The Exploding Man

I digress. “Chi pu tao bu tu pu BOOM!!!!” What was that? A huge explosion outside my window and Yan Yan is not even phased – she just points to my book and tells me to pay attention. Ten minutes later there is another huge explosion right outside my building.

“Yan Yan? What is that noise?”

“What noise?”

“What noise? That huge explosion outside.”

“Oh don’t worry about that – now repeat, ‘Chi pu tao bu tu pu tao pi…’”

I try to focus on the lesson but every ten minutes there is another huge explosion outside.

“Yan Yan, seriously, what is that noise?”

“OK, I tell you. That man she put…ummm…the iron in the pot, and then she put it on fire, and then it goes boom. Hao chi (‘It’s good food’). Now back to work lazy boy.”

This explanation is probably as confusing and unsatisfactory to you as it was to me, but I have learned that the best course of action is to just take a mental note and store away the broken pieces of the puzzle for a later time. I am confident I will figure it out later. (Language note – the word for both ‘he’ and ‘she’ in Chinese is “ta” so the pronouns ‘he’ and ‘she’ are constantly confused in English conversations).

After our lesson, we walk down stairs. On the stairway of my building there is a skinny old man sitting on the curb wearing a grimy Mao suit with a Mao hat. He is hand-cranking this iron furnace device over a hot coal fire. Picture a miniature version of the back of a cement truck with a heavy iron cap sealing the open end. The man’s knotted hands looks like they have been cranking this thing since the 1960’s. The whole contraption is on a self-contained cart with a coal fire on the bottom, an iron vessel above the fire, a push handle at one end and a big fine metal mesh bag at the other end.

Yan Yan bounces up and down, “This, this is the booming thing!” “Ahhh, dui, dui,” I say as I nod knowingly – glad that the pieces are starting to come together (man, iron, fire,…check). A small crowd of children is gathered around the man. He stands up and yells something in Chinese and all the kids run away holding their ears, as does Yan Yan. I think this is a good time for me to do the same. So I do. The man stands up, tips the metal cement truck thing toward the fine metal mesh bag, and yells the same saying again, which I am sure translates roughly to, “FIRE IN THE HOLE!” He hits a lever. BOOM!!!!

The kids all squeal and then starting running toward the man trying not to get trampled by the big crazy American who is also running like a school girl towards this new and exciting discovery. I look down into the mesh bag and there are thousands of these little tan tic-tac shaped things. He starts scooping them into small plastic bags and handing them out to the customers gathered around. I am happy now that I know what the noise was, so I turn away to go to dinner.

Are you kidding? How could I not buy a bag of these things, whatever they are? As a general rule, any food that is created by a deafening explosion is worth a try.