Soup dumplings, a/k/a Xiaolongbao, in Beijing last week

By Jack Brummet, China travel and restaurant editor


After our trip to Beijing's Forbidden City last Friday, my friend Liang took me out for soup dumplings in Beijing.  The restaurant was glitzy, on the top floor of a fashionable atrium style mall that sold very high end consumer goods like Coach handbags, diamonds, Brooks Brothers, perfume stores, and all sorts of gear for the disposable income set. 

A bamboo steamer with Shanghai hairy crab soup dumplings (Xiaolongbao)

The dumplings, or, Xiaolongbao, are traditionally filled with pork, but variations include other meats, seafood and vegetarian fillings. The soup-filled kind are created by wrapping solid meat aspic inside the skin alongside the meat filling. Heat from steaming then melts the gelatin-gelled aspic into soup. They are just amazing.  We had a great lunch of a little bit of grilled pork, a plate of sauteed spinach, some soup, and three varieties of Xiaolongbao: vegetable, pork, and Shanghai Hairy Crab a/k/a mittens crab.  They're not actually hairy, but like our local Dungeness crabs, their claws look hairy.  The hairy crab is actually a freshwater crab that only goes into saltwater to breed and later to fetch their young uns.  Soup dumplings have recently become a very hot item in the Seattle area, with a couple of restaurants serving them and people waiting on line for two hours to get in. . .

Liang

I think I can reverse engineer these fairly easily.  I think the main trick will be in sealing the dumplings, which are not dropped into boiling water, but steamed in bamboo steamers.  Making the aspic will probably be the only big P.I.T.A.

Lunch

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Alien Lore Mo. 234 - The sounds and music we sent into deep space on the Voyager (1977)

By Jack Brummet, NASA and Alien Lore Editor

The picture on the left went into space with our early interstellar craft (The Pioneers). It explains where earth is, what homo sapiens sort of looked like naked (like Barbie and Ken), and other information, like a diagram indicating the location of our sun. 

Nasa's Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) worked on this "Interstellar Outreach Program" for many years. The gold-plated disk is from the two Voyager craft, launched after the Pioneer.  It is a bronze record containing sounds and images of life on earth. Each of the two Voyagers is equipped with a record player of sorts--with a cartridge, even--to play the disk, and recover the images. 

The two circles in the bottom right side of the record show the two lowest states of a hydrogen atom. The vertical lines on the circles show the spin moment of the electron and proton. And (is this cool, or what?) "the transition time from one state to the next provides the fundamental clock reference used in ALL the cover diagrams and the images to be decoded from binaries."  [Ed's note: Obviously, they're not expecting a dork like me to find the record laying around somewhere in the future].

Carl Sagan and a team of other folks designed and selected the Voyager's messages and data. The disk includes a greeting in 55 different languages, from Aramaic to Vietnamese. The record also includes a sampler of non-human Earth sounds such as wind, rain, surf, chimps, sheep, crickets, saws, and trains. It contains photos as well, and maps, diagrams of DNA, vertebrate anatomy charts, chemical and mathematical definitions, and other visual displays. The disk includes Beethoven, a Chuck Berry tune (Johnny B, Goode), Bach and Mozart, a Navajo chant, Indian Ragas, and a Louis Armstrong recording. There are 116 binary images on the record. 

No one know if the aliens who find this will be able to use it, or decode the information. Will they even have hands? Opposable thumbs? Will they even think in any path parallel to ours? Will the disk just look like gibberish to them? Their scientists--if they have science (and we assume they must)--may need to study the disk for a couple of thousand years before they make a breakthrough. 

A book titled Murmurs of the Earth, written by Sagan and colleagues, was reissued in 1992 with a CD-ROM compilation of the Golden Record, and a description of its creation. It's out of print, but you can pick up a copy fairly cheaply. 


Don't hold your breath that any of our cousins in other galaxies will find this and come to visit. The Voyager will not come close to another star for something like 40,000 years. But then again, when you're dealing with our alien cousins Out There, 40,000 years may just be a sneeze in the winds of time. 


