Ingredients (makes roughly 32):

Skin (饼皮)

• Flour (面粉), 150g
• Vegetable oil (植物油), 70g
• Water (水), 70g (begin with slightly less)
• 1 egg (鸡蛋)

Pastry (酥油)

• Flour (面粉), 150g
• Vegetable oil (植物油), 70g

Filling (馅料)

• Gourd / red bean paste (冬瓜容/红豆容), 70g

OR, if making your own red bean / mung bean paste:

• Approximately 2 dl of red beans and/or mung beans
• Sugar

Instructions:

1. Mix the ingredients for the skin, adding the water last to ensure that the dough is smooth and easy to work with but doesn’t have too much liquid. Divide into smaller balls of dough, roughly 32 in total.

2. Mix the ingredients for the pastry, and divide into smaller balls of dough, the same number as for the skin (which should give you portions that are slightly smaller than the portions for the skin).

3. Prepare the filling, either by buying gourd / red bean paste, or by making your own filling. I made red bean and mung bean paste for mine (see recipe below), and a type of glutinous rice paste is also occasionally used. Divide into portions, same number of portions for the skin and pastry and roughly the same size.

4. Blend the skin and pastry by first wrapping the skin around the pastry, and then folding and re-folding to create many thin layers inside the dough. See this video, starting at around 9.30, for a demonstration of how this can be done.

5. Wrap the blended dough around the filling, and flatten slightly. The chef in the video I’ve linked to above flattens them quite a lot, while the Wing Wah chef’s only flattened the dough slightly.

6. Place the cakes on a baking tray and brush with beaten egg. Let the egg dry, and then brush once more.

7. Bake at 180°C for 15-20 minutes, until the cakes are golden brown.

To make your own red bean or mung bean filling：

1. Let the beans soak in water overnight.

2. Rinse beans, cover with fresh water, and bring to boil on the stove. Reduce to a simmer, and let simmer for 1-2 hours. Skim off the white foam that rises to the top (mainly for the mung beans).

3. The beans are ready once they can easily be crushed with a fork or spatula. Remove from the stove, but keep some of the water that the beans were boiled in.

4. Peel the mung beans (the red beans do not need to be peeled). This is the most time-consuming step, and I’m not sure if it can be skipped – if you don’t have the patience for this step, stick to just red bean paste. One tactic that some people use is to bring the beans to a boil once again and skim off the skins that float to the surface. However, I found that most of the beans still needed to be peeled by hand.

5. Add sugar to taste (I used roughly 0.5 dl white caster sugar), and fry the paste with a small amount of oil until it is smooth and has the right consistency. It may be useful at this stage to add in a small amount of the water that the beans were boiled in.

6. Once the paste has been prepared, it can be kept refrigerated for roughly one week.

Beans soaking overnight

Dough split into portions and ready to be rolled into wife cakes

Finished wife cakes! Slightly higher dough to filling ratio than would be ideal, but still delicious

The Chinese economy won’t continue to grow by 8-10% per year forever. The amount of growth in the past 30 years has been incredible, but a lot of that was bound to happen once the ridiculous economic policies of the Communist era were reversed and the Chinese people were allowed to be their naturally entrepreneurial and hard-working selves. Today, too much GDP growth comes from real estate, which is probably in a bubble (it’s enough to travel around China and see all of the empty high-rises to know that something is wrong), expensive infrastructure investment (like high-speed trains) with questionable returns, and the financial sector, with lots of money going into the pockets of people with the right connections. I see the Communist Party less as a master puppeteer pulling all the right strings, and more as a huge, complicated web of a bureaucracy desperately trying to cling on to power, with different factions trying to carve out as much of the pie for themselves before the whole thing collapses.

If China does go the way of Japan, it wouldn’t be a bad outcome — a comfortable standard of living, and given its huge population, China only needs a per capita GDP of roughly a fourth of that of the US in order to become the world’s biggest economy. And both Chinese and Western media have in the past few months been awash with stories on the recent rises in worker’s wages, signalling the first step in a shift in the economy (although a part of the rise in wages was really just an adjustment for the lack of rise with inflation during 2008 and 2009, while factories braced themselves for a downturn in international demand). Higher wages are good for everyone, both the workers with more money in their pockets, and the Chinese and foreign companies that want to sell their products to China’s growing middle class. Factories are also beginning to move from rich coastal cities like Shenzhen to more affordable inland cities, like Wuhan, spreading jobs and money more evenly across the country. (On a side-note, for a great account of life as a migrant worker in a factory town, see Leslie Chang’s book Factory Girls).

