I'm so dismayed about the war, & this morning have been schlumping around the house in a fit of pajama'd depression, until I got an email from Amy about this guy who is working his way systematically through every dish on the menu at Henry's Hunan in San Francisco. So fabulous! Such admirable tenacity! I love people's weird obsessions & the websites that go with them!

More inspiration providing some counterbalance to the war: a triple threat of friends' art openings, starting with Kim Anno's beautiful paintings last night. Heather Johnson up in Santa Rosa tomorrow, Debra Greene on Thursday the 3rd. (Trust me, I've sent you to the right places for these shows; galleries are notorious for slow website updating.)

It also helped a lot to hear Saul Williams delivering the Pledge of Resistance as only he can. Powerful!

In wartime when the destructive stupidity of humanity is so apparent, we really need the creative intelligence that art manifests. All you artists out there, rock on!

Could it be that Minnesota is the Last Uncool Place? I can't find any Minnesota travel books around here... I tried the library & 4 very good bookstores, & there is just nothing where Minnesota should be. The travel bookstore had a book about Minneapolis/St. Paul & a Minnesota history book, but that's the closest I got. What, people around here never want to go to Minnesota? Very interesting... I didn't have this problem with Wyoming. I got a really good guide for Wyoming with no trouble at all. Looks like I gotta go online, sigh....

In contrast, you'd be amazed how many people exclaim, "I grew up in Minnesota!" or "I used to live in Minnesota!" when I mention I'm going there.

Can I just say that I am completely overwhelmed by the sheer number of Chinese restaurants in Minnesota?

So. Every time I go to Phoenix I always eat this shrimp & mayonnaise thing. It's shrimp smeared with mayo & it's mixed with candied walnuts that have sesame seeds on them. This is a warm dish, not a shrimp salad. I've never understood the warm mayonnaise thing, or what mayonnaise is doing in Chinese food anyway, but it's actually pretty good. Warm mayo in person is not nearly as vile as it sounds in the abstract. I don't know which of my relatives is responsible for this dish appearing at every restaurant meal. Maybe it's everybody. Maybe there is something about living in Phoenix that makes you really want to eat shrimp with mayonnaise & walnuts whenever possible?

All I know is that I was eating it about 40 minutes after stepping off the plane. "Wow, I must be in Phoenix!"

Actually, the last time I was there, about a year ago, someone clued me in to the fact that you can actually get this dish in lots of places, including the Bay Area and Hong Kong. (They were like, what is wrong with you that you think we only have this here?!) The Hong Kong part was what made me suspect the mayonnaise must be a Brit thang. Where else could it have come from?

Off-topic again: I've been going around making smart remarks about how I was into duct tape before it was cool, but now I realize that some people have waaay more rights to such a claim. I mean really! I want one of those purses....

Oh. My. Gawd. It's true... Leann Chin is, in fact, a minor force of nature.

Woops, I might be bending my own rules against naming names out there in the heartland. Well, I haven't been to Leeann's & I haven't eaten there, & I won't divulge my opinions once I do, so it's all good. You haven't heard a peep out of me about Yan Can or PF Chang's , have you? Let me reiterate: this is not a restaurant review project! I'm an equal opportunity researcher: yummy, mediocre, & scary restaurants are all interesting to me. Mini-chains, franchises, obscure mom & pop operations alike are all fair game. Just cause I mention a place doesn't mean I'm saying you should go there, or not go there.

But I do give props to my personal local favorites because I don't see how it could possibly hurt my project.

Now I'm going to look at Wisconsin....

I've been doing my homework on Minnesota. (Aren't I a good girl?) I want to know who Leeann Chin is! Sister has like a million restaurants all over Minnesota. Clearly she is a force to be reckoned with! On the other hand, I'm also pretty curious about Danielson's Chinese Restaurant in Mapleton; not your usual Panda this or Golden that. Who are the Danielsons and why did they open a Chinese restaurant in Mapleton? White folks? Chinese folks with an Anglo last name? Black folks? Oh, the mysteries....

Good news! The Anderson Center in Red Wing, Minnesota called & invited me for a residency! Red Wing has 17 Chinese American residents (according to the Census) and 2 Chinese restaurants, although there is a rumor that one of them might be closing soon... we shall see... I'm looking forward to being the 18th Chinese person in town, for a couple weeks in May, anyway.

So. Many people have asked me... what exactly do I plan to do with all these menus, survey responses, photos, roadtrips, just the whole project, anyway? Well, I do appreciate the curiosity, but as a rule I don't like to talk about something until it's actually done. On the art-process side of things, the work needs that kind of privacy in order to evolve freely; stating "how it's going to be" discourages change. On the publicity side of things, it can kinda suck if you've been telling everyone the fine details of Plan A, only to end up six months "late" with Plan Q; then people get confused, wonder if they've missed something or, in the worst case, decide you don't know what the hell you're doing. Trust me, I do know what the hell I'm doing, even if the specifics do keep wiggling around. Such is the nature of this long-term, multi-tentacled art project. I hope when you finally see Plan X, Y or Z you'll forgive me for playing my cards so dang close to the vest.

