The Mid-Autumn Festival

            I like collecting Grandma’s stories.

            If I don’t ask after them, she’ll ask me if I have a boyfriend (“It’s too bad. You know that doctor I wanted to introduce to you? Well, he’s off the market”), tell me to be safe while I’m in Europe (“Don’t take the train! Too many refugees!”), and offer me food (“Grass jelly drink? Your favorite?”). And, after all is said and done, comes the standalone comment, “You’re not skinny anymore.”

            This story is about moon cakes and isn’t so much a story as it is a lesson in economics.

            One evening we sit side by side, she, settled on the green pleather sofa such that her small feet just touch the carpet, and I, nestled into her curves, holding her spotted, blue-veined hand.

            “Grandma, how did you used to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival growing up?”

            “Oh, we didn’t celebrate at all,” she replies immediately. “We were too poor.”

            Oh. Right.

            “But didn’t you at least eat moon cake?”

            What is moon cake, you ask?

            It is delicious.

            Moon cake is a treat that can only be bought once a year, around the time of the festival, which falls on August 15 – according to the lunar calendar*. (Duh. Moon cake, hel-lo-o.) On this day of the year, the moon is said to be the fullest and shining at its brightest.

*This year it falls on September 27 (after the Gregorian calendar). Happy Autumn Moon! Go outside tonight for some moongazing if the skies are clear!

            “Back then it wasn’t so easy to get your hands on yuè bĭng. After all, it was a luxury food, and nobody had that kind of spare change lying around when the vendors started selling them,” Grandma launches full speed ahead into her explanation, a solid wall of no-nonsense Cantonese that Dad translates into English several lungfuls of air later. 

            “If you weren’t wealthy,” she continues, “you’d start paying for your moon cake a year ahead of time. Each month, until the twelfth month, you paid your baker of choice a chunk of the total sum, and they’d stamp a sort of booklet. At the end of the year, you’d pay the final installment, and exchange your twelve stamps for the cake.”

            I imagine an old-time baker pulling out his stone stamp, a slender stone rod with a flat, engraved end that would leave behind a sticky red circle of ink, the circle made up of stylized, archaic Chinese characters, probably the name of the establishment. It would peel off the thin paper, smelling like incense or herbal medicine.

            My dad concludes, “So that was how you got your moon cake – if you didn’t lose your stamps!”

Grandma continues to stare ahead, ignoring Dad’s follow-up punchline.

“And – if the bakery didn’t go out of business!” he guffaws.

What a joker – my dad, ladies and gentlemen.

Anyway, I was telling you about moon cake (which is almost definitely not gluten-free and possibly not vegan). Moon cake is an art form, a thick (usually sweet) filling encased in a thin, chewy, golden brown crust. Where pie crusts might boast a lattice top, the moon cake is often stamped with the name of the proud bakery, the dough itself raised – like edible braille – into each stroke of each character, the centerpiece of an intricate, overall design. Common fillings are jujube paste, lotus seed paste, and (my favorite) red bean paste. If you’re going to splurge, at the center of the moon cake will be a salted egg yolk (or two). Yup! An egg yolk. The color of marigold. Like having a little moon in your moon cake.

            According to legend, Han Chinese revolutionaries were able to pass along secret messages by embedding them inside moon cakes, which, on the surface, appeared harmless enough. In this way, they were able to lay low and organize a revolt against the then-Mongolian dynasty.

            But that’s the legend.

            Here’s the Gospel truth: Moon cake is delicious. (And expensive.)

P.S.  If my Grandma asks, you didn’t hear it from me. (She thinks the Internet will eat her.)

At what "cost"?

(Or, the irrelevance of a cost-benefit analysis)

  

12:30, Wed., Sept. 23, 2015

Vienna

Well, the big question – after a summer like this one – was if I would see a notable difference in Austria, compared to the Austria before an unprecedented wave of refugees entered the EU these past few months.

As seen on a traffic post in Germany.

It’s hard to say for sure, but, sitting now at Westbahnhof (a major transit point in the heart of the capital), fresh off the metro (from Dallas to Chicago to Vienna and eventually back to Graz), it really does seem like a lot of the faces I’m looking at are new arrivals. It’s hard to say because I can’t assume that any or all Middle Eastern-appearing people are necessarily asylum seekers from Syria, especially in a diverse metropolis like Vienna. All the same, my gut tells me that what I’m witnessing is indeed only one stop on a long journey for these men, women, and children. (A journey that makes my last 26+ hours pretty insignificant.)