But despite these steps forward, I’m worried about the current system. I want China to succeed — not only because I like China (and I’ve just invested two years of my life into learning Chinese), but also because China accounts for a sixth of the world’s population, and bringing this huge population out of poverty and into a happy, stable existence would be a huge step forward for humanity. For that to happen, I believe economic reform will have to be accompanied by political reform.

The important thing about democracy isn’t elections per se (although elections are probably an important component of ensuring accountabilty in a political system). Rather, it’s the security provided by guaranteed rights and civil liberties that matters. If you’re never sure whether you’ll be given a fair hearing in court when a developer with ties to the government wants to take your land, you’re much less likely to make investments. If the media isn’t allowed to reveal that an executive in a state-owned company has been taking bribes, it’s much harder to fight corruption. Rich Chinese are moving abroad because living in China is just too risky, and everyone is focused on short-term profits rather than long-term investments, because it’s just to hard too tell what the long-term will bring. The small benefits that might be gained from autocratic rule don’t come close to compensating for the huge disadvantages, ranging from distorted markets and a level of risk that discourages long-term investment, to the lack of security that comes from not being able to depend on basic civil rights, driving rich and talented Chinese people out of the country.

My impression, however anecdotal, is also that more Chinese people are unhappy with the current state of affairs than outsiders realize from media reports. The problem is that young people who care don’t always know what to do or how to get in involved. The obvious choices — like joining a political party, or writing about your opinion, are off-limits, and the burden of being an only child with the responsibility of eventually providing for parents and two sets of grandparents means that most people have no choice but to focus on their careers. There’s a lot of nationalism among the post-80s and post-90s generations, which disguises discontent in the short term, but doesn’t necessarily mean that the system is working and people are happy.

The idea of the “Asian model”, that Asian cultures value hierarchy and prefer paternalistic and autocratic leadership, is one that I find ridiculous. The American-style presidential system might not be the answer everywhere, but no one wants to be put in jail for trying to protect local wildlife, and I don’t believe restricting basic civil liberties is necessary for or conducive to economic growth.

The hike was pretty intense — I thought that after doing a few short hikes in other parts of China and wearing a pair of brand-new hiking boots bought in Beijing, 5-6 hours of hiking per day would be manageable. I was wrong — the first day was relaxed, but the second day, which had us at the highest altitudes, was exhausting, and by the end of the day I needed oxygen to recoup after Martin and I staggered into camp with hail raining down on us (I was clearly the slowest in the group). By day three we were descending, and there was more oxygen in the air, but also vampire bears in the woods — they kill children, and suck blood from adults — so we kept up the pace and then stayed closed together once we had struck camp. I later realized, seeing the pictures from the afternoon, that we were all extremely swollen at that point — I looked like I had gained 10 kgs — and I’m not sure if it was because of the altitude, or because of the salt water we were drinking to stay hydrated, but either way it was all very extreme. But also incredibly beautiful — and by Day 4, we had left the stark rocky landscapes and snow-capped mountains, descending into green fields and flowers. The yaks, and even more impressively, the yak-herders, turned around to do the journey back, up-mountain, in a day and a half, as we were bussed onwards to Samye monastery and then home to the luxury of our hotel.

We had a wonderful experience overall, and our tour guide was amazing — if anyone reading this is planning a trip to Tibet, send me an email and I’ll pass along their contact information.

A Tibetan mastiff that would eat me if it wasn't tied firmly to its pole

Yak dung drying on a wall

The puppy version is friendlier

A nomad family's tent, this one without solar panels

Martin, looking cool

Tony, looking cool

Snow-capped pass

Chris, looking cool

Beautiful views

A nomad family gave us surprisingly delicious salt tea, and now have my walking stick

Frosty morning views

More beautiful views

Flowers

Martin, looking handsome

Yak

Prayer flags in the wind

Despite the remote location, people in Songpan told us about how quickly help arrived when the earthquake hit – by the next morning, tents and food and been flown in, and foreigners who had been resting after their horse treks when the earthquake hit got discounted tickets on flights out from a nearby airport within a week. By the time we were there, most of the towns and villages we passed through seemed to have been rebuilt — in Wenchuan there were no hints that this has been the epicentre of an earthquake that killed more than 68 000 people.