Sounds included on the Voyager record:

• Music of The Spheres (WTF is this!?)
• Volcanoes, Earthquake, Thunder
• Mud Pots
• Wind, Rain, Surf
• Crickets, Frogs
• Birds, Hyena, Elephant
• Chimpanzee
• Wild Dog
• Footsteps, Heartbeat, Laughter
• Fire, Speech
• The First Tools
• Tame Dog
• Herding Sheep, Blacksmith, Sawing
• Tractor, Riveter
• Morse Code, Ships
• Horse and Cart
• Train
• Tractor, Bus, Auto
• F-111 Flyby, Saturn 5 Lift-off
• Kiss, Mother and Child
• Life Signs, Pulsar

Music:

• Bach, Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F. First Movement, Munich Bach Orchestra, Karl Richter, conductor. 4:40
• Java, court gamelan, "Kinds of Flowers," recorded by Robert Brown. 4:43
• Senegal, percussion, recorded by Charles Duvelle. 2:08
• Zaire, Pygmy girls' initiation song, recorded by Colin Turnbull. 0:56
• Australia, Aborigine songs, "Morning Star" and "Devil Bird," recorded by Sandra LeBrun Holmes. 1:26
• Mexico, "El Cascabel," performed by Lorenzo Barcelata and the Mariachi México. 3:14
• "Johnny B. Goode," written and performed by Chuck Berry. 2:38
• New Guinea, men's house song, recorded by Robert MacLennan. 1:20
• Japan, shakuhachi, "Cranes in Their Nest," performed by Coro Yamaguchi. 4:51
• Bach, "Gavotte en rondeaux" from the Partita No. 3 in E major for Violin, performed by Arthur Grumiaux. 2:55
• Mozart, The Magic Flute, Queen of the Night aria, no. 14. Edda Moser, soprano. Bavarian State Opera, Munich, Wolfgang Sawallisch, conductor. 2:55
• Georgian S.S.R., chorus, "Tchakrulo," collected by Radio Moscow. 2:18
• Peru, panpipes and drum, collected by Casa de la Cultura, Lima. 0:52
• "Melancholy Blues," performed by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven. 3:05
• Azerbaijan S.S.R., bagpipes, recorded by Radio Moscow. 2:30
• Stravinsky, Rite of Spring, Sacrificial Dance, Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Igor Stravinsky, conductor. 4:35
• Bach, The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2, Prelude and Fugue in C, No.1. Glenn Gould, piano. 4:48
• Beethoven, Fifth Symphony, First Movement, the Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, conductor. 7:20
• Bulgaria, "Izlel je Delyo Hagdutin," sung by Valya Balkanska. 4:59
• Navajo Indians, Night Chant, recorded by Willard Rhodes. 0:57
• Holborne, Paueans, Galliards, Almains and Other Short Aeirs, "The Fairie Round," performed by David Munrow and the Early Music Consort of London. 1:17
• Solomon Islands, panpipes, collected by the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Service. 1:12
• Peru, wedding song, recorded by John Cohen. 0:38
• China, ch'in, "Flowing Streams," performed by Kuan P'ing-hu. 7:37
• India, raga, "Jaat Kahan Ho," sung by Surshri Kesar Bai Kerkar. 3:30
• "Dark Was the Night," written and performed by Blind Willie Johnson. 3:15
• Beethoven, String Quartet No. 13 in B flat, Opus 130, Cavatina, performed by Budapest String Quartet 6:37

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Photos and notes from Beijing's Forbidden City

By Jack Brummet, China Travel Editor 

The Forbidden City, 紫禁城, literally translated by most as The Purple Forbidden City,  was the Chinese imperial palace from the Ming Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty. It is located smack dab in the middle of Beijing, and now houses the Palace Museum, who run the place. For almost 500 years, it was the home of emperors and their households, as well as the ceremonial and political center of China's government. Mao Zedong later lived just on the edge of the city.  The site includes an amazing 780 buildings on about eight million square feet (or, 178 acres!).  According to The Wikipedia, in the fifteen years in the Ming period when then city was under construction, it employed one million workers.  I saw a fraction of it in three hours.  I look forward to going back later this year to explore it further. 

Roof guardians - many of the buildings have these wonderful gargoyle sentries

This painting, from the Ming Dynasty period (mid-1400's) depicts the completed Forbidden City looking just about like it does today.

At the gate to the forbidden city.  In this photo, I am facing Tiananmen Square, just across the way.  Next to the Great Wall, I think this entrance, with the picture of Mao Zedong (who in my youth was still known as Mao Tse Tung), is probably the most photographed image in all of China.

a plan of the Forbidden City from Airphoto International - it only shows the largest structures

There are wonderful images of dragons all around the Forbidden City.