I see white men, one in a suit, one in a red vest suggesting a uniform (The Red Cross? Caritas?), speaking to small huddles of (presumably) Middle Easterners, many of whom fill the ticketing foyer, presumably waiting for passage to their next stop. (Presumably.)

I don’t notice any increased security presence, nor any decrease in tourists. Westbahnhof and Vienna, from what I’ve gleaned in transit, seem largely the same, running as always. Perhaps the only new presence is the old woman holding a Caritas donation box at the foot of the escalator that takes one up to the food court.

New Wifi networks at Westbahnhof.
What are all the meanings of "free"?

On the flight from London I took a moment to catch up on events as reported by the Financial Times. I knew the EU’s interior ministers would be meeting on the 14^th, but I didn’t expect much to come out of it. Apparently, they voted yesterday to distribute 120,000 more accepted refugees – in addition to the 40,000 marker agreed upon in July – among the EU bloc, overruling by majority vote the dissent of Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Romania. (Notably, this policy was championed by Germany and France, Germany hosting significantly more refugees than any other EU member state.)

I think FT reporter Martin Wolf is exactly on point in writing:

…the EU must draw a distinction between refugees and immigrants. Countries have legal and moral obligations to refugees.* […] Compassion for the desperate has to be distinct from a cooler assessment of the advantages and disadvantages of immigration. It may be helpful to argue that refugees could provide economic benefits to the recipient country. […] But that is not the reason why they should be accepted.

I do believe that incoming asylum seekers can contribute to their host communities – granted, contingent largely upon (1) developing sufficient proficiency in the local language** and (2) successful integration (adequate housing, access to jobs, enrollment in schools, etc.). BUT, those who so strongly oppose the taking in of refugees, who shudder at the prospect of shouldering what they perceive as a financial, social, and possibly cultural (invasion of national identity by otherness) “burden” – those leaders and member states are unlikely to buy the “economic benefits” argument. Or at least, the argument loses in an overall cost-benefit analysis. They are much more likely to wonder from where in their already allocated budgets they're supposed to muster up the necessary funds (and manpower and infrastructure) to facilitate language courses and integration.

**As an educated American navigating studies conducted in the German language, a language not so unrelated to my mother tongue, I can tell you, this is no easy task!

Not to mention that scary buzzword (shh!) “terrorism” and the inextricable connection between ISIS, Al Qaeda, and the Taliban with the countries from which many are fleeing. (In the first half of this year, 39% of refugees came from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Eritrea.)

BUT. Apart from fears of strain on an already tenuous economy and of the disguised infiltration of terrorists, “[economic benefits] is not the reason [asylum seekers] should” – or should not – “be accepted.”

Refugees ought to be welcomed and aided because they, too, are human beings, whose lives and human dignity are – to borrow the word – “terrorized” by oppressive governments, by an exchange of bullets and blood that is beyond their control, and even by those the FBI, too, has classified as “terrorists.”

Which brings me to another reason why I believe the “economic benefits” argument is not the strongest for building the case to welcome refugees.

Just as an example, immigrants seeking a US green card might apply through family, as an international student, or even because they will be major investors (i.e. create lots of jobs and pour in lots and lots of money). That is to say, these avenues of entry are warranted by an acknowledged value in the reunification of families, in education, and in improvement of the national economy.

Well. One other possible port of entry is as a refugee, and this possibility exists because of an entirely different reason – namely –

“Countries have legal and moral obligations to refugees.”

Not because they are human capital.

But because they are HUMAN. Period.

The state of the economy and national security are – most certainly – valid concerns. Yet I have faith, even with an influx of refugees, that the stable governments of the West can handle all three issues. They not only can, but must.

#becausehumanity

*What is the definition of “refugee”? Where do those obligations come from? Well, I can’t answer that exactly, but here’s something from the United Nations 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. (And last time I checked, the United States was a part of the UN.)

“A refugee, according to the Convention, is someone who is unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion. […] Importantly, the convention contains various safeguards against the expulsion of refugees. […] It provides that no one shall expel…a refugee against his or her own will, in any manner whatsoever, to a territory where he or she fears threats to life or freedom.”

So you live in Australia now?

No, um, actually it’s Austria.

See? I’ll show you the difference:

Left: TX-v-Austria.  Right: TX-v-Australia.

(Images from mapfight.appspot.com.)

MATH TIME:

If Texas is 8.3 times bigger than Austria, but 11.05 times smaller than Australia, how many times bigger than Austria is Australia? 