Rebuilding the road through the mountains and valleys seems to be a much more difficult task. The dirt road that stands in for now was clearly not designed for buses, and in places disappears into a muddy slush. But our bus, the Golden Dragon, fought on bravely. The ride came with sound-effects: “Waaaaah” went the passengers as we passed a tipped-over PetroChina truck; “Waaaaah” as we stood by the side of the road and saw the bus gain a deep dent in its front fender as it struggled out of a particularly deep ditch; “Waaaah” as we drove over what can only be described as a waterfall. At one point, the bus’s engine gave up, but half an hour or so of prodding from the driver convinced it to struggle on. Most of our time seemed to be spent in “traffic jams”, places where long lines of trucks stood waiting to slowly pass by a particularly difficult section of road.

There was one rest stop, and then a little after 7 pm we finally stopped for food, the first bite to eat our driver had had for at least 12 hours. But life has to go on and tourist money has to keep coming in, and so he and the bus will have to turn around and do the whole journey again. Hopefully he had a chance to rest in Chengdu before the time came for the Golden Dragon to start the journey back.

Traffic jam

Even though horse treks are the thing to do for tourists coming to Songpan, there’s only one trekking agency, which has been around for 20 years – back then they charged 30 rmb per day for treks, and now it’s 200 rmb per day. After our guide had led the horses on a slow walk through the hills to a Tibetan monastery in the next valley, he cooked us a noodle soup and complained about how little of what we paid went to him. A few years ago, there had been a rival agency as well (started by a couple of guides from the original agency), but the two companies fought with each other (bad for harmony) and cut their prices to win over customers (bad for business), so the local government presumably decided things would be simpler with just one trekking agency, and they were forced to merge. Now only the merged company has a license, and is free to charge as much as it wants from customers, and give as little as it wants to the local farmers who raise the horses and act as guides. 80 rmb out of the 200 per person goes to the guide (who is responsible for providing the horses and most of the food), and presumably another chunk goes towards things like taxes, insurance, and fancy dinners, but that should still leave quite a bit for the people at the trekking agency, who spend their days gambling on the second floor and evenings signing up the next round of tourists for treks. Not a bad business model.

We got the story of the trekking agency from Sarah, the owner of one of the two backpacker-oriented restaurants next to the trekking agency. She doesn’t have a monopoly, and clearly has to work hard to compensate. She’s our age, born 1984 to a Tibetan mother and Han Chinese father, and opened the restaurant seven years ago. After leaving school at 16, she moved to Chengdu and worked in the kitchen at Holly’s Hostel, where she learned to cook. She got married to a man from Chengdu when she was 20, and now she has a son who’s five years old and who goes to school in Chengdu, where he lives with her husband’s parents. She told us that she misses him, but her parents-in-law refuse to move to Songpan. When she opened the restaurant, the only words she knew in English were “Come, eat”, but through talking to customers and reading in the evening, she worked herself up to a level where she spoke to us maybe not with perfect grammar but with amazing confidence and fluency. She worried that tourists weren’t coming to Songpan as much as before because they were worried about earthquakes, but it probably has more to do with slow progress on rebuilding the road from Chengdu.

For those who haven’t found a way to get a slice of the tourist economy, there’s construction work and farming. Our guide on the horse trek was a Hui Muslim farmer from near Songpan, and he complained about the burdens of providing for three sons and a daughter. When I told him he was xingfu to have so many children, he replied that sons were’t a blessing at all, they only meant more mouths to feed, and he wished he had only had daughters. He blamed the trekking agency for taking too large of a cut for the treks, and then blamed the size of the Chinese population, which seems to be the catch-all explanation for poverty.

Once the road to Chengdu has been fully repaired, it will become that much harder to escape from the tourist trail — and the people we met in Songpan probably won’t mind.

Saddling up

We shared the park with urban Chinese dressed head to toe in North Face hiking gear, which I guess is the look for these things — but in this case was by no means necessary. In return for an astronomical admissions fee (310 rmb, 260 for students), roads have been paved all the way up to each of the scenic spots, raised wood paths have been built along the lakes and across the waterfalls, and shuttle buses drive visitors out to the lakes and then back to the restaurant and shopping centre where the roads meet. The valley is named after the nine Tibetan villages that lie there, and when the final touches were put to the park, most of the villagers were reportedly forced to move out, with a few staying on to work as park attendants in their now brightly painted former homes.

The whole park is very tastefully designed, and Chinese parks seem to be particularly good at building wood or stone paths along lakes and mountains in a way that makes them almost completely blend into the background. A part of me felt that seeing these lakes and waterfalls after having earned the privilege by hiking to them, rather than simply being driven there by bus, would have made the views seem even more breathtaking – but at the same time, this type of tourist infrastructure makes the views accessible to so many more people, including people who wouldn’t have the time or ability to see them otherwise — and there’s still lots of open wilderness in northern Sichuan, like in the area around Songpan, were travellers really do have to earn their views, so maybe losing this park to the tour groups is ok. I wonder if the Tibetans who were moved out of their villages felt the same way.

