IX

I received two packages last week. The first was for my birthday which was about three weeks ago. My sister sent a rum cake as she usually does on my birthday. So delicious usually, the kind of cake that can be eaten with one's hands entirely because it doesn't have frosting, because it doesn't need frosting, because it is perfectly sweet all the way through. Pretty much every year she sends me one and in the last three or four years, these cakes come along with birthday cards from my eight year old-niece and my six year old nephew. The backward "y" and "r" in their kid-print handwriting of my name make it all so charming. The trouble began however when my sister informed me that USPS had informed her that the box had been delivered on November 11th. At that point it was November 16th, and there was no sign of the cake. About five days later I got a message from the mail room saying that I had a package. And so all said, it was about 10 days since the cake was delivered to China, and when it was delivered to my work. So the question is where was it? The answer is a mystery, though it's safe to surmise that the cake was inspected thoroughly by customs:

The cake was no longer in a round cake like form, but instead was a mass of cake like nuggets, wadded up at the bottom of the Styrofoam shipping container. Though I may have been able to eat it, it seemed like a bad idea, as I imagined a customs official in a drafty airport hanger poking through the cake with a rusty metal baton and cigarette dangling from his mouth. If my sister had sent me any contraband, that guy must have gotten it. On the bright side, I did receive birthday cards from my nice and nephew, and two stylish dishtowels that my sister had also packed.

The second package came on Sunday morning. I knew it was coming as my landlord had told me it would. A few days previous, her and I had been messaging over WeChat along with the real estate agent. The rent was due and I needed to send my landlord the money over WeChat. Of course we're not really talking, as I can't write anything beyond a few stock phrases in Chinese and my landlord has zero command of English. WeChat however can translate, and so I write in English, and she writes in Chinese and most of the time we can understand what each other is talking about. At any rate, after paying the rent, my landlord, who refers to me as "little handsome" (she is an elderly woman), said that she would send me a chicken in the mail. Not knowing what else to say, I wrote back, “好的,” or, "Ok." And so on Sunday morning it arrived:

This is the first time I've confronted an entire chicken. I typically don't cook chicken, but when I have in the past it has already been cut up. So I thought, I don't know what to do with this, I don't know how to cook it, I don't have the write tools or a big enough pot, and I wonder if anyone I know wants it. So I messaged a number of my colleagues and waited. The first colleague passed, but the second took it, and then a third wanted it, and then another, my neighbor, suggested we cook it together. So that evening I went over to his apartment and watched as he cut up the chicken: cutting off its head, its' feet, tearing out its guts and then breaking into smaller pieces. We used a pressure cooker to cook it along with potatoes and onions, and then mixed everything with Thai curry. It was delicious, and I have an entire pot of it left over that I'm looking forward to eating over the course of the week.

There is one easy takeaway from this story: don't send cakes to China. My sister said she would try it thinking her chances were 50/50. I think they were much lower than that however. The internet tells me that food must be packaged with a complete ingredients list and have a shelf life of 6 months (or in other words, "non-perishable"). One must follow the rules, especially in China. And so at the same time I receive another message from this destroyed cake, one that is a bit more ominous. Incidents like these are offset by my charming landlord and the wide spread everyday kindness that I routinely experience. And so I didn't get to eat cake, but I did get to eat chicken.