KTV- Karaoke Television

This post goes out to all you Voicebox fans in Portland!

As you're all probably aware, karaoke originated in Asia (Japan specifically I believe).  It's kind of a big deal in China, and karaoke places are massive.

First, I'd like to point out that what a lot of people in the US think of as karaoke (a stage at a bar with a song book and lots of people you don't know singing) is not what karaoke is like here.  Here it is individual rooms that you reserve with your friends so that you can have all the singing to yourselves!  Yes, this is exactly like Voicebox in Portland, but about a hundred times larger with rooms ranging from two people to about 50 or 100.  It is clearly very popular here as there are KTV places all over the city.

Nina and Jim walking into our room

I went a few weeks ago with a huge crowd of Beijing Ultimate players (and acquaintances).  It was as easy as sending out an e-mail, and I think 20 people showed up.

We had quite a large room, so it included an actual stage complete with chair and personal screen as well as two massive flatscreens on either side of the room.  There were three microphones, and the room was lined with couches and tables

Joe posing on the stage

In the basement of the KTV building is a store where you can buy beer, soda, water, snacks, and full bottles of hard alcohol.  Other than the hard alcohol (which is generally expensive in China), everything else is relatively reasonably priced.

Nina starting us off in the back while Joe and Alex read the stage screen

The console that controls the songs is (obviously) all in Chinese, and I have to have Jim (below) give me a lesson on what each button means every time we go.  Good thing he's always up for KTV!

Jim mastering the controls as usual

The selection of American songs is always rather interesting, but there were clearly enough to keep us entertained from about 11pm to 2am, so no complaints here!

Me singing

Full room of KTV-loving Ultimate players

I should be adding a few more posts in the next few days as I'm ON VACATION!!  I'm finally returning to the states (leaving for the airport in about half hour).  I'll be spending 5 days on the east coast and 5 days on the west coast.  I look forward to catching up with a lot of you!

Tofu Making at The Hutong

Despite needing to remain in China and work through Golden Week, we still got sunday and monday off to relax before getting back to work.  Naturally, I went into Beijing to spend my days off at (my closest thing to home) Andi and Scuz's apartment.  (They now refer to their guest room as "Chirona's room.")

Sunday morning, the three of us learned how to make tofu from scratch at a Chinese cooking school called "The Hutong."  It was surprisingly easy, so much so that I can summarize it in a few steps and pictures:

1) soak soy beans overnight

2) add more warm water and blend soy beans

3) strain pulp from soy beans

4) add cold water and additionally strain

5) boil resulting liquid (this yields soy milk)

6) let sit until cooled down a bit

7) add vinegar to cause to curdle

8) let sit longer

9) separate curdled soy (tofu) from water

10) gather in cheese cloth and press with a weight to desired firmness, and you're done!

The "pulp" that is gathered from the soy milk is called okara, and we used this to make some delicious pancakes.

You can also not press the tofu together, i.e. just strain it from the liquid in step 9 above.  Our teacher took some of this and added soy sauce, sesame oil, and green onions.  It was delicious!

We got to take our tofu home, and we decided to press it for another hour or so.  Here's our resulting product.

We used this to make a stir fry sunday night that was delicious!  Thanks to Scuz and Andi for hosting as usual and for inviting me along on this adventure.  I'm hoping to go (finally) learn to make baozi this weekend :)

I promise a few more posts in the next week or so...