Anyway, yes, yes I do live in Austria now. Actually, I have since October, but I’ve only just recently managed to haul all my things over here from Germany during the two weeks that was our Easter vacation. (Yeah, we get two weeks off for Easter. Catholic country.)

So I’m schlepping my two oversized suitcases and a stuffed hiking backpack to the train station, when not a single young man passing me by offers a hand (much less a sympathetic look). If anything, one guy on his bike “tsk”’s at me for impeding his trajectory on the sidewalk, seeing as the Adrianna-backpack-behemoth + 2 suitcases = width of sidewalk.*

*That is such a pet peeve of mine. Never “tsk” at me.

I’m sweating from the exertion and thinking to myself, “Chivalry, WHERE ARE YOU?” when I hear a sweet voice from behind.

“Are you on your way to the station?”

I turn around and there stands a tall, dark, and handsome young man with chiseled pectorals and abdominals a petite elderly woman with dyed red hair and vintage purse in hand (vintage because she’s probably had it for decades). I don’t know how to say this without categorizing all German women over the age of 70, but she was the epitome of “German Oma.” (“Oma” means “Grandma.”)

“Yes, I am,” I answer with a hesitant smile, not sure how this is going to play out.

“Let me take one of those for you,” she gestures to my luggage. “I’m on my way there myself.”

“They’re very heavy…”

“Oh, that’s ok, I’ll just give it a go,” she smiles jollily.

At her own slow but steady pace, she pulls my large suitcase behind her, insisting on relinquishing it only once she’s delivered me to the elevator that will take me to my platform, despite my periodic remarks – “I can take it now” – “We’re almost there, I can manage.”

Along the way, we make small talk.

Well, I must admit, I initiate. “Small talk” is apparently a very American thing.

“I’m moving to Austria; that’s why I have so much luggage,” I offer, embarrassed.

“Mmhmm,” she nods politely. “Are you Austrian?”

“Oh, no, I’m from the United States.”

TIME OUT.

Mrs. I’m-Over-70-But-Gosh-Darn-It-I’m-Going-To-Help-This-Foreign-Looking-Girl-Pull-Her-Suitcase just asked me if I’m Austrian?

She is so cool. Seriously. My hero of the day.

First, because of her act of kindness, and second, because she neither assumed I’m from Asia nor showed surprise at my response.

As she bid me goodbye she said with delight, “I think one should do a good deed every day, and now I’ve already done mine this morning!”

FAQ:

Q:  But where is Austria?

A:  Well, it’s here: 

Image from Google Maps.

You’re right, all I did was hop the border into the Land of Mozart.

Q:  So does that mean you have to speak Austrian?

A:  No. Austrians speak German. (Well, “German.” Kind of like how US-Americans speak “English.”)

I know what you’re thinking.

Q:  But then, how is Austria any different from Germany?

But before that, I know what you’re really thinking.

Q:  How could you turn your back on Bach?

A:  It’s a bit complicated to answer your first question, but as for the second – I could never turn my back on Bach. Trust me. Herr Mozart certainly didn’t.

To be honest, I’m still figuring out the “Austrian identity.” Heck, I had a mini-identity crisis upon arrival, initially feeling more “German” than “American.” (Don’t worry, I’m American again.)

What I can say is that – while my first impression of Germany was that it was very small – Austria is even smaller. German has several cities with populations ≥ 1 million (Berlin, Hamburg, Munich & Cologne) whereas Austria really has only its capital to speak of, with a population of 1.7 million in Vienna. I live in Austria’s “2^nd-largest city,” Graz, with a whopping 270,000 residents. (Dramatic pause for awkward clearing of throat and chirping of crickets.) With six universities, add about 44,000 students to that figure.

Aside from Mozart, Austria also boasts such celebrities as Arnold Schwarzenegger (born in the same province as Graz) and the sensational Conchita Wurst, who can be seen in street-front windows sponsoring Bank Austria.

Never heard of Conchita? It’s ok, neither had I. She was the winner of Eurovision in 2014.

Apart from the stereotypical Wiener Schnitzel and Sachertorte (yum), Austria is also home to this delicious trifecta: (1) Kürbiskernöl (pumpkin seed oil -- delicious on salads), (2) Kaiserschmarrn (megafluffy pancakes + compote + powdered sugar), and (3) Schilchersturm (a rosé made during the early stages of fermentation from a grape grown only in Styria, only available for about a one-month season ).

Would eat this every day if I could.

I’ll have to get back to y’all on the Austria-v-Germany question. Until then, I will say this:

For the first time in my life, I have used purple toilet paper.

