very used to this kind of hot food.

Maybe the closest we have to spices in our dishes are black paper, garlic and a bit of curry. In France we have “moutarde” or mustard, a kind of paste made out of seeds comparable to the Japan’s wasabi and which is extra strong. It’s often eaten in small quantity with meat. Yet, it’s different from the dozens of pepper varieties from Xinjiang to Yunnan. Besides, in the UK and the US some exotic foods are very popular, like Indian curry of the Tex Mex cuisine. Yet all these are peanuts. They cannot really compare to a Sichuan style spicy tofu (Ma po dou fu), spicy pig tripes (fu qi fei pian) or the spicy fish soup (ma la shu zhu yu), all delicious, but deadly for the non-trained foreign tongues.

If like me, before coming to China foreigners have never tried it before, it’s then a mouth torture. For us spice neophytes, hot spices fries our brain, upset our stomach and wet our socks. That was my first experience to spicy food upon arriving in China two years ago. No rice, water or beer can extinguish this fire. The only remedy I found so far was to drink coconut milk. It offers an instant relief. So when you invite foreign friends to a spicy food restaurant, always prepare some spare coconut milk for them.

Foreigners aren’t used to spice, but some can stand it. Until they reach a threshold, and when it tastes very spicy for them, it might be just mildly spicy for some Chinese. Eating spice is in fact a question of practice. From childhood some Chinese, Indian or Thai people get used to a large amount of spices in their food. The more they eat the less they feel it, the same cannot be said for Westerners.

I then realized that despite the fact that many Chinese people smoke, the first national addiction isn’t tobacco but probably spicy food. I have a female friend. Let’s call her Laba. She’s from Kunming, Yunnan. She’s twenty something and her hobby is spices. She always asks her Yunnan folks to send bags of spice (seasoned ground red pepper) to her Shanghai’s home. The last parcel contained more than one hundred of these little bags of fire. It would merely last for two months she told me! She is indeed a spice queen.

Sometimes, when I cook French dishes for friends, they don’t bother to taste the real thing, like Laba, they just add tons of hot spices. They might find it’s too light or to plain. A shame, French dishes are also very delicious. Yet my friend’s French plate must taste like a Sichuan dish.

For Laba, no matter where she goes, she’ll take her little bags of spices with her. She claims she cannot do without it; even if it gives her pimples she needs it. She told me it was like a drug. True, in fact the more spice she eats, the more her mouth and her taste buds are accustomed to spice. So to get the spicy feeling, she always needs more. It’s the “vicious spice circle”. The spicy feeling on the tongue must be very exciting; it must make her feel like she lives dangerously.

But it’s not good for boyfriends, for it’s hard to bear a spicy kiss. Besides, spice food doesn’t give good breath. At all. My friend Laba doesn’t have a boyfriend. She has two dogs. So that solves the problem. She can eat spice as much as she wants.
Yet I wonder, one day, if she goes to a foreign country where there are no spices, what would she do? She’ll be craving after a couple of days. Would she smuggle tons of spice to this country? Would she try some substitutes to titillate her taste buds, like these acid little lemon-flavored candies? Or would she get a sweet tooth and start eating very sweet things? I hope her skin problem will get better though and she could start dating one day.

China Youth Daily

(c) China Youth Daily/Thomas Podvin
August 2006

This column is a part of a monthly contribution to the national daily China Youth Daily. It was published on March 28, 2006 and in the China Youth Daily Website. Originally written in English, it was translated into simplified Chinese by Joy Shao Jie.

English version:

Being romantic is a very blur concept, related to love and sexual desire. We usually believed some people are more romantic than others, like French or Italian. What about China? Are Chinese people romantic?

A question of perspective
One day, I saw a wedding ceremony in the garden of a posh Shanghai hotel. The Chinese bride wore a magnificent virginal western gown and was holding the arm of the Chinese groom in tuxedo. In the background, we could hear a French song called "Helene, Je m'appelle Helene" by Helene Rolles. It surely is a hit in China, as we keep hearing it anywhere. Many Chinese probably think it sounds romantic and perfect for the wedding. For any francophone, however, it hardly sounds romantic but probably cheesy, schmaltzy, sad and hopeless. Basically the song talks about a lonely girl longing for love and desperate to be taken for whom she is. The point is being romantic is a question of individual viewpoint as well as of cultural perspective. What is romantic for Chinese won't necessarily be romantic for French or British. Everybody in China sees Paris as the world capital of romanticism for instance. But what's really romantic about Paris? Ask a Parisian and he won't be able to answer.

Gesture of love
Everybody cherishes different ideas of romanticism, love and desirability. In the streets of China, love and romanticism are hardly perceptible. Men and women holding hands in public can be considered as bold in a society known for being prude. Chinese couples would hold hands as an indication of commitment whereas in the West, it's simply a sign of deep affection but not necessarily a pledge for long-lasting love.

In some places very much influenced by the West (in some chic districts of Shanghai for instance), you might as well spot two Chinese lovers intensively kissing and hugging. This sight is casual for foreigners, as love and affection are more openly expressed in western countries where girls are emancipated at an early age, men bolder to seduce them, and the sexual revolution took place decades ago. As a foreigner, I can see that the Chinese society has evolved rapidly; in two decades traditional morals have been diluted into global morals. Some women on street have adopted the western fashion; they wear tighter cloths and sometimes short skirts to appear more seductive. In another hand, men are bolder to show their feelings in public. Younger generations are more prone to follow the social behaviors of the Western world.

In subway stations and city centers I was half surprised to see so many advertisement posters for foreign designer underwear with models in sensual poses exposing a great deal of flesh. The ads aim at local customers already open to an occidental vision of love and sex. A bra isn't only an undergarment, but a seduction tool. But these models are all Westerners; you cannot expect too much too quickly. Chinese cannot see yet their peers showing some extra bits of skin in public. People unconsciously tend to stick to an image of a pure Chinese girl who perhaps should be asexualized, or at least never be the object of sexual desire.

But what you see is probably the tip of the iceberg. A female Hong-Kong filmmaker who's lived in New York once told me that American women are proud to be considered as sexy sometimes free-spirited or libertine. But when it comes to act they¡¯re in fact very much prudish. On the contrary, Chinese women are discreet and hide their sex appeal, but can become wild romantic partners. The TV-series "I Am Really Desperate for Love," a Chinese equivalent of "Sex and the City" directed by Liu Xin Gang offers a fair example of what modern Chinese women are capable of.

Gesture from the heart
More and more Chinese tend to adopt the Western conception of romanticism. Valentine's Day has been fashionable in Shanghai lately. It's a European Christian holiday to exchange tokens of affection. But do you only think of your partner on February 14th (or for qi xi)? Is it really romantic? As a Frenchman I think it's not so original to do as many other people do, like buying flowers and chocolate on Valentine's Day. You can celebrate your love any other day of the year. If one hasn't taken care of his lover the remaining 364 days of the year, chocolate and flowers are more indications of guilt than tokens of love.

Love should fuel the imagination: Partners ought to be creative to find a genuine gesture from the bottom of the heart. Being romantic is also being original. It's to offer something unique to be cherished by the other. Romanticism is an unselfish expression of the heart to prove your feelings to the other. This is also what Love is all about.

China Youth Daily

(c) China Youth Daily/Thomas Podvin
March 28, 2006