Back in the land of green tea and yellow cranes

By which I mean construction cranes. The avian kind are white, even in China.

Beijing is about the same as I left it four weeks ago, with a few exceptions. Five or six more floors have been added to the growing high-rise across the street. The building represents Phase Three of the already enormous China World Trade Centre, a complex of offices, two hotels, and a giant subterranean shopping mall that takes up three square blocks. It has it’s own subway station and is known as Guomao to everyone except English-speakers. Our confusion can be forgiven since all the buildings shout “China World” in red-lit signs.

The garish and sometimes inexplicable Christmas decorations (a string of lights on one high rise depicted a windmill over the words Merry Christmas) have been replaced by more authentic (and therefore more tasteful) decorations for Chinese New Year, which falls this year on February 18. 2007 will be the Year of the Pig and so of course there are pigs on sale everywhere: stuffed, gilded, painted and embroidered. The pigs are always fat and nearly round, their sweet faces flat against the stylized curve of their bodies, thereby obfuscating the slightly sinister look that real pigs have, with their long snouts, powerful oblong bodies and those mythic cloven hooves.

Otherwise, Beijing is it’s charming old self, dry, dusty, delightfully gastronomical. Last night we went to a new (to us) restaurant in China World (oops, Guomao) called Chamate, where there are plush cushions in all the chairs and the food arrives on wooden trays. Their specialty is the hot pot, a soup tureen that sits on top of a flame, like fondue. Included on the tray are small bowls of rice, cold edamame and diced veggies, hot minced pork and three slices of pear. Loose leaf tea is served in a small glass pot and a server dressed in a traditional white silk tunic and pants (I think called pien fu) refreshed the hot water with what what looked like a giant, ornate watering can, with a spout about 4 feet long. With a flourish, he swung the pitcher up and around so that, with his arm extended up and behind him, the long spout descended over his shoulder. He lunged forward and bent from the waist, holding the tiny glass tea pot in one hand while the thin stream of hot water filled it.