P.S. There are no kangaroos in Austria.

The Anonymity of Trains

Unlike planes, wherein passengers are compelled to please fasten their seatbelts, and wherein the privilege of sitting in an exit row is not the luxury of following crew member instructions in the event of an emergency, but rather, the extra leg room, trains grant you that mysterious quality of anonymity only achieved by the steady ebb and flow of embarking and disembarking travelers scrambling for a choice seat. Not to mention the vastness of Alpine landscape that engulfs your journey.

That’s right. The purchase of a train ticket does not include an assigned seat. You can cough up another few euros for a reservation (which can be worth forgoing penny-pinching on a busy travel day, I assure you, having once been among the sardine-packed seatless individuals on the luggage-end of a lopsided wagon), but for whatever reason, most people don’t. My German teacher in Erfurt was affronted by the idea of paying €4.50 each way (“That’s €9.00!”). Even the Austrian Railway employee at the ticket counter advised me against getting a reservation (“You won’t need it”).

This inevitably leads to madness on the platform.

Perhaps thanks to German Ordnung, even before the train pulls in you can look up the very section of the platform your 2^nd-class wagon (because who travels 1^st?) will stop. Approximately 1.013 minutes before the train approaches, an announcement saying so is made over the loud speakers. This triggers the mobilization of the sitting/smoking/texting masses to the ridged yellow line of demarcation.

Personal space and chivalry become relics of antiquity as everyone around you hovers by the doors, anxious to board as soon as the flow of those exiting ceases. Once aboard, your eyes survey the status of occupied and free seats in either adjacent wagon, like a hawk on the hunt, and the field mouse is seat 102, window, with table, silent wagon, facing the direction of travel, no small children and therefore no potential temper tantrums in a wagon-wide radius.

At exactly 13:54 the train departs (but if there’s a 5-minute delay, that’s barely forgivable; 15 minutes and you have the right to remain silent and pissed; 1 hour or more and you’ll never make your connection). You curl into fetal position and settle in for a cat nap, but not before setting an alarm so you don’t miss your stop (a misstep virtually impossible by flight).

When you awake, you peek surreptitiously and curiously at who you’ve won in the transient-neighbor lottery. Sometimes you feel like talking, sometimes you don’t. (Most of the time you don’t.)

Last Thursday I woke up to see another young woman across the table from me, also catching some Z’s. When we made eye contact, I said a polite hello, and that was that. Unable to sleep further and at a loss for how to occupy my time, I began to make a stack of redundant receipts that had accumulated in my wallet. Being a good world citizen, I made my way to the end of the wagon where the trash cans for sorting (but not Sorting, as in Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, or Slytherin) may be found. Just as I made my way past three rowdy pre-teen boys, I heard an unmistakable “Ni hao,” spoken sideward with the lilt of mockery and followed by an echo of not-quite-low-pitched-because-they’re-still-going-through-puberty guffaws from his goonies (let’s call them Crabbe and Goyle).

“Oh, yeah, that’s hi-lar-i-ous!” I rounded on him.

Goyle looked over to “Malfoy” with an expression that read, “Tee hee, she’s actually talking to you, dude.”

Cooling off enough to revert to German, I continued, “So, you see someone who happens to look Asian – ”

“Uh huh…”

“ – and you think to yourself, oh, she must come from China! And with this presumption you say, ‘Ni hao,’ like it’s some clever joke. But guess what? It’s NOT funny.”

He apologized with a sincerity I had trouble believing, but it was probably the best I was going to get.

I marched on to the end of the wagon only to discover that there weren’t any recycling bins after all and felt foolish making an about face, returning to my seat, receipts still in hand, a bit unsure if it had been such a good idea to raise my voice in the train. I then made eye contact for the second time with my neighbor.

She nodded, “Gut.”

Though we only exchanged three words during the entire three-hour journey (“Hallo – Gut – Ciao”) that affirmation meant everything to me. That a perfect stranger had acknowledged my right to defend myself and teach those boys a sugar-free lesson. When would they otherwise ever get that chance? When bullying a shy foreign-exchange student still struggling with asking for directions in German? Or worse yet, after reaching adulthood?

Catching something along the lines of, “Man, she’s totally gonna whip out some kung fu!” I only wished I could muster up some kind of Jedi mind trick or send them a slew of Howlers by post – anything devious and devoid of a strictly Asian association.

Why did he think it’d be funny?

Why didn’t his “friends” call him out?

