After promising her students that she would make 50 cookies, Anna and I
met up to buy the ingredients to make chocolate chip cookies. Not knowing how to say certain ingredients in
Chinese we looked up the words on Google translate and wrote them down. We
arrived at the supermarket and went to the back in hopes of finding sugar. Anna
grabbed a packet of what seemed to be crystallized sugar that read, “Lotus
Flower” and had Chinese characters underneath it. Next, Anna joyously asked a
woman to assist us in finding baking powder and vanilla extract. After showing the
woman our Google translate words, ever so sure of herself-absolute no
hesitation , walked to the other side, bent down and happily gave us a small,
hard bag that read, “Instant drying yeast”. I looked at Anna and told her that
it wasn’t what we needed, but being hopeful, she grabbed it and put it with her
other odd ball collection of ingredients. As we’re walking to the cashier I
read Anna’s mind about needing aluminum foil. What should have been like a half
an hour run to the supermarket, turned out to be a 3 hour quest to find
aluminum foil. We hit every convenience store, and we just kept finding the one
thing we didn’t need- plastic wrap. The whole time, we were waiting on Sarah to
meet up with us and grab dinner, but she wasn’t answering her phone. So not
only did we have to find this damn aluminum foil, we had a missing volunteer
whose phone was off and was supposed to be with us 3 hours ago. We went back to
Anna’s apartment in hopes that Sarah would be waiting there. 2 Minutes after we
walk in, Sarah knocks on the door.
My first question to her was,
“How do you say aluminum foil in Chinese??” She looks it up on her phone and it says,
“Lubo”. For fuck’s sake, such a simple word for such a complicated item. Now
for the rest of the service in China, that will be the one word I will always
remember. The three of us went out to get something to eat, and Anna was still
convinced that there would be aluminum foil in a random convenience store, but
she had no such luck. It was just odd to us that it was hiding, or no one knew
what we were talking about when we kept saying lubo. It’s as if it was hidden
in a magical tunnel, like it was some kind of prized item that no one could
have. It reminded me how I could never find cinnamon when I wanted to make
ginger tea. I followed all of Anna’s steps, and wrote down what it was in
Chinese. I even had a duel language, visual dictionary to show the people and
they looked at me like I was making it up. My mother’s friend sent me a package
last semester and in it was a cinnamon packet because word got around I
couldn’t find any in China. The aluminum foil must be where the cinnamon is
hidden, it just has to be. After giving up, Anna derived a plan to mix the
cookie batter in a rice bowl and cook them on a dumpling steamer. On top of
that, a brilliant idea came to mind to bake them over the stove, as the other
ones were cooking in a small toaster oven. This made perfect sense, because
after all, hard boiling eggs and making popcorn in a tea kettle totally worked
out just fine the other day. I trusted her instincts. It was turning out pretty
well, and looked like delicious cookies that even smelt like cookie dough. All of a sudden I hear, “fuck, shit, fuck omg,
fuck” Sarah and I both looked at each other and ran to the kitchen. We both tried a small piece of the grilled
cookie and simultaneously spit it out like it was venom.
Sarah picked up the sugar package that said “Lotus Flower” and read the
characters underneath. “You poured a whole package of MSG!!”
Me: “I told
you it was odd it had ‘lotus flower’ on it!”
Anna: “Yea
but I saw a ‘lotus flower sugar’ on it too”
Me: “So why
didn’t you get that instead?”
Anna: “The
other one was cheaper”
Me: “Well,
that’s what you get for being cheap” ]
Anna: “Yea,
a cancer cookie. It always felt brown to me, I thought MSG was brown.”
If sugar was MSG, what was baking soda?? Anna looked
over to Sarah and asked, “Can you tell me if this is baking soda?”, as she
threw the packet over to Sarah. Sarah looked at the package, leaned back and
then pulled herself up again, and as she tried forming sentences, she started
to laugh with each word. “This is instant drying yeast, it says it right here
in clear English.” After Anna sent her students a text saying she didn’t make
the cookies, a student responds, “It’s ok, we know you tried your best. Thanks
so much.” Under her breath she whispers, “My best was trying to kill them… and
I failed.”
That package is hanging on her wall now, with a note that says “Never,
ever buy this ever again”
…Yet
another brilliant evening with Lanzhou’s finest response volunteers. I enjoy
every moment of it. If I ever feel shitty, I’ll just keep this conversation in
my pocket and pull it out when I need a good hard laugh and the world will be
just right again.
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