Rebecca Henderson

Chinese New Year is January 23 this year, and since I’ll be in Texas doing research at that time, I decided to celebrate a little early with my friends here in Washington. We’re entering into the Year of the Dragon, the year I was born in, so I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to make a ton of food and a pot of eight treasures tea and enjoy the evening with my friends. The celebration was a bit inauthenthic in that we didn’t set off a barrage of firecrackers outside the neighbors’ doors, but hey, we’re within city limits in the U.S., what do you expect?

When I made nacatamales with my friends for Christmas Eve a few weeks ago, I mentioned that I’d been wanting to teach them how to make dumplings. You can buy them frozen at Costco or wherever, and they’re really pretty good — but I still have a mental block that assures me anything I buy in a bag from the freezer section can’t be as good as what I make from scratch. It just can’t be. Yes, it’s time consuming and labor intensive to put together 120 dumplings for a dinner party, but what’s a little time spent in the afternoon compared to the yumminess of homemade dumplings?

Here we are, filling the wrappers. You can buy packages of the wrappers at the grocery store, usually in the section where you’ll find tofu. If I were a good little Chinese grandma (which I’m not, on several counts), I would roll out my own wrappers from flour and water. But that would be just silly.

We made dumplings with two different fillings: pork and cabbage in one, beef and carrot in the other. The filling also has all sorts of other wonderful ingredients, like garlic, ginger, soy sauce, and scallions. A small spoonful of filling is lovingly nestled in the center of each wrapper, before the edges are sealed and the tiny pocket of deliciousness is tucked in its spot in the row to await the pot, where it will fulfill its dumpling destiny.

Some of the dumplings went into a large soup pot. Once the water comes to a boil, you put several dumplings in, bring the water back to a boil, and then cool the water off again by adding a cup of cold water. You bring the water to a boil again, add more cold water, boil, add cold water, and by the third time the water comes back to a boil, they should be done. Adding cold water keeps the outside of the dumpling from cooking faster than the inside, which would result in a tough wrapper.

We also did a few dumplings in true potsticker style by pan frying them. It’s a less healthy cooking method, for sure, but who doesn’t enjoy a little oil now and then?

Thank you, Jane and Andy, for letting me take over your kitchen to make dumplings! (Jane and Andy aren’t in this photo, but this is their table and place settings with our dumpling feast.)

My first Christmas in Washington, but not my first Christmas away from home. I’m somewhat used to being away from family at the holidays — although, do not hear me say that I don’t miss my family when I’m away at Christmas. I do. I just can’t always be there with them, and I’ve made my peace with that.

At Christmas meals on both sides of my family last year we had tamales, and I decided that I want that to be a holiday tradition. Apparently my family didn’t stick with it this year without me, but that’s ok, no worries, I can keep traditions by myself.

My friends Abner and Laura invited me to spend Christmas Eve with their families in Grandview, Washington, about 45 minutes from where I live in the Tri-Cities. Abner’s family is from Nicaragua, and they always make nacatamales for Christmas. Making the nacatamales takes most of the morning, and then they have to cook for a few hours, so there’s a lot of sitting around and talking and hanging out while you wait.

Like Mexican tamales, the key component of nacatamales is masa. But there are a lot more fresh ingredients that go into nacatamales than the Mexican tamales you may have eaten.

You don’t just make a couple of nacatamales at a time — you make a few dozen. So you have to have a big pot to cook the masa, along with onions and bacon grease and potato and garlic and a spice called achiote that the Solanos get on trips to Nicaragua.

Once the masa has thickened, the assembly line starts putting together the nacatamales. Unlike Mexican tamales wrapped in corn husks, nacatamales are wrapped in banana leaves and are a few times bigger. First, you spread a generous amount of masa on the center of the banana leaf. Then you add the rest of the goodies: pork rubbed in achiote, rice mixed with achiote, slices of potato, carrot, bell pepper, tomato, a few raisins, a green olive, and a sprig of mint.

At the end of the assembly line, you fold the banana leaf over the ingredients, and you wrap the entire thing in foil, making sure it’s sealed good enough to stay together when you boil it. In Nicaragua, where banana leaves are abundant, you wouldn’t need the foil. Banana leaves are pricey in Washington, though, so you have to make do with one layer of banana leaf and the outer foil layer.