Why is it that people try so hard to be “cool,” even when it isn’t “right”?

I should say that this has happened to me before in Europe. But it must also be said that this scenario could just as likely have happened back in the States. Putting on airs and calling it “cool” at the expense of putting down others is an international problem. A problem that makes me very angry.

Slipping back under the blanket of anonymity I focused very hard on a round of Sudoku* in order to put my mind elsewhere. And I mused that perhaps it was best that this had happened on the train, where I could go back to doing my thing, and they could go back to their banter. Maybe the lesson wouldn’t sink in right away, but at least the boy wasn’t entirely losing face either, able to brush it off for now. Maybe he went home that day and reconsidered his actions. Or not.

*Actually, now that I think about it, this is somewhat ironic. I don’t have any martial arts skills, but I can play some mean Sudoku and Ken-Ken!

But maybe the next time he thinks about telling this same old joke, he’ll think twice. And not.

At the very least, I’ve realized that in comparing the trio to Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle, that must make me Hermione.

Which is nothing but awesome.

Violence is not the answer.

Whiplash Culture Shock: 2.5 weeks in the States after 50 in Germany

When you return from a year abroad, you realize that nothing back home has really changed, but since being away, you have.

Sure, friends are either getting haircuts or getting married, but America is still the good ol’ USA. The national flag has always flown over every car dealership and in your neighbor’s front yard, but you were never quite so aware of their omnipresence until living in possibly the least nationalistic nation in the world made you as sensitive to the red, white, and blue as a dog to squirrels.

As I child, I used to recite the pledge of allegiance every time I saw the flag. (International readers: This is abnormal.) My parents probably remember with some bitterness that oft-driven stretch of highway with many a dealership.

And now?

Landing: New York, New York

The 70-strong CBYX crew said a bittersweet “Tschüss” and “Danke schön” to the Lufthansa flight attendants as we disembarked at JFK, a large U.S. flag greeting us at customs and immigration, along with a new station of electronic kiosks that have replaced human customs officers, who now deal only with non-citizens.

(You touch-screen your way through “No, I do not have fruits, animals, or more than 10,000 USD on me” and then fit yourself webcam-style into the outline of a torso to have your mug taken. As I squatted to align myself, a supervising officer enlightened me, “You can move the monitor.” Embarrassed, I laughed awkwardly, “How practical!”)

On the streets of New York City, everything is as I left it. Young 20-something sunglassed hipsters brush past 30-something fashionistas in Louis Vuitton pushing high-end strollers around suited-up, briefcase-toting businessmen juggling Starbucks and a Bluetooth ear piece.

I'm sure they were there before, too, I just never noticed --

Standing on the corner of 47^th and 3^rd I can count eight flags. Underground waiting for the 6, the subway whooshes past me, a flag adhered to the same corner of each car. Walking along the river, more than 15 miniature flags wave from the outdoor deck of a seafood joint.

Next Stop: Fort Worth, Texas

Coming back home is a familiar feeling.

The first notable experience is the dread of leaving the air-conditioned airport. The tinted automatic doors slide open and you are unapologetically engulfed in 100°F and blinded by the sun hitting concrete.

The second is hitting up all your favorite eateries. (More on that later.)

The third is driving a car again. Like riding a bike, you don’t forget how.

During my brief week home, between visiting family and Godfamily and adopted families, I say hello to some longhorns (no, really, I do), eat Krispy Kremes 3 breakfasts in a row, have the best homemade pie I’ve had in a year (sorry, Germany, but you don’t really know how to do pies), and try not to cry while singing a wedding.

At the Fort Worth Stockyards.

One night in Texas

Grandma, who is also a snake by the Chinese zodiac, is 60 years older than me. She’s lost a lot of her teeth, walks very slowly with the aid of a walking stick, and is suffering from failing vision and hearing, but most of all, from solitude. (Her most faithful companion is Cantonese television.)

I visit her now that I’m back. Dad and I enter through the garage door because she’s afraid of wasps and lizards dashing through the front door, where they’ve recently sprayed. I run to her side, bending over to hug her short frame, and I note that she smells the same as she always has, a mixture of her favorite Chinese soap and Bounce (her dryer sheet of choice). She wears a random T-shirt covered by her usual sweater vest (to stay warm, even though it’s 100 degrees outside), loose-fitting pants, and house slippers. Her hair is still salt-and-pepper gray. No doubt she trims her hair herself. Her eyes look smaller, the crow’s feet more pronounced, and I think she has fewer teeth than the last time I saw her.

