Chinese Dumplings

"They're not dumplings", I said knowingly! "Dumplings are sort of round and squishy, they belong in stews, beef or lamb, they stick to your ribs in the cold English weather, give you a warm coating to protect you from the full awfulness of the British weather. Dumplings, real dumplings are made with suet, flour and a pinch of salt. Some, the posher ones, have dried herbs". I took a deep breath.

"These things are parcels. Chinese parcels, wrapped with bamboo leaves containing a whole host of things which does not include suet. Chinese parcels, loosely called dumplings by the unknowing some, are made with two types of rice, have pork, chestnuts, dried prawns and all sorts of goodies to fill eager starving tummies. They, in no way, resemble those gooey lumps found loosely associating with over boiled lamb, demolished potatoes and disintegrated barley."

I was in high dudgeon. I was on my high horse, which was standing on a soap box and I was getting very bloody annoyed at the whole misnomer. I was irrational, true, but I was making a point.

 "Chinese parcels are not dumplings". 

It was like the whole bloody turkey bacon saga all over again, or that of the non-alcoholic beer. What next, non-pork pork and non-alcoholic alcohol?

 "Other things are Chinese dumplings. Things that are made of pastry. Things that are fried and dunked in vinegar with ginger strips, or steamed with minced pork and chives inside, or boiled with long flowing tresses of wet pastry trailing like Won Ton but much, much larger. Chinese dumplings surface in Dim Sum eateries, alongside Siu Mai, steamed ribs, feet of chickens and wide rice flour made noodles called Cheong Fun, which fairly drip with flavour (not to mention hoisin sauce) and are hauled around on shaky, rambling, trolleys in restaurants in London’s China Town."

We British have translation problems when we try to talk about Chinese Dumplings. We are out of our depth, out of our culture, lost amidst a veritable ocean of succulent Chinese morsels, each being called dumplings by we foreigners who know no difference. And, be honest, which would you choose - Chinese parcels, which are called Chang (Chung) or dumplings, soggy English dumplings. Chinese dumplings are dumplings but tastier than any from British cooks. They far out strip our humble British dumplings which swim, but most likely sinking, in stews like those of my dear departed mother; thin, lifeless stews, stews existing purely to make her robust dumplings buoyant.

Yes, you guessed it, it's that time of year again in Malaysia. A time of remembrance of ancient Chinese poets and their sacrifices for Emperor, and country. A time of dragon races and over eating, and yes I know that just about every week there is an excuse for that in Malaysia, but this is a time honoured tradition so, of course, I have to comply don't I, don’t I?.

June is a time when, once again, Chinese sons and daughters return home to help ageing relatives consume those heaps of Chinese, bamboo-leaf-wrapped, parcels that loving relatives have tenderly made for their eagerly returning kin. Let's face it, anything concerned with food is practically sacred in Malaysia, and more so if you are Chinese. Chinese love to eat, they live to eat, they long to eat. The 'Dumpling Festival' provides a Spring excuse to consume weighty amounts of rice and meat filled parcels, until consumers can consume no more and have to remain  seated, bloated, unable to rise from the table.

Home-made parcels are simply the best. They are fragrantly imbued with all those family and cultural heritage tastes/remembrances. It is that poignant combination of culture, memory and a full stomach which entices sons and daughters to return 'home', dragged away by cultural consciences from that other Chinese love -that of making money. 

THURSDAY

It was Thursday, day of Thor, hammer of the gods and general show off. It was the third day of the domestic dispute with she who shall remain nameless. The day after two sleepless nights sleeping solo, waking tired after frustrating dreams of nubile nymphets and, seemingly, a lot of running around. Freud would have enjoyed all this.

The non-appearance of breakfast and lunch, and dare I say diner too (the day before), which never have appeared magically as they have in some marriages, prompted me to quickly shower and walk, yes walk as I have no car thanks to a vindictive former spouse, to the Indian eatery some 15 hot minutes away, and have breakfast.

