Light Snacks Will Be Served

Escape To My Kitchen

Spices for massaman curry. 

My wife and I live in Yannawa. This neighborhood is tucked away in a southern fold of Bangkok, in a crook of the Chao Phraya River that is said to look like the belly of a dragon. On most days, it's a peaceful neighborhood, and one that I've become emotionally attached to in my 16 months living here. Our neighborhood has a pleasant mix of working class and white collar people; it has outdoor fresh markets and an expensive grocery store; street food and ice cream parlours, whiskey bars and kindergartens. It's a neighborhood where people welcome you with warm smiles when you head out in the morning to buy fruit and eggs, and where the beer and chicken wing vendor knows your name, even if she can't pronounce it. 

But lately my neighborhood hasn't felt very safe.

That's because we're hemmed in by the conflict on Bangkok's streets. There is fighting due north of us, on the usually quiet alley of Soi Ngam Duphli. Taxis have barricaded the area around Klong Toei, and tire fires stain the skyline from my eastward-facing kitchen window. Grenades explode not far away to the west, in Silom. When I leave the hum of my air-conditioner, I can hear the Army's gunshots poking holes through the tropical night. I wonder what they hit. It's more unsettling than scary. 

A heavy despair hangs in the air in my neighborhood. Last night I strolled around. "Where are you going?" my neighbors asked with concern. "Be careful." And, of course "Stay safe." This being Thailand, everyone smiles with grace. But smiles can't hide the sadness in their eyes. 

To escape the madness unfolding around us, to ignore the potentially disastrous outcome of urban war, I escape to my kitchen. I am so lucky to have a wonderful wife and a goofy dog and a fridge full of food and a stove and a home that's safe. And to pass the time I cook: chicken with garlic, white wine and bay leaves, or spaghetti bolognaise, and later maybe a roast of pork. I pounded my own massaman paste and slowly braise pieces of beef in coconut milk, then fold in the fragrant spices, tamarind and peanuts. 

These times when I cook I can clear my head. There is only food. I can ignore the never-ending twitter updates, and the faces of death on the news channels, and the frantic calls from journalist friends who just squeaked out of another shootout. But as we sit down to eat, in the comfort of our air-conditioned home, with a cold beer or a bottle of wine, we can hear the gunshots peppering the air. There is so much suffering on our doorstep, and yet we sit and eat a meal, watch television, and try to take our thoughts to another place. We feel guilt, and helplessness. We love this country, and hate to see what's happening to it.

It's a very strange time to be here, indeed. 

Update: Tonight, as I cook chicken soup, I'm staring out my window, waiting for a tanker full of gasoline that has been hijacked to explode. It's about a kilometer away - close enough to hear when it goes, but far enough to remain safe. I'm listening for the bang, searching for the smoke, and stirring the pot. I watch the drama unfold on the internet, and head to my window to witness it. And life goes on, strangely.  

Further note: That photo above is not of the tanker, which was empty, apparently. It is just another fire, in a city with more than a few of 'em.

 

Cause it's Friday: Political Calculus Edition

On Sunday, I'm off to Nakhorn Si Thammerat and Sunday couldn't come sooner. Bangkok is awash in politics. Last night, a few servers at my favorite Isaan restaurant were decked out in red. On the television behind me a General chatted with reporters. Mid-meal, a friend left. He had lost his appetite. The worst part about all this is the expedient and cyclical nature of discontent. Without the yellows, the reds would have nothing to fight against. And as Democrats complain about Bangkok grinding to a halt under the pressure of demonstrations, many ignore the real reason that they're happening. Meanwhile, the silent majority suffers. 

Two nights ago I was wandering down Rama 4 in the dark, wondering what to make of all this. Would this be happening today, if the opposition party didn't shut down Bangkok, and its airport about 15 months ago? And as I walked beneath the elevated highway, I saw this scribbled on the concrete in chalk. It said Suvarnabhumi.