She loves to save things and is loath to throw anything away, sentimental or not. Having barely stepped into the house, she shows me the mail and asks me if I need any books. I tell her gently that the Half Price Books coupons have already expired. We sort through credit card and airline advantage program deals. She’s told they’re advertisements, and she hesitates, asking me for a second opinion.

“Yes, Grandma, they’re advertisements.” The medium-sized print on the lower-right hand corner of one envelope reads, “This is an advertisement.” I point to each word and translate into Mandarin, “這是廣告.”

Moving beyond the foyer she begins offering all varieties of food: canned eel, instant coffee, guava-flavored hard candy, fresh plums, bran bars, and Little Debbie blueberry muffins. My father and I joke that, should any epidemic strike, we would be able to survive off of Grandma’s stores for up to two years.

For as long as I’ve known my grandmother, she’s always lived like this, with piles of mail and newspapers and packaged foods towering around her. It occurred to me that she couldn’t have always been this way, that perhaps she didn’t grow up used to having goods so readily available.

In fact, as a girl she often didn’t have anything at all.

Sitting on either side of me on the green pleather couch, my grandmother entreats my father to do something – what, I’m not sure, because they’re speaking in dialect. I interrupt the cyclic conversation, suddenly curious, “Grandma, what was it like during the War?”

Completely nonplussed by the abrupt change of topic, she begins to answer in Mandarin but quickly reverts to Cantonese. Dad has to occasionally translate for me into English.

…

婆婆’s father had made (marginal amounts of) money selling wares door-to-door. Her mother repaired costumes for Chinese theater troupes. A few days before it actually happened, her mother had a dream forewarning of a Japanese air raid. They retreated to a relative’s home in the countryside and soon received the news that their home had indeed been bombed. The Japanese were overtaking Canton (Guangdong) so the family retreated to Hong Kong, along with many other mainland refugees. At one point their shelter caught fire, and with only a split second to think before fleeing, my great-grandmother grabbed the costumes she’d been sewing, for fear that their loss would lead to demands for reparation from their owners. Otherwise, they had nothing.

            My grandmother was about ten years old.

Eventually, they made just enough money to rent one bed in a room full of bunk beds. The residents of the crowded room permitted two homeless refugees to take temporary shelter in the entryway and use the facilities to drink water and relieve themselves. These two would go around the city collecting cigarette butts, accumulating the very last dregs of tobacco to re-wrap and sell. When food ran scarce during the invasion of Hong Kong, there was much looting, and the two homeless ones stole a bag of rice, which they gave to my grandmother’s family. Because of their kindness, my grandmother survived starvation.

The British surrendered Hong Kong with little resistance. Normally, only young and fit Chinese would be hired by the Japanese as labor, but one Japanese official took pity on my bone-thin grandmother and allowed her to wear the badge that allowed Chinese to work. She carried firewood barefoot for hours, day after day. (“See,” she points to her arms and legs, “that’s why I have these scars.”) Sometimes, this same official would give her his leftover food, which she would then bring back to share with her parents.

“That’s why PoPo doesn’t hate all of the Japanese,” my dad explains. “She happened to meet a ‘kind’ one.” Air quotes around “kind.”

Eventually the Japanese decided that there weren’t enough resources in the territory, what with the crowds of mainland refugees. Those from the mainland were sent back, and my grandmother and her parents walked the entire way back to Canton. My grandmother can’t remember anymore how many months it took, but she does remember the hunger, falling sick, and just wanting the journey to be over. Some Chinese villagers living near the path offered ladles of rice porridge to these travelers, one ladle per mouth. Another miracle of kindness that allowed her survival.

One of my favorite Cantonese dishes: congee with pork and preserved
duck egg -- certainly not regarded by today's standards as fancy fare, but
still more than what my grandmother must have encountered on the
journey back to Canton. When I was a little girl, she would always make
me congee if I got sick.

Last stop:  Philadelphia, PA

I’m struck by the irony that I’m sipping a cappuccino in my favorite café on Germantown Avenue.

The Malta Club House on Boathouse Row.

Earlier this week I made a 20km (don’t ask me how many miles) trek into downtown Philly, where one in the row of iconic boathouses is another irony:  a quaint example of Fachwerk flying the American flag. Benjamin Franklin Avenue is lined by flags from around the world, including Deutschland’s. I visit Independence Hall, pick up a bubble tea from Chinatown (probably my last in a while), and discover at the end of my ride that the front reflector has since been stolen.

Naturally.