Somehow I ended up at the end of the line and got to learn to fold the nacatamales — which was fun, but also a bit nerve-wracking because I worried that not sealing it properly would ruin the entire nacatamale. When I learned to make Chinese dumplings, I had the same concern about not sealing the dough and letting the contents escape during boiling. For dumplings, though, you’re only ruining one bite if it comes apart in the boiling water — a loosely sealed nacatamale could ruin a meal for one person. So much pressure!

We made over 40 nacatamales in all, and the Solanos will eat them for several days. The foil packets were boiled in a huge pot on a burner in the back yard.

Here’s a nacatamale on a banana leaf after they were cooked. So very yummy! Lots of fresh ingredients and good flavors all mixed together. And I love anything in a banana leaf — reminds me of Sipsongpanna.

So, my new Christmas tradition will continue next year with tamales once again, Mexican, Nicaraguan, or otherwise.

We don’t learn about it in history class growing up in America, but modern Western culture owes a great deal to the Irish. And “a great deal” is putting it lightly.

Reading Thomas Cahill’s How the Irish Saved Civilization was a pivotal experience for me, for a couple of reasons. A friend loaned me the audiobook version when I was home in Texas in the summer in 2005. I remember it well, because Cahill’s fascinating narrative is what got me hooked on audiobooks, right around the time that I started making regular 15-hour bus trips back and forth across Yunnan. I could easily listen to a couple of books each round trip and decided to put a subscription to Audible.com to good use.

Cahill’s book on the Irish also helped me grasp for the first time that history is about more than facts and dates and timelines. He looks at groups of people in crucial periods and describes their overall impact on the way of thinking or course of events to follow throughout the Western world. His writing made me aware that some of the facts we learn in school aren’t necessarily untrue, but they may be presented in a way that distracts from or covers up other points of view. History is written in the perspective of men and women, who are always frail and sometimes purely deceitful, and I must be critical as a thinker in order to understand it, not just accept it injudiciously. That goes for reading a book from 100 years ago or an article about current events. A good lesson to learn while living in communist China.

How the Irish Saved Civilization is the first book in a series called “The Hinges of History,” which also includes volumes on the contributions of the ancient Jews, Jesus and his disciples, the Greeks, and Europe in the Middle Ages. Supposedly there are two more books to come, but I’ve been obsessively checking Cahill’s page on the Random House website for years (I mean it — years) and have seen no news of what’s next.

So, according to Cahill, what did the Irish do to save civilization?

The short version is that while the Roman Empire was falling to the barbarians and all their art and literature was being destroyed, the good monks of Ireland, tucked safely in their monasteries away from the devastation of Europe, were busy making hand-written copies of everything in their libraries. Thus were the records of Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian civilization preserved. Without the work of the Irish monks, little would have been left for us today. Who knew?

And why were all these monks in Ireland?

Skip to the chapter on Patrick, or Patricius as he was born in Britain, a Roman citizen and a Christian. Captured as a slave by the barbaric Irish as a boy, he began having visions at a young age. One led him to escape slavery by telling him to walk to a waiting ship, even though he was 200 miles from the coast. Back home with his family in Britain, he continued hearing voices, but this time it was the Irish, begging him to return to them. Eventually he knew it was God calling him to take the gospel to the Irish — he heard the voice of Jesus Christ himself saying, “He who gave his life for you, he it is who speaks within you.”

So he went, after becoming ordained. Patrick went as a missionary to those who had kidnapped him. More amazing — he didn’t go grudgingly, but showed evidence of truly loving the Irish people.

According to Cahill, Patrick is the first missionary since the time of the apostles. Like Paul, Patrick is a missionary called directly by a vision, by the voice of Jesus. He is the first missionary to go to a people outside the Greco-Roman world (this includes Thomas in India). Patrick also stands out as the first person in recorded history to vocally oppose slavery, as the tides of power changed and the British began kidnapping the newly converted Irish.

Those are God-given characteristics of Patrick worth celebrating every March 17.

One last word on Cahill as an author — I don’t agree with some of his theological positions (most evident in the book on Jesus), and I’ve read another book by him outside this series and found that I also don’t completely agree with him politically. In some ways, this makes reading his books even more important to me. He holds views different from mine on some issues, but I still really enjoy the way he uses language, the way he tells a story, the way he makes me consider things I never had before. It’s good to read well-spoken authors who differ from me. It helps me grow, helps me have compassion for those who aren’t the same as me, and helps me not to be prideful.