  

On Isolation, Inclusion and Democratic Principles

I'm riding the Shanghai metro on the way to dinner. A man and wife, who probably rode the train from the main railway station, are standing beside me. Their thick, farmworker fingers are gripping the large, plaid fiberglass bags of the countryside that probably hold all that they own. And between them they're holding hands. 

They look terrified - too afraid to speak, and totally unable to comprehend the sounds and smells and faces surrounding them on that train. It is as if they have been lifted from another planet and stuffed into that subway car. This is not a wide-eyed look of wonder, it is one of confusion and fright. I smile at them, and this seems to upset them even more. 

I kept remembering that image last night, as I sat up late reading a story called 'The Good Cook,' written by Barbara Demick in The New Yorker. It's an unsettling tale about a woman who tries to feed her family in North Korea's period of famine in the 1990s. She is a resourceful cook, a loving wife, and a budding entrepreneur. Despite her best efforts to sustain her family, cooking with food scraps and finally foraged weeds and tree bark, she loses her husband, her mother-in-law, and finally her 25-year-old son to starvation. It's an incredible and awful sort of story, and in that woman's fear and fake belief my mind kept turning to the couple in the subway car. I'm not sure why, besides the fact that maybe those two Chinese people were realizing that life outside -- like Ms Song, the North Korean woman in the story who ends up in Seoul -- was played with a completely different deck of cards than the ones they'd been dealt.

As the world fixates in China's rise, on Olympic Games and World Expos, the frightened couple on the train seems less relevant. But they're still there, hundreds of millions of them, struggling to figure out how they benefit from all of this. 

Cut to Bangkok. Over the past month or so, the so-called 'rural hordes' have descended on the city. This Red Shirt movement (the UDD) is largely criticized for its overly simplistic understanding of Thai politics. And they have a deeply flawed figurehead in Thaksin Shinawatra. There are many reds that are Bangkok-born, too, and highly educated, but I'm going to focus on the country folk here, because that's where the memories last night led me. 

What strikes me about Thailand's democracy is that, while it is maligned on all sides, there is a growing awareness that people's voices count, and someday might count just the same. It is an encouraging, empowering ideal. There is a growing awareness that there are ways to effect change in what has been a largely stagnated, class-based society.  People from the countryside can march on this cosmopolitan city of 12 million, they can shout for change and even pull smiles from office workers shuttling to lunch in their tailored suits. They don't look afraid, they look confident.

And this is exciting, and should be mentioned more. North Korea's Socialism, or even the far freer Chinese model, serves to alienate people from the state by drawing them so close to it that they can't see its form. Here in Thailand the reds march, yellows shut down airports, Newin's blues trade sides, newspapers and radio stations exchange barbs and insults, and it all seems pretty damn dysfunctional. But people know the hand that they've been dealt, and they can at least try to reshuffle the cards. 

It's a heck of a lot harder for other people, in other parts of Asia.   

Update: I wrote this post not to defame China, which has done wonders to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in the last three decades. I wrote it because I think a lot of people in Thailand, and particularly in the English language Thai media, and even more specifically the Thailand-based foreign pundits that populate discussions on the web and elsewhere here, lack any sort of real world perspective and/or appreciation for what they've got. This isn't North Korea. Or China, for that matter. It's a young democracy.    

On Isaan, Bitterness and Politics

 

Here in Bangkok, our city awaits an uprising, a showing of great strength, a sudden burst of violence, a failure to mobilize, or just an inconvenient weekend. People could die, or cocktail parties could be cancelled. It all depends upon who you talk to. 

I have been learning as I go here, trying to explore the intricacies (and they are endless) of Thai politics. In doing so, I've mostly kept opinions about what is right and wrong, and which side might prevail, to myself. Each camp has a story to tell - each side is right, and often wrong. Plus, this is not my country, and it's not my struggle.

