Lizhen

Simply reverse the order of the English addresses, totally, don’t hesitate.

Then look at the Chinese address which you need to dive into. I am not exaggerating when I say ” dive into”, I still feel desperate while writing down a Chinese address in English, I mean, in Pinyin, which consists of the very 26 latin letters, thank God.

Some companies or organisations may have their P.O.box, which is simplified addresses, easy to write, so we will not talk about it here.

Basically one Chinese city address shall look like this :

China-Province Name-City Name-District Name-Road Name-Community’s Road Number-Community Name-Residence Building Name or Building Number-Appartment Number

Recipient’name

Finished!

But I’m sure that you are still confused: How do I write my Chinese address in Pinyin (English)? Now we need to put the Chinese adress into Google Translate, automatically the address in English will be layed out in an order which English people are used to, get out of your comfortable zone, reverse the order! Make sure the receiver’s name will have the whole bottom line, no sharing here. Professionally Done! Cheers!

Note: a Chinese countryside address works in a similar way.

Wonton can be called “dumpling” ,too. But actually northern Chinese make dumplings while southern Chinese make wonton. There is a saying in China:”The most yummy food is dumplings.” I couldn’t understand, because in my eyes wonton is much more delicious than dumplings. Recently I saw a list of “foreigners’ favourite Chinese food”, in which the wonton is in front of dumplings! Hehe, I agree.

Not only wonton is more tasty than dumplings, but also easier to make. Simply go to a nearby market, buy wonton skin, 1 pound of wonton skin can make 50 to 60 wonton, depending on how thick the skin is, if you can not be sure , just ask the guy who is selling the skin, he(she) must know it.

How to make wonton? there are two crucial steps, one is to make the filling, the other is to wrap the filling with wonton skin.

1.How to make wonton filling? You can put whatever you like into a wonton, as long as you keep one rule in you mind: make the filling dry. Otherwise the skin will go broken very easily. Though you can make filling out of anything, I still suggest the following ingredients: vegetable or(and) meat.

2. how to wrap wonton? hummmmmm, easy to do but difficult to describe, hehe. Maybe you can find a video teaches how to make wonton^_^.

I love wonton, but I am so lazy to make dry fillings for my wonton, so I found a kind of vegetable, which I only have to use a small trick to “dry ” it without drying it.:-) That is leek! Now comes my wonton with minced pork and leek filling!

How to make them?

Ingredients:

1. 1 pound of minced pork, half a pound of leek;

2.20g of ginger, minced it until it looks like mud. Of course if you don’t mind to taste ginger, you don’t have to mince it that thoroughly;

3.soy sauce, salt, one egg white, Chinese cooking wine, chicken soup salt.

Steps:

1. stir minced pork with salt, soy sauce, Chinese cooking wine, chicken soup salt, minced ginger,one egg white to one direction until you feel the filling becomes thick, if you fail to make the filling thick, add some starch to help you;

2. put the prepared meat into fridge for half an hour, meanwhile cut leek as small as you can, put some cooking oil into the cut leek——to prevent leek juice from coming out, or you can put the leek under sunshine for 15 minutes, that works, too;

3. mix prepared meat and leek together, that’s the filling for wonton!

Attention:

after you mix meat and leek, please avoid to add salt into the filling anymore, that will push the leek to release juice…..if you find the filling really is not salty enough, then additionally prepare some soup for your wonton, just like the wonton in the displayed picture. You can see, I put seaweed and spring onion into the soup:-)

Now we are in 2019, I wrote this article 10 years ago. Now The birth policy has changed, with complicated amendments, but basically the government selectively “authorise” certain people to have 2 kids, at the moment. (Written by Lizhen 19/03/2019)

 

It’s a shame which I have to admit, I really thought the Chinese people who breached  one-child policy deserved their punishment until I started to use my own brain to think about the events happening around me.

I have a friend, which is the second girl for her parents, she could have another sister because she was a twin girl. Her mom didn’t dare to go home when she was still carrying the twin baby until the babies were born. Her mom had never been in a hospital so she didn’t know she was carrying 2 girls instead of one. Unfortunately she only prepared one set of clother for her baby, and that was a winter, damn! She hurried home after the babies’ birth , seeing several officials from the birth control bureau already blocked the door of her house. No matter how terribly the woman and her families begged them, they scolded them and kept the woman and the 2 new-born babies outside until one baby died, from hunger or from coldness.

My mother told me, the operation of one-child policy started in 1982 in my hometown, hundreds of  pregnant women were forced to have an abortion, no matter how many months the women already had been pregnant, even in 8th month or 9th month, the government didn’t care at all.

Nowadays, the policy is still in power, only the government is not applying it so bloodily, instead, threatening to take the woman’s families’ jobs away, seducing with money your neighbores to inform the local goverment about anyone’s second pregnancy……..and the same, the government doesn’t care how many months their women have been pregnant.

Yeah, there are too many Chinese, which is already a horror to Chinese and also western countries, but there must be a better way to control the population from rocketing up, or there is a better way to implement the one-child policy. With a little mercy, with a little care, with a little planning, maybe the policy would not appear so cruel.

