2007: Into The West of the East

Soup, duck, stuffed eggs in Forest Foods preparation, drawing by Lucey Bowen, Kunming, 2007.

      If pressed, most of us remember 2007 as the year that the economy tanked.  I remember it as the year I explored western China.  Who travels in a recession? Me.  Studying Chinese, Chinese brush painting, Asian American Women and the Filipino community whetted my appetite for a second trip to China.  When my Number Two Chinese Painting teacher, Ren Ming, announced his annual trip would encompass China's southwestern provinces of Yunnan and Sichuan, I signed on.
     Ming wanted to revisit the minority cultures he'd seen in 1984, traveling after he finished his art degree.  All of our travel, after the flight to Kunming, was by bus and by train.  Almost by definition, non-Han Chinese minorities reside in remote, mountainous areas.  They eke out a living in agriculture and herding in truly awesome surroundings.  The long bus rides gave me a better chance to get to know my fellow travelers, principally American-born-Chinese, or as they call themselves, ABCs.  To see China with them, and thru their eyes was most revealing.  All at once, they take pride in China's history and its vast territory, while taking a more critical attitude to current conditions than Peace-Corps-trained me ever would.
     This trip finally established a congruence in my travels and one promoted by the magazine.  A month after my trip,  Nicole Mones "The Road to Shangri-La," about Yunnan's Kunming, Dali and Lijiang appeared.  In April, Fuschia Dunlop wrote "True West," about Xinjiang.  The principal minority residing there are Turkic Uyghur peoples, and the principal religion is Islam.  Dunlop feels more like she's in Marrakech than Beijing.
      Two more articles, one on Mughal cuisine in India and the other the cooking of Persia make this subtle attempt to convey the range of people and places Americans have begun lumping together as "Islamic fundamentalists."
     Meanwhile, in the United States, there were more Chinese restaurants than Burger King, Wendy's and McDonald's combined.  By-and-large it will be the Mom and Pop shops that survive the downturn, with a few exceptions, noted below.
 
New York:
Momofuku Noodle Bar at 171 1st Avenue is still Momofuku Noodle Bar.
Momofuku SSam Bar at 207 2nd Avenue is still Momofuku SSam Bar
Wakiya at Gramercy Park Hotel, 2 Lexington Avenue is Maialino.