This year, Chinese New Year falls on February 14, 2010. My regular source of red envelopes is the local bank or 99 Ranch supermarket. Many Chinese bookstores also have red envelopes available for purchase. If you want to make your own, you can find free Ni Hao Kai-Lan Chinese New Year Red Envelopes at the nickjr. website. Just print them out, and cut and paste to assemble. Since I do not have a color printer, I used the Find Edges filter on Photoshop to make a colorable version, which is probably more fun for the kids anyways.

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After having some success with Wei-Chuan’s Chinese Cuisine (中国菜), I decided to pick some some of the other Wei-Chuan cookbooks to diversify, namely Chinese Snacks (點心專輯), Chinese Cuisine: Beijing Style (北京菜) and Chinese Cuisine: Shanghai Style (上海菜). I really like the bilingual cookbooks produced by Wei-Chuan. While I prefer to read through recipes in English, I like the title of the dishes to be in Chinese because I am more familiar with the Chinese names. I also like that I can consult with the Chinese recipe if the English directions are unclear.

Last weekend, I made the 糖醋瓦塊魚, which was inartfully translated to Sweet and Sour Fish Tiles. Another reason why I like the Wei-Chuan cookbooks is because the recipes all include a color photo of the final dish. If I had to rely on the awkward English translation, I probably would not have attempted the dish. Anyways, the recipe called for 1 T. of brown vinegar. Since I was unsure what was brown vinegar, I looked at the Chinese recipe which listed 鎮江醋. The bottles I see at 99 Ranch are labeled Chinkiang Vinegar, not Brown Vinegar. So, having the Chinese recipe with the English translation really helped in this instance.

I did notice that in some instances the Chinese and English recipes differed. Specifically, the Chinese recipe for 槽溜魚片called for 味精, but its English translation did not. I guess the translator was aware that Americans are not exactly fond of MSG. However, this cultural sensitivity theory fails if you look at all the dishes in the Chinese Snacks book that requires lard or shortening. I guess that’s the only way to make pastry dough light and flakey, but it’s definitely not a product I stock in the kitchen.

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I really like the music of Vienna Teng and was fortunate enough to hear her live a few years ago. If you’ve never heard her in concert, Internet Archive has a collection of her live recordings. You can also find her videos on YouTube.

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I rarely listen to the radio. When I do, I almost listen exclusively to KQED, which is not the best source for hearing new or old Chinese music. So, I pretty much depend on the Genius Just For You feature in iTunes to discover new music. iTunes seems to handle English artists and songs quite well; however, it experiences difficulties when dealing with Chinese artists and songs.

If I search through my own music for 王菲, iTunes will only return the songs by 王菲. If I search through the iTunes Store for 王菲, iTunes will return the songs by 王菲 as well as the ones by Faye Wong. Curiously, iTunes will return the songs from Zhi Mi Bu Hui from the artist Faye Wong, but not the ones from Wang Fei. So, when iTunes recommends Chinese songs, I have to make sure that I don’t already have their recommendation in my collection. And, this double-checking is not a straight forward process because I have to search through all permutations of a song’s or artist’s name: English, Pinyin, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. Ugh…

The other issue that troubles me is that some song titles are obviously incorrect, like 桃花开, which was inartfully translated to Peach Bloddom Come Out. If this was Wikipedia, some of these errors would already be corrected.

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In Ratatouille, Remy’s ratatouille dish whisks the critic Anton Ego back to his childhood. I have yet to meet a dish that could summon my memories of childhood, but some children songs come close. For quite some time, I’ve been trying to figure out the lyrics to 当我们都在一起, which I had learned many, many years ago. Only recently did I discover that this is the Chinese version of “The More We Get Together.”

I saw this version online, but the lyrics were not the ones I committed to partial memory. This version may be someone else’s childhood song, but it was not mine. I did find two other versions – audio and video – that unfortunately provide different lyrics for the one line that I cannot remember. So, it is either 其快乐无比 or 真快乐无比.

Curiously, if I search in English, I come up with even more results, such as this one with a different title and lyrics and this version on YouTube.

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I recently finished reading Lissy’s Friends by Grace Lin. Lissy’s Friends is a wonderful children’s book that describes how one Chinese girl handles the awkwardness of being the new kid in school. At first, she has difficulty making friends and turns to her origami animals for companionship. Later, she shares her origami creations with the other kids and befriends them.

Summary: A gorgeously illustrated book with an engaging plot that weaves elements of Chinese culture with the anxieties of childhood. Delightful for young children pre-school age and up.

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New York Times: Ford in Talks to Sell Volvo to Chinese Rival, Report Says. Ford Motor is in talks to sell its Volvo car business to its Chinese partner, Changan Automobile Group, the National Business Daily reported on Tuesday, citing an unnamed source at the Chinese company.

OK. The country that gave us melamine milk, pet food and candy may also acquire the automotive brand synonymous with product safety? I’ll believe it when it actually happens, but I see nothing but a total destruction of goodwill. I already don’t trust the Volvo brand as much under the care of Ford. I will trust it even less in the hands of a Chinese automotive company. Trust is earned, not purchased or sold. If you want to be the caretaker of the Volvo brand, you need to share their same passion for driver and passenger safety. Otherwise, you are just producing knock-offs.

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Strangest sight this morning. I had to fill up this morning, so I stopped at a gasoline station before heading to work. So, I took one path that takes me past an intersection with three gasoline stations: ARCO, Shell and Chevron. I was just about to pull into the Shell because it was on the right side of the street when I suddenly acquired sticker shock. $2.43 per gallon? Did gasoline prices go back up? I quickly glanced at the other side of the street and spotted Chevron selling gasoline at $2.27 per gallon. Ordinarily, if an intersection has 3 gasoline stations, I would expect their prices to be roughly comparable. A few cents I can understand, but a 16 cent difference? Now, I have to figure out whether Shell is the laggard in lowering its prices or whether its the front runner in raising back up its prices. I like $2.27 per gallon. Saved me $40 for a full tank of gas from 5 months ago.

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Last month, MSNBC reported that Warren Buffett had invested $3 billion in General Electric preferred shares with a 10 percent dividend. At the time, GE had fallen 42 percent in the past year. Well, since October 1st, GE has fallen almost 48 percent and that dividend (if it doesn’t get cut) is creeping closer and closer to the 10 percent mark. We’re dipping into the zone of the single-digit PE ratio, a number that I have read about but rarely seen until now.

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Five months ago, I had to pay $4.55 per gallon for regular unleaded at the local Valero gasoline station. At the time, gasoline prices were just 10% away from hitting the $5.00 per gallon mark. So, if I was offered a bet on whether gasoline prices would be over $5.00 or under $2.50 in five months, guess which way I would have wagered? However, here we are in the middle of November and regular unleaded is $2.35 per gallon. So, what does this all mean?

Right now, I am not sure. Was it oil speculators that previously drove up the price of gasoline? Or, is the economy that badly off to dry up demand for gasoline? In some parts of the Bay Area, the signs of the real estate deflation are obvious. However, in other cities, housing prices remain pricey. I always thought demand for gasoline was relatively inelastic. Everyone has to drive, right? However, if the demand for gasoline is true off kilter, then we are all headed for trouble times, regardless of which neighborhood we live in.

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