Maybe it’s the freshness of my German travels and the anticipation of being back on European soil very soon that makes me see all of these Germanisms (and Americanisms). I’ve had a little time to reflect, and I realize I’ve (worryingly?) found Germanisms in myself, too.

Distance makes the heart grow fonder:  Germanisms I can’t seem to shake off

1. Speaking English with German grammar construction and doubting my English
   (“…eligibility…e-li-gi-bi-li-ty…that feels funny…eligibility. Is that a word??”
2. Keeping my phone on “military time”
3. Showering the German way
   (i.e. turning off the shower head while lathering and turning it back on to rinse)
4. Lowering A/C levels
   (Americans, and especially Texans, really do blast it)
5. Wanting to wish everyone a “Guten Appetit” before digging in; being similarly unable to drink an alcoholic beverage without first looking everyone in the eye and saying “Prost”
6. Getting surprised when people I’ve never met before keep saying “hi,” but I get caught so unawares I can’t react in time
7. Cringing while every single thing at the check-out gets put in a plastic bag faster than I can say “No, th-”
8. Being appalled at the widespread use of Styrofoam L
9. Where are all the recycle bins? L

On the other hand:  Welcome Americanisms J

1. Nobody smoking in my face (smoking, recently described to me as “slow-motion suicide”)
2. Not needing an adapter to charge my appliances
3. Listening to NPR in the morning
4. Watching music videos on YouTube without a VPN
5. Nobody asking me where I’m from.
6. And...

Binge-eating my way through 2.5 weeks

It's not that you can't get good Chinese food in Germany, it's that you can't get good Chinese food in Weimar. 

As a warm-up in NYC, my first meal back in the States was of sushi and sashimi, featuring the appropriately-named "American Dream" roll. We hit up K-town for 순두부찌개 (sundubu jjigae) and 비빔밥 (bibimbap). My last meal in the Big Apple was conveyor-belt sushi at midnight -- because one can never eat enough sushi. Bubble tea was a daily beverage.

Back on home turf the first meal was similarly modest:  蔥油餅，韭菜盒子，紅燒牛肉麵，小籠包 (scallion pancake, leek turnover, beef noodle soup, and steamed pork buns)...

Left: beef noodle soup, leek turnovers in the background.  Right: steamed pork buns (i.e. heaven on earth).

...followed later by 紅豆沙麻糬（當然還有）珍珠奶茶 (red bean paste mochi, and of course, bubble tea).

Soft gooey goodness.

Not wanting to leave any base uncovered, Tex-Mex was the obvious other requisite cuisine.

Beef fajitas with all the fixin's, bottomless chips and salsa, and a frozen
margarita as big as Texas.

My stomach capacity would never again wish to eat so much food in so little time, but looking at these photos, I'm already drooling and ready to do it all over again.

…

Oh, America, I love you, I really do. (I just wish you’d recycle more.) And I don’t know when I’ll be back. I’m glad I got to see so many friends and family and collect their stories during this whirlwind return*, including a day of business in three different states, and I’ll only miss you all the more once I’m back in Europe.

*If I didn’t visit you, please don’t be offended!

This past year showcased:

• the NSA scandal and tapping of Merkel's cell phone
• the German general election in September, whose results I read on a chalkboard upon exiting the symphony hall post-concert in Cologne (pictured below)
• Germany winning the 2014 World Cup

"Bundestagswahl 2013"

What will this next year bring…?

Will I become more German…?

Will I be able to exercise these last 2.5 weeks off…?

Frame of Reference

I say "toe-may-toe," you say "toe-mah-toe." I say "baked potato," 

you say "Ofenkartoffel" and add a whole lot of dill.

The other day I’m sitting on the train from Austria back to Weimar, reading Die Zeit, a German newspaper, admittedly with the occasional aid of my dictionary. Across the aisle is a presumably American family (they could be Canadian, but on the son’s jacket are the Stars and Stripes embroidered), and a couple rows back are three presumably American Collared-Dress-Shirts chatting over an array of IBM laptops.

I’m not being my usual “Ooh, Americans! I should talk to them!” self because I’m feeling motion sick and also in the mood to write. (I am, moreover, receiving the socials cues of their sitting in complete quiet, Dad reading a book and Junior asleep, face plastered to the window.)

Also, I just have to sit down and write because (a) I am rather impressing myself by virtue of reading a German-language newspaper, (b) I've been starting a tragically growing heap of potential-but-soon-neglected blog posts for the past couple months, and (c) I've only got 4 CBYX days left before I hop on a jet plane and can no longer reflect on the German-American relationship with the legitimizing status of American-living-in-Germany.