Clouds roll over a mountain overlooking Arrow Bamboo Lake

Following the narrow wood road

Turquoise waters in the Five-Coloured Pool

Waterfalls and a former village

Some logistics for fellow travellers: Guidebooks recommend starting early, ideally at 7am, when the park gates open, which is good advice – both to escape the tour groups and to catch the beautiful views of clouds clinging to the mountain in the early-morning light. Best route in my opinion is to take the bus all the way up to Swan Lake (天鹅海), get off briefly to look at the view, and then get on the bus again before it leaves to go back down to Arrow Lake (箭竹海) (Swan Lake was closed off when we were there, and the walk down from the top is very long). From Arrow Lake, you can walk all the way down to the Nuorilang Waterfall (诺日朗瀑布) along the wooden path across from the road, which takes around 3 hours. Most tourists just get off at the scenic spots and then get back on the bus, so for most of the walk, you’ll have the very peaceful path to yourself. There are lots of food options at Nuorilang, both expensive and cheap-ish. And after lunch, you can either take the bus up to the Five-Coloured Pool (五彩池) and Long Lake (长海) and back, or just begin the walk down towards the entrance from Nuorilang, which is also very beautiful. There are several points along the road back where the bus stops to pick people up, so it’s you can easily walk until you feel tired and then cross back over the lakes to take the bus back.

The way up is dotted with temples (both Taoist and Buddhist), and with inscriptions in the mountain left behind by rulers who have reached the top. On the way down, I stopped next to one written in what seemed to me to be particularly squiggly and illegible calligraphy, and realized that it was signed 毛泽东, Mao Zedong. Another (to me equally illegible) was signed 江泽民, Jiang Zemin – I assume Deng Xiaoping and Hu Jintao are up there somewhere as well.

Some say (perhaps jokingly) that in China’s history of rising and falling dynasties, the People’s Republic of China is simply the latest incarnation, destined like all others to rise, fall and be replaced. Dynasties usually fall when corruption becomes endemic and inequality grows to a level that is unsustainable, but also because they grow bankrupt. China’s government is far from bankrupt, so if this dynastic analysis of the rise and fall of power in China is accurate, the PRC still has some time to go. And in the meanwhile, its leaders continue to climb Taishan, prove to all that they still have the Mandate of Heaven, and leave behind inscriptions for posterity and for photo-happy tourists.

A long way left to the top

A long way back down

Money -- still bearing Mao's face -- tied to a tree near a temple as offerings

Mao's calligraphy on an inscription near the summit

Incense burning at the Confucian temple

At lunch on our first day in Qufu, the restaurant owners sat down to chat with us while we ate. The wife asked if we were Christian, and seemed disappointed when I said I wasn’t. It turned out that their daughter had been converted to Christianity when she went to university, and had in turn converted her father – his wife claimed not to be Christian, but still peppered her speech with phrases like “the Lord’s children” (when she tried to convince us to book a guide for the Confucian temple and mansions through her, and insisted that she could get us a better price than the official ticket price, she tried to reassure us by saying, “You’re the Lord’s children, I wouldn’t trick you”). They attend church in Qufu, and told me that there are a fair number of Christians in the town.

Confucianism is a more of a system of morals than a religion per se, and has existed alongside Buddhism and Daoism for thousands of years – so it only seems appropriate to throw Christianity into the mix. Before we left, he gave us a souvenir: a long red strip of paper with the words 人能弘道, a quote from the Analects, written in his calligraphy. From what I’ve heard, the Analects seems to be a lot like the Bible in that it’s filled with statements that are vague and open to interpretation, and provide fodder for a lifetime of contemplation. I’ve also been told that Confucianism, which is all about going out into society and being a good citizen, is a philosophy appropriate for guiding one’s life while young, while Buddhism, which is all about withdrawing from society in the search for inner peace, is a philosophy for the old. I’m not quite sure what 人能弘道 means (or the full phrase, which I happened to spot written on a lamppost in the center of the town: 人能弘道，非道弘人). But given that learning enough Chinese to be able to tackle the Analects will probably take the next 60 years, contemplating the deeper meaning of Confucian thought will probably have to be put on hold for my rocking chair days after all.

Until then, my favourite Confucian line seems fairly straightforward: 有朋自远方来，不亦乐乎？: “Is it not a joy to have friends come from afar?”

Mythical animals stand guard on the roof tiles of the Confucian temple