Happy Saint Patrick’s day, all!

It’s been almost eight months since I arrived back in the States from China, and I have just five weeks and a few days left before I make the drive from my current home base of Texas up to Washington, where I hope to figure out my next home base.  Those five weeks include Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s—a busy enough time of year when you’re not trying to pack and relocate across country at the same time you’re trying to start a freelance business and edit a novel.

So the blog is taking a break for the holidays.  Not necessarily because it takes huge amounts of time to write the entries.  It takes some time to do that.  But, I’ll be honest with you, I find myself wasting time checking my stats page, looking for comments, looking on Facebook and Twitter and wherever else to see if anyone is paying attention to what I’ve posted.  And I need a break from that.

Actually, I need a permanent break from my need for attention.  That need is quite a dilemma for me, as a writer who has only recently started letting people read what I write—isn’t attention part of what it’s all about?  The desire for attention doesn’t have to be all bad—it’s a good thing to want what I write to hold meaning and benefit for others, for them to pay attention to my words.  But when I’m more concerned with checking the number of clicks I’m getting on my site or how many “likes” certain posts get on Facebook, then it’s switched to a different kind of need for attention, and that’s a problem with my heart that needs to be dealt with quickly.

Aside from this heart issue, I also just need a break from messing so much with the blog and Facebook and Twitter so that I can focus more intently on the things going on right here and now.  I enjoy blogging about trips or my book or other things as they are happening, and I will continue doing that in the future.  But right now, I just want to enjoy the moments while I’m in the moments.  All this online stuff will still be here in a few weeks.

Or if it’s not, that’s ok too.

Our friends in MN, both the old village and the new, asked us to come up to the Mountain to celebrate Water Splashing Festival this year, so on the second day of the holiday we piled in both the truck and the jeep to make the drive up to the villages.  Road construction continues to improve the travel conditions, and we’re hopeful that the trip will consistently stay at around 2 1/2 hours or less in the days ahead.

We made our way from house to house, eating meals with friends and leaving them gifts of fresh baked goods, candy, and instant coffee.  It was a good couple of days of visiting families our team has come to love.

But as far as Water Splashing festivities go, the trip was a bust.  We had been told by numerous people that there would be a big village dance the day we were there.  We heard a village spokesman make an announcement on the loud speaker that could be heard in every house, that everyone should come to the center of the village so the dancing could begin.

We went to see the excitement.  I was ready to join in, wearing my new holiday dress and my dancing flip-flops.

But no one was there.  A couple of sleepy guys half-heartedly banged a drum and cymbals, while six or seven girls made an effort to dance to their less than enthusiastic music.  There was obviously no life in this party.  We heard later that all of the other guys in the village were too drunk to show up and play for the girls to dance.

To top it off, I barely got splashed with any water.  I didn’t relish the thought of a bucket being dumped over my head, but it was hot enough outside that I would have appreciated a couple of squirts with a water gun.

A surprise visit from Colleen, home for the holiday from her job across the border, made the trip worthwhile.  The photo above was taken with Colleen and two American girls at her grandparents’ house.

In the town where I currently live, JH, Water Splashing is a bit more tightly controlled.  The city organizes three days of festivities, of which only one day includes the actual throwing of water, unlike other towns where the chaos may last for a few days.  Aside from being targeted by an occasional kid with a water gun before and after the holiday, it is relatively easy to stay dry in JH, if you so desire.

The splashing of water falls on the third day of the holiday in JH.  The second day includes a citywide parade and dance performances.  On the evening of the first day of the holiday, people go to the river to float candles downstream and set off lighted paper lanterns.  The masses also head to the banks of the Mekong during the daylight hours of that first day to watch the dragon boat races.

The year I moved to JH, the races were held just a few days after I got settled in my apartment across the street from the river.  A couple of friends and I braved the sweltering heat and the teeming crowds to see what these dragon boats were all about.

We couldn’t get very close at all, but we were able to see the races from the bank above the rocks along the wide stretch of the Mekong River.  Even though I wasn’t exactly sure what was going on, the excitement of the crowd was contagious, and the sight of the men and women propelling the long, slender dragon boats with their oars was well worth the heat of the noonday sun beating down on us.  (I don’t know why they don’t get up any earlier to race these boats before the hottest part of the day, but it’s not my holiday to plan….)