But there is one thing that I often want to say to people, but don't: That much of Bangkok is way out of touch with the rest of Thailand. This electoral majority of Red is treated dismissively, written off as a dangerous liability, or a puppet army paid to protest. It's far more complicated than that, and these people deserve better. Until the reds get the consideration they demand, and the ruling elites realize that these people deserve some respect, the divide can only grow wider.

On that note, here's a story I wrote recently about cooking upcountry. It's about food, but it's also about the perceived divisions between Thai people. 

It's impossible to cook a meal these days in Isaan, and not discuss politics. It seasons everything these days.  

On Changing Careers

Yesterday the Atlantic Food Channel ran a short piece that I wrote about planning to open a bar/restaurant here in Bangkok. Here on my blog, where I have more space to play, I'll also be sharing stories as I navigate this new and uncertain path.

It's decision borne out of a harsh reality and a comforting compromise; I can't continue  to write stories from Asia in the manner of my choosing, because that sort of work is drying up. As the space alloted for words gets smaller, and food writing is democratized by the internet, I've seen rates slip. Good freelancers are paying the price, and often not getting paid at all. It's fine to write for free if you're not a professional writer. It's just plain stupid to do so if you are (see: Learned, hard way). And I can't stick around and wait for the market to correct itself. I gots to move forward.

But there's more to it than that. I think I can more clearly articulate my ideas about food by selling it - which should also mean books or blogs on the topic - than I can by simply writing about it. We'll see. And there is something so dangerously appealing about pouring myself into a restaurant. 

Another disappointment as a writer today, besides the not getting paid part, are those times when you spend a great deal of time tinkering with words and ideas, shuffling them like puzzle pieces, into something that you are truly proud of. Something unique and pleasing. And then it gets swallowed up and forgotten in that great chasm of the internet, like a slippery oyster. I know, it's silly. Maybe even vain. But stories do seem less important than they did a few years ago, as we blog and tweet our way into the future.

This is the last thing I'll say on this subject. It's time to get busy. It's time for profit and loss sheets and dish washing. For chopping herbs and signing business licenses. It time to create something that, when I turn the lights off and head home, will hopefully be there the next morning, ready for a mad rush or an eerily silent night. Who knows? I certainly don't. But I know it's going to be interesting. And I'm glad to have good people to share it with. Thanks guys.

(Below I've posted the entire Atlantic piece, in case you missed it. Much more to come, on sustainable agriculture, rum drinks and spreadsheets. Stay tuned.)

For most of my adult life, I thought I had the best job in the world. While many of my friends were busy making Wall Street money or earning graduate degrees or selling modern art, I got to travel across Asia and write about it. That career began in Chengdu, China, in 2002. For five years I stalled in Shanghai, where I helped start a magazine and established a reputation as a food writer. In Shanghai I learned a lot about food, about cooks and kitchens, and especially about the weight of the written word. 

And then I left, to wander through Southeast Asia and India, to write about the things that interested me, and to live in Bangkok. You may have read about some of those adventures here at the Food Channel.

But late last year, on a flight from Seoul back to Thailand, I had a rude and necessary revelation. That "best job in the world" of mine wasn't a real job anymore. Food magazines were floundering. Editors backpedaling. I had more outstanding payments from publications than I had money in my bank account. When freelance writers and photographers get together, we tend to talk about what we put up with to live this bright and tetherless life. And on that plane ride I decided to tether myself to something: selling food. 

I've always loved to cook, but cooking has usually been my means of escape. In college, I cooked Chinese or Korean food rather than writing term papers about Asia. After my parents divorced, I spent days in the kitchen cooking elaborate holiday meals for the men in my family, stirring and plating as if nothing had changed. This year, I again found myself turning negative energy into dinners, and I realized that for most of my life I've wanted a restaurant, bad. 