Meanwhile, I'm willing to tell you everything you want to know about my current show! This is a big ol' sculptural piece that I made back when the Chinese restaurant project was barely a twinkle in my eye. Although it is somewhat related. Anyway I think it's looking pretty good, if I do say so myself, so come on down! Oh... & there'll be fortune cookies at Friday's opening, too! (wink)

Happy Year of the Goat! Gloria said that it's mostly Vietnamese folks who call it Goat, & Chinese folks tend to say Sheep or Ram, but hey, I like goats! Sheep are cool too, of course. I mean, where would Wallace & Gromit be without sheep? Ram, I do have issues with; why make the year a gendered thing? Year of the Ewe, anybody? But I digress.... Of course we ate ourselves silly over the weekend. Peking duck is one of the greatest things ever. (Lots of joking all around the table about the buns looking like shoulder pads.) Two friends who had never had it before ranted about how duck would never be the same again; they pictured themselves in a fancy French restaurant, discontentedly asking, "Uh, could we have some hoisin sauce with that?"

Where have I been?! Completely distracted by the weather, I guess. It's downright balmy. Not just plum trees but even some of the crabapples are blooming! It's ridiculous! Makes me want to load up the van with my Holgas & woks, drive off to Montana (I know, it's freezing there right now) or Alabama or something. Check out what all those Chinese restaurants out there are up to. (Wow, that's an awful lot of prepositions in that sentence.)

Besides ogling flowers on trees, I've also been trying to drum up some institutional support (that means: writing residency applications, grant proposals, &c.) for this project. If you, dear reader, have any funding ideas for me, I'd sure love to hear 'em. Or hey, be direct: just send me money. & takeout menus. I don't want much, do I?

It's my blog & I'll be off-topic if I want to... I just have to say, that peace march yesterday was absolutely TREMENDOUS. I have never seen anything so big! The crowd was massive, the vibe was positive, the energy was high... I barely thought about Chinese restaurants at all!

You know how it is when you're working on a project, it seems like the whole world is all about that thing. Everywhere you go, everyone is talking about Chinese restaurants... ok, well, so, not exactly, but this New Yorker article by Calvin Trillin makes me pretty dang cheerful. That, and the bizarre Chinese takeout carton Christmas-tree ornament recently given to me, no kidding: it's that old-school kind of glass ornament with the sort of frosted/metallic surface, tapering to a pointed hole on the bottom (where they blow the glass from? I don't know) capped with a decorated metal finial. Except it's a Chinese takeout box instead of the usual red or green sphere! Now, who besides me would ever want such a thing??

I've been reading this fabulous new book by J. A. G. Roberts, China to Chinatown: Chinese Food in the West, which Dan found for me. I'm completely engrossed! Here is a particularly satisfying passage:

"The aversion to the eating of dogs and cats has been expressed so loudly by Westerners that it is important to point out that dog-eating was certainly practised in Germany until early in the twentieth century, and that the killing and eating of cats, as an ingredient in spells or for medicinal purposes, was common in France in the eighteenth century." (p. 20)

Spells! Oh my....

Yes, it's true, even a fiend like me can reach Chinese food saturation. Masses of relatives converged in town over the holidays & pummelled me with large quantities of food every time I dared show my face. I think I have fully satisfied my crustacean cravings for at least the next few months. (One uncle sent himself to the emergency room with a crab OD, I kid you not.) Most recently we had some very lovely steamed fish in black bean sauce, the likes of which Wyoming cannot even dream. Also at that meal: fried milk?! Someone enlighten me, please... is it milk like from a critter (shades of crab rangoon! eek!) or is it soy milk (more what I would like to believe)?

I'm not knocking Wyoming; they can't help being so far from the ocean. It's not their fault, really. I mean it!

This year we cheerfully participated in the great Jewish American Christmas tradition: Chinese food & a movie! There we were at Shan Dong in Oakland, eating fabulous, cheap food, totally free of any holiday hype or family drama. About half of the customers in the restaurant were Chinese & the other half were white folks who I guess were probably Jewish, but how would I really know w/o asking? (& I didn't feel up to asking.)

Earlier in the day we went for a walk in our neighborhood, duly noting that the only open businesses were the Chinese restaurants -- until we came to a cafe busily cranking out espresso. Once inside, we realized that the place is run by Chinese Americans. Of course.

Yesterday was a good day. I went over to Meigan's & made pies all afternoon with the 3 o'clock girls. Then I spent the entire evening devouring Kip Fulbeck's book Paper Bullets, which Peggy lent me. One great thing about this book is that it's "a fictional autobiography"; that really gives a writer room to move! It'll be good for me to remember this concept as I work with the Chinese restaurants, which can sometimes feel so weighed down by mountains of "facts" (statistical, historical, all kinds). Totally gripping facts, sure, but I've always been more interested in a different kind of truth.

By the way... just for the record: not all Chinese restaurants in Wyoming are bad. But I'm not going to name names.

You must remember, they have to adapt to local tastes. Don't scare the customers! No braised duck feet!

Nothing provokes a craving for good Chinese food quite like bad Chinese food. When we were beset with too many scary buffets in Wyoming I started fantasizing about Ocean Restaurant at home in San Francisco. For one reason & another, we haven't made it back there since we got home, until now. Just looking at menus this past week got my craving going again, until I started ranting incoherently about Hong Kong (Cantonese food capital of the world). Ocean is an excellent cure for this affliction & so we finally went tonight. Ginger & scallion LOBSTER!!!!! I swear I feel about 300% better.

I dreamt about Wyoming last night, the open plain & endless sky, all that light... & then that oh-so-human feeling of curiosity when you drive into a town, wanting to check it all out & see what it's like, so interesting just because there are people there instead of antelope & cattle.