Escape from Chinatown and the Fading Notes of Smoke and Graphite

What is up, dude and dudettes!   Thanks so much for gathering poolside to once again share the acrimony and salty innuendo here at the Yellow River Chronicles.   As you may have noticed, we had a "VACANT" sign on the office door as the truant YRC staff headed for California for the first stop in the Napa, Naptown and Napalm tour.  Our BAD, man! We will make it up to you with a few ice cold glasses of good old YRC moonshine.  Yes, dear readers, for next series we will be Narcistic in Northern California,  Noisy in Naptown and Happy in Ho Chi Minh City as we hurtle around the globe in our search for the smell of Cabernet in the morning.

We are going to kick this edition off with an update on one of our favorite subjects, Evil Food in the PR of C.  As you may recall in an earlier column, we introduced "Toxic Food Bingo".   The mayhem continues during Shanghai's hairy crab season with "Bleached Crabs".  Here is it from www.shanghaiist.com.

Bootleg crabs mar another hairy crab season

By Benjamin Cost

The annual scourge of bootleg hairy crabs, one of China's most notorious counterfeit items, will ensure that you have a less than merry Autumn hairy crab season.

Each fall, hairy crab pirates duplicate China's most coveted crustacean: the Yangcheng Lake hairy crab, an expensive delicacy prized for its sweet, delicate meat.

Unfortunately for the Yangcheng Lake Hairy Crab Association, shanzai crabs are here to stay, unlike shanzai phones which are on their way out: the counterfeit market for hairy crabs is ten times greater than that for authentic hairy crabs. Just ask local crabber Xing, who says, "Everything is being counterfeited. There's nothing you can do about it. And you can't control it."

And believe us, the Yangcheng Lake Hairy Crab Association has tried everything from hiking up the price by 10 to 20 percent in 2010 to giving every shipment a 12-digit security code. This year, they distributed 15 million plastic "crab authentication" tags complete with serial numbers and a toll-free number to help customers distinguish their crabs from the fugazis.

Did we mention that sellers have even taken to using lasers to etch serial numbers onto the crabs themselves? The hairy crab black market is not to be toyed with, apparently.

Even still, the authenticity tags aren't entirely trustworthy, as many tagged crabs don't even originate in Yangcheng Lake, located 3km northeast of Suzhou. Many crabs spend only half a year before the harvest at Yangcheng Lake, since six months is the minimum period required for a crab to get its Yangcheng Lake bona fides. Increasingly, more and more alien crabs will have to be imported to the lake due to nearby human development interrupting crab breeding patterns (after all, the lake's just a short train ride from Shanghai).

With all the fakes on the market, people might be less eager to spend the 300 yuan a piece on these two-faced scuttlers.

Next week, bleached pork!!  And now for something completely different:

To start the Calfornia tour report with our usual blend of candor and rancor, we are going to discuss hauntings.  Let us elaborate:  some are haunted by spirits, some are haunted by their past, some (you know who you are) are haunted by small whiney children with sticky hands and others are haunted by the notion that maybe they should be doing something better with their time.

Let Us Pet Us

Here at the YRC we are haunted by Chinatowns.  Whenever we visit a city, a Chinatown jumps out of an alley reeking of dim sum and stalks us through crowded markets filled with plastic buddhas and fake Rolexes.   Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Chicago, New York, London, you name it.

It was our fear of the dreaded San Francisco Chinatown that led us to hide out in the Castro, setting for the film "Milk".  The film was neither about dairy products nor Wisconsin, but instead the life and times of Harvey Milk.  Harvey is remembered by a small plaque in front of his former camera store and the Castro Street Fair.  We saw both while we were there.  While we were disappointed that there were no amulets at the Fair, there were some excellent snacks and a few curious booths, including a "Petting Zoo".  You figure it out.

The Check's in the Mail

While San Francisco is the setting for many, many great films, our favorite remains "Big Trouble in Little China" featuring Kurt Russell as Jack Burton.  Heres the link to the trailer on YouTube if you're interested in checking it out.  It's all in the reflexes.

From Rotten Tomatoes:  Playing in a manner that can be conservatively described as larger than life, Kurt Russell plays a macho truck driver who agrees to go to the San Francisco airport and pick up his friend's (Dennis Dun) fiancee (Suzee Pai, freshly arrived from China. Suddenly, a gang of Chinatown toughs kidnap the girl right before Russell's eyes. After a wild chase sequence, Russell discovers that the girl has been abducted by a genuine, bonafide sorceror (James Hong), the ghost of a 3000 year old warlord. And that's just for starters. 

Big Trouble in Little China Trailer on Youtube

The Haight sans Ashbury

When we fully recovered from the Fair, we also took in the rather dreary Haight-Ashbury, the Botanical Gardens and Muir Woods.   Why, you might ask, and all we can say is, maybe we were in the mood for....plants.   And excellent plants they were, including a display of "Wicked Plants" that included carnivorous and poisonous plants.    Along that line, have you ever wondered why Botanical Gardens are called Botanical?  After all, what is in a garden that is not, in fact, botanical?  Curious.

Part of the Wicked Plants Exhibit

The Mighty Redwood Groves

A highlight for the staff was the spectacular redwoods at Muir.  Whenever we visit Muir Woods, we have the overwhelming urge to bow before them.  While this creates the risk of stroller people from the Plains running over you, it does show the respect that the Big Trees command.

When we finally made it to Napa we were pleased to find that there was no Chinatown there, and in fact, dozens of fine establishments dedicated to wine.  Napa has that "Adult Playground" feel to it with many Bed and Breakfasts, Inns and Lodges.  And there were wine tastings everywhere.  Wine tastings at the vineyards, wine tastings at the grocery store, wine tastings at the gas station, wine tastings in the lobby of the B&B.

Route One Roadside Attraction

There were so many great wines, it was almost aversion therapy.  You were gargling a fine Cabernet, then an Pinot, then another incredible Vinter's Master Reserve, then an amazing Zinfandel.

By then, the forward grapefruit was fighting with the lingering graphite. The resonant leather and smoke was washed away by hints of ginger and papaya while the pepper tones simply wandered off.

While the visit was incandescent in its beauty (pause), if we were to return to northern California, it would be for one thing that you cannot find in the PR of C.  No, not the surf, nor the spectacular views nor the air you can actually breathe, nor tall blonde people nor large bounteous grocery stores.  No, it would be the oysters.

Heading due west out of Napatown, we connected with famous Route One and cruised south down the coast from Tamales.  It is a food, and a place.

As we were stopping to admire the view, we learned we were in oyster country! While there are oysters in the PR of C, like certain other behaviors, consumption is considered...high risk.

So it was there, south of faire Tamales,  that we were able to inhale plates of excellent oysters grilled right after the oystermen brought them in from the bay.
No bleached oysters, these.

A crisp California Red Ale and a large plate of oysters was the perfect punctation point to begin the next phase of the Narcistic in Northern California,  Noisy in Naptown and Happy in Ho Chi Minh City tour.  Thanks for coming back and see you next week, when we discuss Tiny Weddings and Big Parties!

Roadside Oyster Paradise