A lion that was carved almost six hundred years ago guards the entrance.  I wonder if these have been restored?  You would think the air pollution in Beijing would make short work of them, but they look like they could have been carved this year.  In Seattle, we have two ancient Egyptian sculptures of camels outside our Asian art museum on Capitol Hill.  About 20 years ago, they brought them inside and put copies outside.  They did the same thing in Florence with massive statue of David.  These lions are tough!

Yeah, I was bad about writing down the names of buildings.  I can only name a few of them.

It's virtually impossible to take a photo without someone (or hundreds) of tourists in it

Most of the interiors are closed off, but you can see in to the throne and sitting rooms

Many of the buildings have these vast bronze cauldrons (some covered in gold leaf) out front.  They were the Ming equivalent of fire hydrants.  They were always kept filled with water in case of fire; in the winter, they would keep fires lit beneath them to keep the water from freezing.  When a fire broke out, presumably some sort of bucket brigade sprung into action.  I'm not sure how effective these were--many  buildings, mostly built in the early 15th century eventually burned down and were reconstructed.

Just when you think you are at the end of the city, you stumble upon a new row of buildings.

This is a 200 ton sculpture that was quarried and carved far away from Beijing.  It was brought to the Forbidden City (presumably by slaves).  We know it was transported on the road in the winter.  They would pour water on the road, and drag the sculpture fifty feet and begin the water/freeze/drag procedure once again.  I wonder how many slaves it took to push 200 tons of rock across the iced roads?

This was just amazing.  It is not sculpted or carved.  It is a pile of gigantic, fantastically shaped rocks that they built a hill from and then topped it with a pagoda.  The Emperor would come here with his wife on special occasions and climb up the hill into the pagoda.

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Photos and notes from Tiananmen Square, Beijing

By Jack Brummet, China Travel Editor

Tiananmen Square is El Centro of China; the very heart of the country.  The Communist Party began building the square after the 1949 revolution.  It was the parade ground upon which The Party would hold its massive parades of soldiers, tanks, and missiles.  Eventually, it would contain Mao Zedong's tomb, and many other museums, monuments, and memorials.  TS sits squarely in the center of Beijing, China, and is named after the Tiananmen Gate (Gate of Heavenly Peace--a phrase lifted from the I Ching) just across the street to its North, and a few hundred feet south of the Forbidden City. Tiananmen Square is one of the largest city squares in the world--roughly 100 acres.  It has enormous cultural significance as the site of numerous important events in post-revolution Chinese history.  


Almost every citizen I asked about the square didn't want to talk about what happened there in 1989. They didn't refuse to talk about it, but their answers were always a little muddy and vague.  To us, outside China, the square is known as the focal point of the protests of 1989, the pro-democracy movement which abruptly ended on June 4th, 1989, with a declaration of martial law in Beijing, the iconic images of a tank killing a protester, and the death of several hundred civilians.  It was a sobering visit for me, partly because no one really wants to discuss what happened with an obscure American blog site.  People seem aware of what happened, but no one was willing to open up on how it affected the citizens. In any case, this is one of the most popular tourist sites in China.  There were literally thousands of Chinese tourists the day I visited there, and maybe one or two dozen Europeans and Americans.  


Tiananmen Square is the biggest square I have ever seen (the biggest square I've seen prior to this was El Plaza Mayor in Madrid--a mere 129 by 94 metres).  There are many beautiful and culturally significant features, but for me it was impossible to be there without remembering the savage beatdown the Party put down on its citizens in  1989.  I was utterly unable to determine what the events of June 4th mean to the regular folk in China; I encountered the same reticence every time I asked people about membership in the Communist Party.

This photo captures maybe one third of the vastness of Tiananmen Square.  The building you see

directly in front, behind the red video screen on the right, is Mao Zedong's tomb.

A view of the Great People's Hall

 I didn't verify this, but these two video displays (this is just one--roughly 150 feet wide--may be the biggest I have ever seem.  They mostly display scenes from various parts of China and messages for The People.  

The obelisk is a memorial for fallen soldiers.

The leading edge of a sculpture just to the left of Mao Zedong's temple 

(in which the taxidermied Mao Zedong is available for viewing three hours a day).

Another view of the sculpture outside Mao's memorial.  Someone just pointed out to me that they 

thought this sculpture resembled the famous photograph of Americans planting the flag on Iwo Jima. 