Food writers tend to have strange relationships with cooks. We spend our days trying to capture the essence of their kitchens. Then they read our stuff, and rightfully dissect it. For all that, we treat each other with mutual respect—confidants, friends, but not colleagues. I've often expressed a deep interest in opening a restaurant with professional chefs whom I'm closest to, but their responses are usually no different than the advice I once gave a chef who wanted to write. "Why the hell would you ever want to do that?" I growled. 

Well, I want to do this because I'm in love with honest food. This post is the first installment in a series in which I think there will be much to tell, good and bad. In the next six months, I hope to open a bar and restaurant in Bangkok. It will serve Thai food—mostly the sort you'd eat on the street—but it's more complicated than that. I want to work with farms in a way that benefits the growers and my customers. I'd like to faithfully recreate delicious things I've eaten on roadsides across Asia. I want to recruit a small army of bad-ass street cooks. And a few times each month I'd like to share my experiences with you, as this strange creation evolves.

Like most things in business, this column is a calculated risk. The restaurant might fail before it has the chance to sputter to life. The food might stink, or the people may not come. But I don't think those things will happen, or I wouldn't be writing this. 

Along the way, I will tell stories of Thailand—of farmers and cooks, and of this wacky backdrop of Bangkok. There will also be very cold beer, good cocktails, and a free jukebox. The world needs more jukeboxes. 

In some ways, great eating and drinking isn't much different from a well-crafted story. It demands your attention. It introduces you to things you might not have known. And most importantly, it's good from beginning to end. But right now, that eating experience seems infinitely more difficult to create—something I'm about to learn the hard way. I'll save you a seat. 

  

Amazing Quotes Dept, Thailand Edition

Government spokesman Panitan Wattanayagorn on large sums of money being transferred to certain Red Shirt leaders in Thailand (who plan on rising up in the next two weeks and overthrowing the government) and cupcakes:

"The money is likely to help the violence-prone group to be cash-rich. But the government will try to control the red shirts like when you bake 'khanom thuai foo' (Thai cupcake). When the cakes start to swell, you cover them and prevent them from expanding too much," he said.

Read the rest here.

Amazing Quotes Dept, V2

It's been a roller coaster month in the world of Chinese politics. And today I was shocked, and quite proud, to read this piece by Yang Yao of Peking University  (I'm an alumni!), in Foreign Affairs. It seems risky in the extreme to write this, but his argument is dry, measured and intelligent. Do read it all. Here's a teaser:

Popular resistance and economic imbalances are now moving China toward another major crisis. Strong and privileged interest groups and commercialized local governments are blocking equal distribution of the benefits of economic growth throughout society, thereby rendering futile the CCP's strategy of trading economic growth for people's consent to its absolute rule.

Wow.

The Guy Who Sat Beside Me

 

On a recent flight from Singapore to Bangkok, I sat next to an older gentleman with the thick, tanned forearms and friendly smile of an American who golfs a lot. There was an empty seat between us, and he was watching something on his i-pod, so I just smiled and nodded and unsnapped my laptop and started working. My eye was drawn to his Rolex - the diamonds on which were flashing from the outside light. He closed the shade. I stared at his wedding ring - made of what looked like several ounces of chunky white gold. Then I looked at my thin, little band and kept typing.

About half way through the flight we struck up a conversation. I had already made my judgments - executive, import/export, midwest and probably Chicago, electronics or maybe petroleum. These guys are usually pretty nice when I meet them, and remind me of America in a strange, paternal sort of way.  Like if I happened to sit next to my own father, without recognizing him, while he was on a business trip.

Turns out the passenger was in the seafood business, and was from the Pacific Northwest, but by way of Chicago (one point). What was most fascinating about our conversation was how convoluted his work was, a curious characteristic of our food chain these days. He was based in Seattle, and the lion's share of fish caught for his particular company came from the waters off of Alaska and Russia. 