Each boat holds upwards of 60 or 70 people, mostly rowers dressed in identical Dai outfits.  Drummers stand in the middle of the boat, and Dai dancers stand at the front.  Several standing rowers are placed at the back to help steer.  The dancers, drummers, and steerers are all men, but the rowers can be either all-male or all-female contingents.  Their uniformity of dress and movement is stunning.

I decided that day that the dragon boat races are my favorite Water Splashing Festival activity that I’ve experienced in any location so far.  This year I was at the river for a picnic with friends the day before the races and got to see the boats practicing up close, without the huge crowds.  After getting a closer view of what it takes to get the boats in and out of the water and to coordinate everyone involved in rowing the boat, I’m even more impressed with these racers.

Next in the series:  ”Village Water Splashing“

Three years after that, I was living in a different area, where there are Dai villages nearby, but Water Splashing is barely celebrated in town.  When it came time to celebrate the holiday, some local teachers who I’d met at an English teacher training invited me to visit them in a neighboring Dai county, SJ.  Feeling nostalgic for my days among the Dai in MS, I got on the bus and headed out to splash some water.

If I’d thought MS was rowdy during Water Splashing, SJ was almost beyond description.  But let me try to describe it….

After stuffing myself full of grilled pork, fish, and all sorts of other spicy foods and sticky rice at my teacher friend Lisa’s house, she and her husband and I headed out to join the “parade.”  I was imagining a parade with floats and marching bands and the like, but instead it was a mass of people moving through the main street, up towards the temple in a Dai village on the outskirts of town.  You could hear a few Dai drums and cymbals leading dancers in the distance, but otherwise the crowd was a horde of thousands of people walking along together, dancing and cheering and shoving and dumping buckets of water on each other.

There were hoses and tanks of water set up along the road for people to refill.  I didn’t have a bucket or any other form of offense or defense—a water fight with a few kids is fun and I feel like I have a chance, but in a mob of thousands I pretty much resigned myself to being soaked and just tried not to get separated from Lisa in the crowd.  Everything was so wet, there was no way I could use a cell phone if I got lost; this is the same reason why I have no pictures of any Water Splashing Festivals in the peak of the splashing action.

I marched onward, observing the chaos, resolving not to get myself in this situation ever again, and wondering if people would believe me when they heard me describe it.  I don’t know how people didn’t get trampled in the mob.  I heard later that one girl had died, I think because someone threw a bucket of water in her face while she was driving a motorbike.

I was soaked to the bone as soon as I had stepped out of the door of Lisa’s apartment.  Bucket after bucket of water was poured over my head, once even by a uniformed police officer.  At one point, a man grabbed both my wrists and dragged me out of the crowd, so that his friends could spray me with a water hose.  My resolve not to participate in citywide Water Splashing in future years thickened.  A few gentle splashes from people in villages is one thing, but mob mentality and men being forceful is another.

After eating another huge meal in the village (thankfully we didn’t go all the way to the temple), I transferred myself from Lisa’s care to the hospitality of another teacher friend, Rose.  We spent the next day visiting her friends in a different nearby village.  On the way there, our taxi was stopped outside a shop while a member of our party bought Cokes to take to our host.  A gang of men came upon our car, opened the door, and told us to get out so they could splash us.  Not caring to be drenched by strangers, we refused.  They grabbed Rose and pulled her from the back seat, dumping a pail of water on her.  A man reached in to pull me out, but I had had enough.  I poked my finger directly at his nose before he could lay a hand on me and said “NO” in my most forceful voice.  He might not have known any other English word, but that day he knew the word “no,” and he knew better than to touch me.  The only water I got on me in that cab ride was dripping off of Rose when she climbed back in the car.

I wasn’t as fortunate at her friends’ house that afternoon.  As we sat around woven bamboo tables in their courtyard, drinking tea and eating fresh fruit, a man picked me up off my stool, carried me across the courtyard, and dropped me in a laundry tub full of water.

Since that day, I have made it a point to stay indoors during Water Splashing in cities.

Next in the series:  ”Dragon Boat Races“

My theory on Water Splashing Festival in town is you either have to embrace it or avoid it.  There’s no in between.  You can’t expect to go outside on the days of celebration and stay dry at all—so either stock up on food beforehand and stay indoors, or join the madness.  I’ve done both, depending on my mood that year.