Mao Zedong's tomb, which closed at noon, frustrating hundreds of Chinese tourists

The next few shots are of the colorful topiaries on the west side of the square.

The flag

A six hundred year old lion sculpture

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Alien Lore No. 232 - The Dyatlov Pass incident

By Jack Brummet
Alien Lore and Paranormal Editor


The Dyatlov Pass incident  is one of the creepiest and spookiest stories of the 20th century.  What happened there has been ascribed to Sasquatches/Yeti/Abominable Snowmen, covered up government "experiments," and, of course, The Greys.

Let's start with the facts (of which there are few, since there were no survivors and there are many clues that the Soviets may have suppressed some/most of the facts and findings).


High in the Ural mountains on the night of February 2, 1959, nine murders [probably] occurred. Of course, if the perpetrator(s) happened to be bears or another animal, it wasn't murder at all but another unfortunate man vs, beast encounter.  The incident happened on the east shoulder of the mountain Kholat Syakhl, or, Холат Сяхл.  The pass, where the bodies were found has since been renamed Dyatlov Pass, or, Перевал Дятлова, after the leader Igor Dyatlov.  Nine skier/hikers were found dead on the pass.  The best the Soviet investigators came up with was that "a compelling unknown force" caused the deaths. 


Contemporary Investigators on the scene believed that the hikers tore or cut open their tent from inside and escaped barefoot (they left their boots behind) into the night temperature of just above 0 degrees Fahrenheit.  It appeared to the investigators as if they were trying to escape something inside the tent. The bodies showed no signs of struggle (e.g., no defense wounds), but two victims had fractured skulls, and two had broken ribs and massive internal injuries more consistent with a car accident than an encounter with humans or animals.  One of the hikers tongues had been removed.  The hiker's clothing was later tested, and was found to be radioactive.



Only the hikers footprints were found--there was no sign of any other humans or animals.  

Like all classic 20^th Century mysteries involving groups of missing persons or enigmatic deaths, there is a group of UFOlogists convinced that UFOs or The Greys had something to do with the slaughter.

Lev Ivanov, the lead Soviet investigator, collected a report from a group of hikers suggesting that something extraterrestrial might have resulted in the Dyatlov Team’s murders.  The hikers camped in an area 32-miles south of Kholat-Syakhl that night, and saw a series of “strange orange spheres” in the northern sky.  For the next month and a half, other residents in the region reported similar objects in the night skies. 

Ivanov himself actually believed that these spheres might have a link with the deaths. In a 1990 interview, Ivanov claimed that he was ordered to close the case and classify the findings as secret.

Officials were worried that reports of UFOs in the area by multiple eyewitnesses — including people in the  military and weather service — could result in some unnecessary speculation, or panic.  Ivanov told a newspaper reporter "I suspected at the time, and am almost sure now, that these bright flying spheres had a direct connection to the group’s death.”

One thing not mentioned in this video is that a note was found near the campsite that said "from now on we know there are snowmen."

A photo gallery, including the search party photos, can be found here.

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All This Is That contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We make these materials available to advance the understanding of political, economic, literary, artistic, and social issues. In some cases we satirize, parody, or lampoon materials from other sources. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of copyrighted material as provided for by section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit for research, educational, and entertainment purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', please read and follow our Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license and attribute the work to All This Is That, along with our URL (http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com).

A blanket fort play facility in Seattle (with ziplines, marshmallow roasting facility, and more)?

By Jack Brummet, Seattle Metro Editor

If this isn’t a prank (I can’t actually track the permit down), it's the best land use permit ever.  It is for a lot near Eastlake in Seattle. . .and even if it IS a prank, it’s a pretty good one.  It just about has to be a prank; if not the actual business plan must be the most impractical one ever developed. . .

click to enlarge

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All This Is That contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We make these materials available to advance the understanding of political, economic, literary, artistic, and social issues. In some cases we satirize, parody, or lampoon materials from other sources. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of copyrighted material as provided for by section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit for research, educational, and entertainment purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', please read and follow our Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license and attribute the work to All This Is That, along with our URL (http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com).

Visiting a redeveloped Hutong in Beijing

Jack and Bill Willis on Thursday night in Beijing.  More stories and photos will be coming shortly.  Although Blogger (and Facebook, Tumbler, Twitter, and many more sites) is blocked in China, I can slip in small items like this via the mobile blogger editor (but cannot format or proofread or even be sure it is actually posted).