But that fish - 'Cod,' he told me, which could pretty much be anything white and swimming these days, I thought - is then gutted, frozen whole and shipped to factories in China. In China, it is then cut into precise portions and dusted with breadcrumbs and sometimes also deep fried and frozen. Then, the cut and breaded fish boards another boat, floats back across the Pacific, and makes its way to Denny's, TGIFridays, freezer cases and other outposts of factory produced food nationwide. A fresh, wild fish, paraded around the world and frozen to nothingness, all for a shower of fucking breadcrumbs.

"The problem is, the Chinese have now learned how to soak the fillets in a (insert chemical name) and water solution and increase the weight!" he said, a little dismayed. "But the Indonesians don't. And, they're great at processing the shrimp with the tails still on, too. We just can't do that in America anymore...." he said, now sounding almost wistful.

I nodded my head with genuine interest. And I thought that the problem wasn't in the chemical bath, or the labor costs in keeping a shiny tail poking out of golden breading, but the ridiculous system itself. Then I returned to my work.

As he bit into the factory-made chicken pie that JetStar serves on that flight, I admired his wedding ring again. It really was a magnificent piece of gold, like a vein cut right out of the earth.      

On Google, Censorship and Heading South

I didn't leave Shanghai for lack of work, 14 months ago. In fact, I took a big hit moving to a small and comparatively insignificant country that is thick with writers and photographers. Being in Bangkok felt like getting fished out of a deep lake and thrown into an aquarium.

I did leave China for other reasons. My wife really wanted to go. At first I didn't, because I had studied and lived there for the better part of a decade (7 years, in Chengdu, Beijing and Shanghai). But the China that I fell in love with as a wide-eyed (and freezing) student in Beijing, as a long-haired backpacker in Yunnan, and as a wasting-away English teacher in Chengdu was not the China I found myself in in 2008. Change was afoot, but it wasn't the sort of change I had ever anticipated. Far from it, actually.

I'm reminded of this because of the controversy that lit up the interwebs yesterday (namely, that google has been aggressively hacked for information, and for that and reasons of censorship is now pondering pulling out of China entirely). This is not surprising to many China observers, and it probably won't do much to persuade the government there to open channels of information. But it is significant because it is perhaps the first major commercial reaction against China's increasing surveilance, censorship and secrecy.

I was affected by media censorship in a closer way than some. Each week I submitted manuscripts to the government agency that censored our harmless city magazine in Shanghai. We could not mention homosexuality or sex or politics or drugs in our text, even in a passing manner. Another media organization i worked for was wrenched from the hands of its foreign founder, because in China the government holds your publishing license. 

When I became a freelance writer, I was forced to get a work permit from an ad agency to avoid getting caught writing without proper papers. Deportation was always in the back of my mind, even if I was writing benign pieces about food and travel. Lack of papers was used to threaten me in a few instances, to quell restaurant criticism ('write that and I'll report you to the authorities!) 

The Chinese mechanism of foreign press control operates in two effective ways: it forces licensed outlets to watch what they say or risk being squeezed out, and it forces independent writers to censor themselves for the same reasons. I know several writers living there who won't speak out on this issue for their own good.  I probably would not have written this, while living there.

In the leadup to the Olympics I had already decided to leave a country that I'd spent many years attempting to understand, finally conceding that I didn't understand much about it at all. When I was a student in Beijing, I imagined a China becoming increasingly free and interconnected with the world. I didn't imagine a China that would appear increasingly isolationist, and occasionally frightfully nationalistic. But that seemed to me what was happening, and so we packed our bags and headed south to Bangkok. During our first week here, the government fell, and I wrote a story about it for The Atlantic. It felt strange and liberating.

I write this from a country that has its own set of problems - from corruption to class division to an impending political crisis of great magnitude. But every single time I walk into a store, and see shelves lined with books and magazines, or attend a lecture or a political demonstration, or page through the Bangkok Post, or sign on to this blog without a proxy, I am reminded of why I moved here, and why I no longer wanted to live there. 