Please note: some social and political changes happened during the passed 10 years. ( Lizhen 19/03/2019)

What’s Hukou? According to its meaning, it also means “household registration” or “registered address”.
In China, normal people (not including the army) possibly can have 3 kinds of ID certificates: ID card, passport and family book. What’s the difference and relationship among them?

First, for Chinese the most useful certificate is the ID card. Not all Chinese people have passports, only a small part of them need the passports — this is not too bad.  

Second, the address on the ID card isn’t always the same with the address on your family book. The address on your family book is more powerful. The address is very important for Chinese, it not only shows where you are living, but also shows “where did you come from”, which means in a word if you are a city citizen or a countryside resident. What’s the difference between a city citizen and a countryside resident? Let’s make two examples: first, in China 4 farmers’ vote tickets equal to one city citizen’s vote, which was even 8:1 before 2005； the other example is, let’s suppose one farmer and one city citizen died in a same traffic accident, neither of them has health insurance, there will be a big difference on the compensation which the two victims families will get. The farmer will get half of the city citizen’s compensation or even less. I mentioned earlier that the address on your family book also means “where did you come from”, my meaning is, the address determines whether you come from a higher or lower social level.

The Chinese government is declaring that Chinese have equal rights and equal duties, that’s not true. On many issues the Chinese government still hasn’t paid attention or made effort to keep it equal, or I doubt it simply doesn’t care, such as the farmer’s land ownership right, poor families’ kids’ education right or the protection on women.

Just have a look at the Hukou system, the government is still sticking to divide the whole population into two parts according to their registered address. Then there come the differences on social insurance, social aid, education quality, but there are many more differences — as everybody knows in China the policies are more practical and powerful than its little assistant, so-called “Law”. 

Once a German was kind enough to tell me:”It is said that your Chinese eat everything with two legs except human and with four legs except tables.” Hahaha, yeah this is really embarrassing sometimes, We are eating a lot of horrible things. However, I still cherish the hope that oversea friends can realize China is huge and has a big population, not all the Chinese are eating snakes, monkey heads or something like that.

What I want to talk about is meat and bones. Here in China, bones are more expensive than pure meat, for example, pork ribs are much more expensive than pork meat. So I love to buy meat, pure meat! Now I love to buy beef, Which nearly has the same price with pork! What did I say? Yeah, China is too big, sometimes the differences are really shocking.

Ingredients:

1.500g of beef( the part around the cow’s waist);
2.2 small potatoes;
3. one star anise, salt, oil, one chilli,curry powder.

Here comes the steps:

1. cut the beef to cubes( 2cm×2cm×2cm), cut potatoes to chunks;
2. when the water in the wok is about 80°, put the beef in, cook it without cover until the water is boiling, get the beef out, throw away the bloody water;
3. hot wok hot oil, fry the beef until the color changed a little bit to be golden;
4. put the star anise and chilli into the wok, fry the beef for another 2 minutes;
5. cover the beef with hot water, make sure that the beef is just covered, don’t put too much water if you don’t wanna make beef soup 🙂
6. cook the beef with small flame for 1 hour, put some salt into the soup, go on cooking it for 15 minutes;
7. put the potatoes and curry powder into the soup, cook all the things together for another half an hour, then it must be ready!

Attentions:
Don’t put salt and potatoes and salt together ,otherwise the dear potatoes will suck most of the salt and make themselves too salty while the beef still has a decent light taste.

When I was still in my childhood, there was still a lack of food, that was a crazy time for China, so many things seem so stupid and ridiculous nowadays, however, the people in my hometown didn’t suffer so much from the food lack, because we have so many fish around. I never get enough about fish.

Ingredients:

1.Chinese chub(2 kg without head);
2.4 pieces of bean curds( Dou Fu);
3.4 mushrooms;
4.4 pieces of ginger, salt, cooking wine, spring onion.

Here comes the steps:

1. divide the whole fish to 3 parts: one spine and two pieces of fish meat, chop the fish spine to several chunks, cut the fish meat to pieces ( the fish pieces in the picture were all about 1 cm thick), stir salt and several drops of cooking wine with all the fish, and leave them there for half an hour;
2. meanwhile prepare other materials:cut the bean curds to 1cm×1cm×1cm cubes, cut the mushrooms to pieces;
3. hot wok and hot oil, put ginger in first, then fry fish spine chunks for 2 minutes, pour some hot water into the wok( fish chunks are just totally covered), wok covered and keep boiling slightly for 15 minutes(you can find the soup become a little bit milky white);
4. put mushrooms in and cook for another 5 minutes, then put bean curd cubes in, another 5 minutes;
5. time for the fish pieces, lay them carefully into the hot soup, don’t stir them, otherwise the fish pieces will fall apart;
6. when the fish pieces’ color changes to white, the whole fish soup is ready, decorate it with spring onions!