Drawing: Two Women

Drawing by Jack Brummet

click to enlarge

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ATIT Reheated: Alien Lore No. 150 - The Big Radio

By Jack Brummet, Alien Lore Editor

As late as the 1920s, many people (including Albert Einstein) still considered light signals as the most practical way to contact distant civilizations/The Greys (a/k/a aliens). Radio transmitters were not yet capable of focusing a beam on a distant planet. It took a 50,000 watt station, like KGO San Francisco, WOR NYC, or KIRO Seattle, to even broadcast up and down the coasts. And finally, scientists gradually became convinced that Mars did not have the conditions to support life. . . therefore, any Greys or ETs, would exist much, much further away.


It wasn't until 1959 that radio-based SETI [Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence] started to be taken seriously. Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison showed that radar transmitters of the time were powerful enough to send signals light years through space. "If we can do it, then the aliens might be doing it."

And we've been trying to speak to them ever since.

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ATIT Reheated: Alien Lore No. 180 - The Alien Moon Base

By Jack Brummet, Alien Lore Editor

"Luna," according to many UFOlogists is an Alien base on the far side of the Moon (e.g., the side we never see).  They say it was filmed by the Apollo Astronauts. They also claim the base is HQ for a massive mining operation using very large machines. According to Milton Cooper, a number of very large alien craft--which he described as "mother ships"--were also there. 



Many researchers, UFOlogists, and nutjobs claim that  both Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin saw UFOs shortly after their historic landing on the Moon in in July, 1969.  People claims that one of the astronauts referred to a "light" in a crater during their television transmission.  Mission Control pressed for  further details.   The astronauts did not respond.

According to a former NASA employee, unnamed radio operators with their own VHF receiving facilities  picked up the following exchange:

NASA: What's there?  Mission Control calling Apollo 11...

Apollo11:  These "Babies" are huge, Sir! Enormous!  OH MY GOD! You wouldn't believe it! I'm telling you there are other spacecraft out there, lined up on the far side of the crater edge! They're on the Moon watching us!

The dark side of the moon -- the alleged location of the Alien Moon Base

In 1979 Maurice Chatelain, a former head of NASA Communications said that  Armstrong had

reported seeing two UFOs on the rim of a crater. "The encounter was common knowledge in NASA," he revealed, "but nobody has talked about it until now."

Dr. Vladimir Azhazha, a physicist and Professor of Mathematics at Moscow University said "Neil Armstrong relayed the message to Mission Control that two large, mysterious objects were watching them after having landed near the moon module.  But his message was never heard by the public," because NASA pulled it.

Another Soviet scientist, Dr.Aleksandr Kazantsev, says he saw color movies of the UFOs taken by Buzz Aldrin from inside Apollo 11.  Buzz continued filming them after he and Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon.  The UFOs departed minutes after the astronauts came out on to the lunar surface.

UFOlogists claims that Apollo 11's radio transmissions were interrupted on several occasions in order to hide the news from the public.  Maurice Chatelain claims that "all Apollo and Gemini flights were followed, both at a distance and sometimes also quite closely, by space vehicles of extraterrestrial origin - flying saucers, or UFOs, if you want to call them by that name.  Every time it occurred, the astronauts informed Mission Control, who then ordered absolute silence."

Moon Bases?

Another researcher says "I think that Walter Schirra aboard Mercury 8 was the first of the astronauts to use the code name 'Santa Claus' to indicate the presence of flying saucers next to space capsules. However, his announcements were barely noticed by the general public. It was a little different when James Lovell  on board the Apollo 8 command module came out from behind the moon and said for everybody to hear: 'PLEASE BE INFORMED THAT THERE IS A SANTA CLAUS.' Even though this happened on Christmas Day 1968, many people sensed a hidden meaning in those words."

____________________

One professor asked Neil Armstrong during a university NASA symposium:

Professor: What REALLY happened out there with Apollo 11?

Armstrong:

Professor: How do you mean "warned off"?

Armstrong: I can't go into details, except to say that their ships were far superior to ours both in size and technology - Boy, were they big!...and menacing! No, there is no question of a space station.

Professor: But NASA had other missions after Apollo 11?

Armstrong: Naturally - NASA was committed at that time, and couldn't risk panic on Earth.   [He says here also that after Apollo 11, no one lingered on the moon].

Armstrong confirmed that the story was true but gave no details other than admitting that the CIA was behind the cover-up.
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