I'm not sure what a June 26 issue of Die Zeit is doing on board this 10th of July, but it does occur to me that since living in Germany, I've become 500% more aware of the goings on in not only Germany, but also on the European continent (Russia, too). That, and how these Eurasian folk perceive us A-murr-icans.

The long media-dominating NSA scandal aside, little effigies of “AMERICAN” pop up in more realms than I’d expect. In supermarkets on jars of peanut butter and packages of hot dog buns. Broadcast in every bar, Germany plays against (OK, defeats) the US team in the World Cup. On the 4^th, a small brotherhood of Americans in Weimar sing the Star-Spangled Banner from their apartment balcony, concluded by a round of “U-S-A! U-S-A!”

Exports, sports, "culture."

A German asks me what I think about Obamacare. A man from Eritrea asks me if I can even name other countries in Africa. An Austrian refers to “that horrible war” in Vietnam, adding parenthetically that I personally had nothing to do with it, and his fellow countrywoman describes with fondness visiting pre-2001 America – an America that earnestly believed in possibility and making anything happen if one worked hard enough – this, the America I described one year ago as “a place where dreams come true,” in contrast with the post-2001 obsession with fear.

The role of government, the “living in a bubble” syndrome, history. The very definition of “America.”

I see an economic effigy (oh, that’s cute, an FDA-regulated picnic basket) on the front page of Die Zeit.

"Will the Americans soon have control over us? Trade with the USA shall
become alleviated: the Germans fear genetically-engineered corn, hormone-
pumped steaks and chloro-chicken from overseas. As well as new conven-
tions in the economy. But what really lies ahead of us?"

“What lies ahead of us?”

Perhaps this is too strong a claim, but I would guess that the average American is ill-equipped to answer a European’s questions: why the high levels of obesity, why no universal health care, how have you never heard of the EU Parliament?

I have a theory.

The American frame of reference is simultaneously enormous and microscopic.

Allow me to illustrate the enormity of America with an observation from the point of view of language.

The German "berghoch" means "uphill,” literally composed of "Berg" (mountain) + "hoch" (high).

Ok, fair enough, one can go up both a mountain and a hill. No gravity-defying transatlantic difference yet.

But the use of “Berg” this side of the Atlantic is much more generous. I’m walking uphill to the church and the girl with me sighs, “Ugh. Berg.”

And I assure you, it was a hill. It’d be like me taking a stroll in the park and spotting an anthill that I have to circumvent. “Ugh. Mountain.”

Now from a geopolitical point of view:

After kicking out the Redcoats, purchasing Louisiana, and fulfilling “manifest destiny,” we had a lot of land on our hands. Though China’s land mass is comparable, our population density is 4.23 times more manageable. Add into the equation 2 peaceful neighbors plus-or-minus 24-hour Wal-Mart’s and up-to-15-lane highways, and you’ve got yourself a self-sustaining, resource-rich, politically-powerful, militarily-mighty 1^st-world country.

That said, the happenings and goings on of other lands are simply far away. We worry about immigrants from the southern border, but not in the way that Germany worries about immigrants and asylum-seekers coming from Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine (and the list goes on). We rely on neither the peso nor the Canadian dollar, whereas the EU is an interdependent network of small countries, each led by its own politicians, held together by a thread that is the Euro. We worry about the flow of oil from the Middle East, but not to the degree that some EU countries worry about a 90%+ dependence on energy from Russia.

We are enormous.

Sally and Bob Johnson from Cornfield, Kansas can work their day jobs without any racket from neighboring France or Italy. In fact, a cruise on the Seine or a gondola ride in Venice is just what they’re looking forward to in retirement. Acres of gold rolling about them, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson know what to call a mountain, and what to call a hill. But enormity buffers their daily lives from the rest of the world.

Therein lies the conundrum. Enormity dwarfs.

With only roughly three centuries to work with, their children and grandchildren will study in roughly equal parts (1) the American Revolution, (2) the Civil War, and (3) the 20^th century (cramming in WWI, WWII, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, the Gulf War(s) , and basically every other instance of America “mitigating international conflict” in Central and Southern America, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia). Thanks in large part to being enormous and having an ocean on other side of us, the most conflict on home soil (not that I wish for more) that we can relate to is that first two-thirds. Yet that last third is the most relevant to a global frame of reference.

Enormity dwarfs.

Until what is American is super-sized and what is not is – still of the utmost relevance.