I suppose the meat ball dish is a kind of Chinese fast food, if you don’t have much time to cook, just make some meat balls in weekends. There are various ways to make meat balls, such as meat with mushrooms, with bamboos or with spring onions, i prefer the meat with bamboos, for I was brought up in a town where there were a lot of elegant bamboos 🙂

Ingredients:

1.500g of pork with about 20% fat, of course, minced;
2.spring onions (where I am living now only can get dry bamboos so I didn’t buy bamboos)
3.egg white of one egg;
4.300g of white gourd;
5.white pepper powder, cooking wine, salt, a little starch, several leaves of Chinese parsley.

Here are the details:

1.blend the pork with white pepper powder, cooking wine, salt, starch and egg white, stir all the things in one direction until the minced meat starts to be thick and sticky, leave it there for half an hour (if the weather is too hot, put it into a fridge);
2.put cut spring onions into the meat;
3.remove the skin of the white gourd, cut it to thin pieces;
3.cook some water in a wok, turn down the flame when the water starts to boil;
4.use a spoon to help your palm to make meat balls, carefully lay the meat balls into the wok;
5.cook the meat balls with small flame for 15 minutes until it is sure that the meat balls will not break to parts, then put the white gourd pieces into the wok, turn up the flame to middle level for another 5 minutes;
6.pinch some salt to put it into the wok, giving the soup a little bit taste;
7.throw some Chinese parsley leaves on the surface of the soup, then it’s done 🙂

Attention:

There is another way to make the meat balls tasty: just fry them totally in oil when they are still freshly made. But it is obvious the meat will suck a lot of oil, which is believed not so healthy, but with this way, you can store the meat balls longer and better in your fridge.

I only knew the chub fish was really cheap and I was told that fish was not so tasty. My life was full of all kinds of fishes, so I hardly paid attention to the chub fish until one day in another city I found only the chub fish was acceptable and available for me……

Ingredients:
1.1kg of chub fish;
2.one huge Chinese lettuce(more explanation at the end of this article);
3.spring onion;

Here comes the steps:

1.cut the fish to several pieces,rub some salt and cooking wine on the surface and leave it there for 1 hour;
2.cut the Chinese lettuce to thin slices;
3.hot wok hot oil, a little chilli and 3 pieces of ginger, then lay the fish pieces into the wok carefully,fry the fish a little bit on both sides, drip some cooking wine and more soy sauce;
4.put hot water into the wok, bury 60% of the fish;
5.when the water starts to boil, put lettuce slices and salt;
6.taste the lettuce, if it’s cooked, the dish must be ready! Sprinkle the spring onion pieces on the top,that’s it!

*Chinese lettuce: it is NOT a lettuce at all! It is a kind of root beet whose head looks like a lettuce, lolllll. Without access to a Chinese market, it’s near to impossible to find them. Celery can be used as a substitute for this lettuce. 

I found it seems we Chinese really love to fry food, and we pay a lot of attention to the appearance of dishes, so it’s normal if you see your radish dish is served with the shape of a funky duck or a gorgeous flower.Hmm, I am not a cook, i would appreciate my kitchen so much if it produces yummy food, even without beautiful appearances.

Here comes a “pretty” dish, also has nice taste:-)

Ingredients:

1.200g of preserved ham: clean it first and steam it for half an hour or cook it for half an hour;
2.400g of Sweet Abroad Peas(actually we call the pea “Holland Pea”)
3.2 chilli, salt.

There are more details:

1. cook some water with several drops of oil and a little salt, when water starts to boil, throw the peas in for 1 minute, then take the peas out and put them into cold water to cool down;
2.cut the preserved ham to pieces,hot pot and hot oil, then fry the chilli a little bit before put the ham slices into the wok, fry the ham until you can see the colour changed a little bit;
3.put peas(without water)into the wok,fry a little bit, some salt, then it’s ready. Easy, hun? It is a normal Chinese dish.

Attentions:

1. the preserved hams are normally salty,so be careful about how much salt you will put into the dish;
2.don’t fry the peas too much, otherwise they will lose their beautiful green colour:-)

If someone asks me: “how do you like your Chinese food?” Well, I don’t think I am able to answer the question, though I am a Chinese. China is too big, there are 56 ethnic groups, accordingly the food is various. My appetite is changing all the time, depending on the seasons, the weather and my mood, but deep in my heart, i prefer the food style, which came from my hometown. Here comes a dish of typical Jiangnan style: bean curd leaves rolled with minced pork:

Ingredient:

• 4 pieces of bean curd leaves: please cut them to pieces with the size of 10cm×10cm;
• 500g of minced pork;
• 2 spring onions;
• 1 carrot

Here comes the steps:

• put salt,soy sauce,cooking wine,white pepper powder,starch into the minced pork, leave it there for half an hour;
• put the cut bean curd leaves in water, to keep them soft;
• cut the spring onion and put it into the pork;
• roll the bean curd leaves with pork, tie the leaves with strings;
• cook the prepared bean curd leaves in a wok or steam them (this time, i cook them in a wok) for 15 minutes;
• take the leaves out, cut away the strings, put them in a plate;
• put salt,sugar, soy sauce, watery starch into the soup left in the wok, then add the soup into the plate,that’s it!