So there is this type of crab that everyone is obssessed with and we went and saw what a thriving industry based on crab looks like
We went on my second day in Shanghai. My big auntie's husband took us to CRAB CITY! Also known as Yangcheng He, a very nice lake town where they grow these crabs that everyone in Shanghai wants me to eat so so badly.
The ride to Yangcheng He takes about an hour and a half and my father, mother, brother, and I immediately set ourselves apart by wearing the thickest jackets of anyone in the twelve passenger bus that my cousin Jing rented.
In the summers, we set ourselves apart by walking stoutly and my father wears shorts and sports socks halfway up his calves, and I don't comb my hair and my mother wear short shorts shorter than my shorts so that my grandmother says, look at you, unsightly thing and my mother says, so what. So what.
In the winter, we bring our warmest coat and we take up four passenger seats just by taking off our coats and laying them down. While the little minibus is still moving I take a running leap down the aisle and jump on our coats and my brother says, that's racist! I school him on the meaning of racist and he waves me aside.
--I know, I know.
--So admit that it's racist when in Yo Mamma, a white guy says to a black guy, 'Yo, is that a black hoodie on your back or just some extra skin?'
--How's that racist?
My guofu uncle takes us to meet a guy who has his own crab hut, and he seems to be on familiar terms with him because I think we are just going to buy some crabs but instead we go on a boat, no lifejackets, no warning, and we start to weave our way through the crab huts and I feel happier than I can remember. I really do. We get into an argument with a woman who has low cheekbones and she looks sun burnt even though I have never remembered seeing the sun in China in the times that I have been back, only dust, fog, and gray, but the man steering the boat calls her some bad names and tells her to move her fucking boat aside, and she says, what the fuck, I'm going to move it, you don't have to fucking yell, and I do the translating for my brother and stop midsentence because my cousin Jing might be listening and I don't want to sound so obscene on the second day.
We go back to the crab huts and buy twenty crabs, each one at a 100rmb, but the pretense is that these crabs are a gift, and the owner says he'll come for my dad when he goes to the US, and my dad says, of course, just ask for me, and I'm so fucking dumb that I tug at my dad's shoulders and I almost say, dad, but you didn't give him your name, and then I realize my guofu uncle has paid for these crabs way in advance, and then to make up for my lack of insight, I pretend to push my brother into a crab cage.
You know what, if I could fly above YangCheng He in a small helicopter and take an aerial view of the restaurants and huts, I could show you just little tiny dots of crab faces and the character for crab like a constellation map of orange stars. Long ago, I remember my dad coming home to Shanghai for the first time in fifteen years and our two families, my mother's family and my father's family were sitting down at a round table, and my father was explaining the utter absurdity of American and he said:
--Here's the ridiculous thing. In America, people want to go and spend time at farms. People drive two-hundred miles to get to a farm so they can pay to pick strawberries.
And then the collective, "Really."
--Yes, they pay to go to the country and do work. Imagine that. They pay to 'rough it' in the woods. They call it 'camping.' If only we could take a couple million of these fools back in time and dump them in the rural camps and have them do that work for us, we could have actually gone to high school and learned something.
And the collective, "Hahahahahaha!"
And the other thing about these crabs is that they have this bundle of hair around their big legs, and I waste the first ten minutes trying to take the hair off with my chopsticks. At lunch, we eat in a farmer's house, only it can't be a farmer house, because it has been renovated to look like a restaurant, and I don't see a farm, or farmers, only a few young women who work in the kitchen and bring us our food, and a very old woman who either walks very very slowly, or paces back and forth, I don't know, because in the hour that we walk into our room, eat, and come out, I see her only steps ahead of where I saw her last.
The ride to Yangcheng He takes about an hour and a half and my father, mother, brother, and I immediately set ourselves apart by wearing the thickest jackets of anyone in the twelve passenger bus that my cousin Jing rented.
In the summers, we set ourselves apart by walking stoutly and my father wears shorts and sports socks halfway up his calves, and I don't comb my hair and my mother wear short shorts shorter than my shorts so that my grandmother says, look at you, unsightly thing and my mother says, so what. So what.
In the winter, we bring our warmest coat and we take up four passenger seats just by taking off our coats and laying them down. While the little minibus is still moving I take a running leap down the aisle and jump on our coats and my brother says, that's racist! I school him on the meaning of racist and he waves me aside.
--I know, I know.
--So admit that it's racist when in Yo Mamma, a white guy says to a black guy, 'Yo, is that a black hoodie on your back or just some extra skin?'
--How's that racist?
My guofu uncle takes us to meet a guy who has his own crab hut, and he seems to be on familiar terms with him because I think we are just going to buy some crabs but instead we go on a boat, no lifejackets, no warning, and we start to weave our way through the crab huts and I feel happier than I can remember. I really do. We get into an argument with a woman who has low cheekbones and she looks sun burnt even though I have never remembered seeing the sun in China in the times that I have been back, only dust, fog, and gray, but the man steering the boat calls her some bad names and tells her to move her fucking boat aside, and she says, what the fuck, I'm going to move it, you don't have to fucking yell, and I do the translating for my brother and stop midsentence because my cousin Jing might be listening and I don't want to sound so obscene on the second day.
We go back to the crab huts and buy twenty crabs, each one at a 100rmb, but the pretense is that these crabs are a gift, and the owner says he'll come for my dad when he goes to the US, and my dad says, of course, just ask for me, and I'm so fucking dumb that I tug at my dad's shoulders and I almost say, dad, but you didn't give him your name, and then I realize my guofu uncle has paid for these crabs way in advance, and then to make up for my lack of insight, I pretend to push my brother into a crab cage.
You know what, if I could fly above YangCheng He in a small helicopter and take an aerial view of the restaurants and huts, I could show you just little tiny dots of crab faces and the character for crab like a constellation map of orange stars. Long ago, I remember my dad coming home to Shanghai for the first time in fifteen years and our two families, my mother's family and my father's family were sitting down at a round table, and my father was explaining the utter absurdity of American and he said:
--Here's the ridiculous thing. In America, people want to go and spend time at farms. People drive two-hundred miles to get to a farm so they can pay to pick strawberries.
And then the collective, "Really."
--Yes, they pay to go to the country and do work. Imagine that. They pay to 'rough it' in the woods. They call it 'camping.' If only we could take a couple million of these fools back in time and dump them in the rural camps and have them do that work for us, we could have actually gone to high school and learned something.
And the collective, "Hahahahahaha!"
And the other thing about these crabs is that they have this bundle of hair around their big legs, and I waste the first ten minutes trying to take the hair off with my chopsticks. At lunch, we eat in a farmer's house, only it can't be a farmer house, because it has been renovated to look like a restaurant, and I don't see a farm, or farmers, only a few young women who work in the kitchen and bring us our food, and a very old woman who either walks very very slowly, or paces back and forth, I don't know, because in the hour that we walk into our room, eat, and come out, I see her only steps ahead of where I saw her last.
posted by Jenny at 7:49 AM
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