My first Water Splashing Festival was in 2002 in MS, further west up the border from here.  I had several friends come to visit me during the holiday, and we bought Super Soakers and played with kids in the street.  Foreigners make prime targets during this holiday, so I stayed wet for several days straight.

The worst hit I took was outside the main market in town, where I had taken a couple of friends to shop for Dai bags and skirts.  To that point in the morning, we had all stayed relatively dry.  We needed to meet another friend at the airport, so we headed out to the street to catch a taxi.  Just as I opened the car door, a kid ran up and pegged me square in the middle of my back with a water balloon.  I was soaked to the skin.

Dripping wet as I was, I still needed to get to the airport, though I wasn’t sure how the taxi driver would feel about me getting in his car in that condition.  “No problem!” he laughed, as I apologized for the water.  He was dressed only in a pair of shorts and flip-flops and didn’t seem to be the type of guy to get real uptight about anything.

When I got out at the airport, I left a little puddle in the front passenger seat of his car.  He laughed again as I made some embarrassed comments about how wet I was.

That day I was wearing a sarong I’d only worn a couple of times before, so the dye still faded when it was washed.  Or when I was hit with a water balloon.  I discovered later in the day that my underwear had been dyed bright blue and purple during the drenching.

(to be continued)

Next in the series:  ”Water Splashing Past:  SJ“

Water Splashing Festival (a.k.a. Songkran, Pi Mai Lao, Po Shui Jie, and other names depending on which country you’re in and which language you’re speaking) is a Southeast Asian Buddhist holiday, the traditional New Year in Thailand and Laos and for the Dai people here in China.

There’s a local legend about how the tradition of splashing water on each other started, though I’m not sure if it’s the same story in other countries.  The following is a typical description of the legend, taken from an English language website in China; I find the story to be more “demonic” and “gruesome” than “beautiful” and “happy”:

There is beautiful story about the origin of the Water-splashing Festival. Long ago, there was a devil in the place where the Dai people lived, doing all kinds of evil. All the people hated him to the extremity, but had no method to punish him because of his powerful magic. Then one day in June by Dai calendar, his seventh wife, who had been robbed from the village, fuddled and induced him to speak out his own weak points. When he was sound sleeping, the seventh wife and the other sisters together used his hair to cut off his head. But once the head touched the ground, it began to burn fiercely. So the girls rushed over bravely to pick up the head and hold it in arms tightly, and the fire died out immediately. Therefore, the seven girls took turns to hold the head, each for one year. Every year at the time of changing turns, people would splash water on the girl who has held the head for a whole year, to wash away the blood on his body and the one-year fatigue. By and by, it developed into a happy festival to send off the old year and welcome the new.

In the villages of the Dai and other Buddhist minority groups in border areas of Yunnan, the holiday is spent with family and visiting the temple, with lots of eating and drinking and being merry.  The splashing of water on each other is generally fun and good-spirited in villages, unlike in town where the Han Chinese have taken over the holiday and made it into a tourist experience and an excuse for people to be drunk and obnoxious for several days.  On those days, it’s best to stay inside if you don’t want to be drenched to the bone as soon as you step out the door….

(to be continued)

Next in the series:  ”Water Splashing Past:  MS“

Easter falls at the same time as Water Splashing Festival this year, and Easter is definitely getting short shrift as a holiday in this predominantly Buddhist town.  No matter—the faithful few will celebrate.

Early this morning, while it was still dark, I quietly left my apartment and walked one block to the Mekong.  It’s been too cloudy in the morning lately to see the sunrise, but while it grew lighter I sat and listened to the frogs and the birds and the absence of human voices or construction noises.  I read John 20 and sang a song.  When it was time for coffee, I headed home.

The only people awake and moving on the street under my house were the owners of a noodle shop, just opening their garage door for breakfast.  I greeted the man as I went past and asked him, “Did you know today is Easter?  Jesus died on the cross, but He came back from the dead on the third day.  Today we remember…Jesus is risen.”

He scowled as he poked the coals under the water for their soup.  “I don’t believe that.  But my wife does.”

I stuck my head further in the shop so I could see the wife where she was arranging stools around tables.  “Are you a Christian?” I asked.

“Yes,” she smiled.

“Me too!  Happy Easter!”

Her eyes lit up and her smile widened,  “Oh, God bless you!”

Jesus is risen.   We must remind each other.  May others know and experience the fullness of our joy!