Baozi you are a fickle mistress

One of the great perks of the program that I have gone through to place me here is that Monday through Friday lunch and dinner are provided to us by a cook who lives on site. This is so awesome; however, it leaves us to the winds of culinary fortune for breakfast. For me this usually means baozi. Baozi are basically big dumpling creations. My flavors of choice – cabbage, and pork. 

I order my baozi from the same stand every morning.  “The baozi lady” with time has become a close personal friend of mine, but this was not always so. Chinese as most of you may know is not the easiest language to use. I often believe I am saying the word correctly, but due to tonal differences I am not. The result can be a frustrating linguistic game of who’s on first. When ordering the baozi such scenarios have played out all too often. “ro de he baicai” I order. What sounds like a bunch of garbled fast Chinese is the response I receive which the general gist of I believe to be, “what the hell did you just say? You sound like you’re choking, having a seizure, and talking all at the same time. Please tell me you are not trying to pass that as Chinese.” Ah, its raining and there is a line behind me. “Hao, hao, hao, hao” I eventually submit. This is basically like saying, “okay, okay, okay, okay”, the repetition is key. I just need something to eat before I miss my bus. Time to play scratch off lotto.

First baozi, so far so good, pork. Second, okay, the leafy green spinach deal. What I want to avoid at all cost is the bean paste baozi, the mail bomb disguised as a gift package from your grandmother. Bean paste is the ultimate Trojan horse of food substances. For it knows it is sweet, but harsh, and has a generally disagreeable texture and thus needs to be hidden in whatever food it seeks refuge. Bean paste is a cunning foe. I bite into the third baozi.

No, it can’t be. AHHHH, bean paste! I feel like some infamous military commander who has made a tactical blunder and in doing so sent thousands of my own men into certain doom. Charge or the Light Brigade. Gallipoli all over. Except its my own taste buds that I have let down. I am Colonel Kurtz from Apocolypse Now, “The horror, the horror.” This is not how you want to start your day. The good news it that I have now made it clear with my close friend and confidant “the baozi lady” which my two flavors of choice are and that these days of playing Russian roulette first thing in the morning are over.