I'm not writing this because I hate China. It's quite the opposite, actually. I genuinely love and care about that country and its people. I spent most of my adult life there, and feel just as strong a connection to it as I do to the place where I was born.  

Everybody's got problems. But when you don't address them, when you flat-out refuse to discuss them, that's when the shit really hits the fan. And I suspect that some day in China it will, because the relationship between the nanny state and its diverse and emotional people is a dysfunctional one, and it's getting worse. Google has simply shed light on this situation in a way that few other organizations could.

By building these barriers of secrecy and censorship that cause a company like google to pack up and leave, China might just end up tearing itself down.

 

Ningbo, 2007.

On Uighurs, Asylum and the Increasing Reach of China in SE Asia

Last Saturday, Cambodia repatriated 20 Uighurs who had fled to that country from China, seeking political asylum in the wake of the riots that shook Xinjiang last July. What followed those riots in China was a widespread crackdown on Uighurs and several executions, as that huge western province was basically closed off from the outside world.  

This, from the New York Times:

The agreements on Monday followed the decision by Cambodia on Saturday to deport 20 ethnic Uighurs at China’s request, despite Cambodia’s having signed a 1951 treaty banning the forced repatriation of refugees who face persecution at home.

The Uighurs, a Turkic Muslim group, were involved in ethnic rioting in western China in July that killed at least 197 people. They were smuggled into Cambodia about a month ago and applied for asylum at the United Nations refugee office in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital.

Rebiya Kadeer, a Uighur leader who is living in the United States, wrote in an opinion piece published in The Wall Street Journal on Monday that Cambodia’s decision to deport the 20 Uighurs was “no doubt influenced by enormous Chinese pressure, backed by hundreds of millions of dollars in aid.

I think this is a trend the region will swiftly get used to. Just as the United States, during its period of rapid economic and political expansion in the years following WWII, spread its reach into Latin and South America, Europe and Asia, China is doing the same thing here, and in Africa and the Central Asia. 

But the Chinese are far more pragmatic and less demanding than the Americans ever were - they don't even attempt to veil their strategic interests in good faith or idealism. Instead, the return of the Uighurs is merely a transaction. 

What exactly is China doing in Southeast Asia? is a question more reporters should be asking. (The idea of the Chinese Communist Party funding the reconstruction of Buddhist temples in Cambodia, as the above article states, just rings with cruel irony; it's laughably depressing.)

Recently, I spoke with a Tibetan activist here in Bangkok, and she told me that the Dalai Lama has not visited Thailand since 1993. This is significant: Imagine if the Pope didn't visit the country with the highest proportion of Roman Catholics on earth in nearly two decades. While it's true that Thais and Tibetans study different schools of Buddhism, the Dalai Lama is an enormously respected figure here, as there is no greater figurehead for Buddhism today. You want to know why he doesn't come? Well, let's just say Thailand's economic cooperation with China probably has something to do with it.

Another disturbing trend, in my opinion, are countries in this region looking to China as a model for controlled economic growth because it is anchored by a system that restricts freedom of information and free speech. Every time the Thai political machine starts to spin out of control, for instance (a problem that has to do with the spread of bad information, for sure, but also a convoluted political/military relationship, widespread corruption and a great socioeconomic schism) people here look to China and admire its rock-solid political footing. Bangkok remains static, while Beijing charges ahead... 

Every time Malaysia sentences a woman to a few lashes from a bamboo stick because she drinks a beer, they can be sure the neighbor up north will not speak out. Or if Cambodia decides to harbor a political fugitive, or Burma imprisons a Nobel-winning pro-democracy activist. The greatest difference between American hegemony, which I am by no means supporting, and the emerging Chinese model, is that Chinese one has no moral code. It has no nuance. 

And that is something to worry about, unless this government decides that their power demands some sort of social and political responsibility. 

This is something to worry about. And it stifles progressive democracy taking root here in Southeast Asia.  Which is just exactly what the CCCP wants, anyways.