“Where's aka” (sister) the waitress asked. I wanted to tell her, but only muttered not here, then added (soto voce) and not likely to be in the near future either. I ordered my usual masala dosa and my not so usual sweet lassi. Perhaps there was a tad rebelliousness oozing out with that Lassi. Perhaps I was saying yes, I know that I usually order coffee or masala tea, but I am on my own and I will order what I like, hence sweet lassi, and contemplated what to do about lunch.

The weather was way too hot to consider another jaunt out at lunchtime, so I entertained the idea of buying the raw ingredients, and cooking for myself. It would be no real hardship as I have done that so many times before, and a sheer joy after the tasteless instant noodles I ended up throwing out the day before.

O.K. if you really must know. If the private details of my marriage are really that interesting to you who know me little, if at all. The altercation was, as is the case more often than not, nothing, a trifle without the sweetness, jelly, custard and cream. But it led to my first sleepless night, sleeping alone, the first day of being sent to Coventry or the Malaysian equivalent,  and a day of barely any food (there will be wives smiling great big smiles right about now, having read this). Any one of these petty annoyances would have been grounds for further strife, but all three, in my tiny male mind, signalled an all out war.

Lysistrata and those bloody ancient Greek wives have much to answer for. Several weeks of an entirely different kind of starvation was beginning to take its toll hence, I guess, the fruity dreams and the longer gazes at be-shorted legs of by-passing Chinese women (of which there are plenty in Malaysia).

It is difficult to describe to anyone who has not been married to a Chinese Malaysian wife, what differences there might be cross culturally between a white Anglo-Saxon male and a Chinese Malaysia woman. It has been muted that the Chinese are the Jews of Asia, but that is performing a grave disservice to all peoples of Yiddish ancestry.  No other race has the sheer, unadulterated zest, zeal and undying love for money as the Malaysian Chinese have.

That was where it all had started, two sleepless nights and several celibate days ago, an argument over money, not the first and probably not the last. The cultural differences being, basically, that my Chinese wife is very, very careful with money (a trait she has inherited from her shopkeeper parents), while I have never been burdened with having enough to worry about!

I trudged to Giant (Tescos but seedier), bought the necessary accoutrements for a lamb curry, and walked back home a little heavier and dripping with sweat from unaccustomed exercise. On arrival I mooched to the kitchen, to place plastic bags full of goodies onto our pretentious glass kitchen table and, behold, there was a bowl of freshly made pasta butterflies, and a second bowl of creamy sauce. All my anger and disappointment simply melted away. Ahhhhh, she did care after all. Stupid man!! I was saved the trouble of food preparation and cooking. Saved the potato peeling, saved the constant checking to see if my dry curry was too dry, and burning.

I put the lamb in the freezer for another day. Well, you never know! 

Summer Soundtrack

The precise sounds of any singular summer are a little hazy but, suffice to say, it was some amalgam of years in an era between 1967 (the Summer of Love) and, perhaps, 1970 (when the world ended with The Beatles split). 

A summer soundtrack might begin with Fleetwood Mac's Albatross, first heard on an ancient tape deck when heading into Margate for the very first time, car windows open and seagulls weaving wonders in a white cloud dotted sky. Or, alternatively, on listening to Canned Heat's On the Road Again springing siren like from the bakerlite radio at the bookbinder's where I was apprenticed and, within a month or two, was heading out in a ramshackle rusty Land Rover Defender, to join a 'Hippy' commune in Yorkshire, and imagining us to be Merry Pranksters, me to be Kerouac.

Mungo Jerry's In the Summertime would spin its magic from my 'Victorian' reel to reel tape deck, or bounce with vinyl warp on a portable record deck through an open window, while a much slimmer I would pose all in black, sunglasses and beret included, for Polaroid images which would fade with time, to blues and browns, and I too would encounter blues and browns in turbulent post-teen times.

Inevitably it would be a time of Hyde Park Free Concerts, so maybe that sublime soundtrack would include Blind Faith, Donovan, Roy Harper, Pink Floyd and The Rolling Stones, as well as several thousand 'Heads' chattering to real and imaginary friends, all doped up and being dopey like dopes in the days of kaftans, beads, bells and flowers. Dylan and The Isle of White escaped me, as did the paid concerts, for they needed the money I never seemed to have. I consoled myself with bootlegs, tape recordings and second hand vinyl, bought cheaply.