TO MYITKYINA, FOR ANOTHER LAYER OF UNDERSTANDING

It’s hard to admit how much the shape of my days is affected by technology, but here goes: I am in Rangoon, a fascinating, rapidly changing, seedy place that has been shaped, both built and battered, by war and politics and colonialism and commerce. But now there’s decent internet access, wi-fi in my hotel, and I have my laptop, so that means...

It means that I get up early to get internet stuff done before the connection slows to bogged-down around 9 am, and then stay up late to catch the other end of the day’s good access. And that set of bookend timings of being indoors means that I miss the best light in the morning for photos. I am not getting rested and sleeping in (the usual only-possible-excuse-for-missing-morning-light). I am online.

How wasteful and stupid, I think to myself. But does that mean I shift gears and break pattern? It seems not, from my first three days here.

What is the urge then, to go on reading online from the links that come in on Facebook and Twitter? For that’s what keeps me here. It’s not a wild cruise through the blogosphere or the net, but a quite limited set of excursions, most of them initiated by some posted link. Part of it is that I hate to miss out on anything. If I don’t click now on the link I see on Twitter (and I follow well under 100 people, so they’re quite carefully selected and generally put up fruitful interesting links) I will lose it, never find it again, as the next tweets come in by the dozens and more. That’s one urgency. Another is the pure pleasure of having all this access to the diverse mysteries and curiosities out there in the world. I feel greedy. I want to see and know them all - yes an impossibility I know, but that’s the impulse.

And so in Rangoon for three days I have closed myself away from life in the street and in the teashops for hours at a time, and instead been awake to the e-world, or at least a sampling of it. (I admit that I've also been out every late morning to late afternoon eating huge meals at various places around town, with a good friend. Maybe my computer time is just necessary to digestion??)

The olden-days equivalent of screen-time I suppose is having my head in a book. I did that for years as a kid, was chastised for it by my mother and frowned at for it by her father my granddad, an extremely judgemental guy. Even that didn’t dissuade me, it just made me hide, find a corner to tuck myself into where I could read and hopefully not be discovered.

Another explanation then, that covers both the book and the electronic situations, might be that all this is an escape. It’s a way of not being stuck in the present with all its demands to pay attention and cope. But wait, I find myself thinking, when I am traveling I am choosing exactly that: the demands of the daily unknowns of travel, and the thrills too. If I close myself off, I miss out on the serendipity of travel, and the wonder of it.

Perhaps I’m just tired and needing a break?

I wrote all that earlier, and it seems to have acted like a purge. I spent almost the whole day out and about, with no thought of the internet, I started with an early morning excursion to Bothathaung Temple, by the river, and the action down there. Every morning commuters arrive in long narrow boats from across the river: school kids in uniform; labourers; young women working in service industries, selling clothes or washing and cutting hair, for example; young men working labour jobs; and a collection of others that are hard to place. They come striding up the wooden planking that links the dock to the river’s edge, shirts white and crisp, ready for a new day. It’s a great sight, with the golden dome of the chedi at Bothathaung gleaming behind them in the morning sky.

And as for the rest of my time here, I now have a plan: I fly to Myitkyina in the far north of Burma tomorrow, leaving at noon. I have four days there. I went three years ago, and I want to see how things are there now. In the centre of the country people are now so much more at ease and optimisitic about the future. They feel free to talk and have discussions, and to talk openly with foreigners because of the huge changes in government policy since last summer. But in Kachin State there’s been fighting between the army and the Kachin Independence Army. Many people have been displaced, and villages burned and fields destroyed, and many deaths. The army was ordered to stop, and did not. All that is down the road from Myitkyina, towards the Chinese border mostly. How will town feel?

Markets and teashops are the best place to judge the feel of a town. Food does link us all, daily. And on the food end, I have a very practical interest too: I want to cross-check my memories of Kachin dishes and make sure of some details, for the book.

It will be a lot colder there than steamy Rangoon. I’m glad to have a wool cardigan as well as a shawl to snuggle into...and some books to read on the cold dark evenings.

HEALTHY LOCAL AGRICULTURE MATTERS

It's a rainy Saturday morning, quiet, with only the sound of drips onto window ledges and spattering raindrops on leaves, and then that sprinkling lighter sound of fine rain as it hits the ground.  Out the glass doors at the back, open to let in the slightly chilly moist air, there's a wall of green.  It's the ivy on the garage, lushly in summer leaf, a green wall at the back of our compact garden.  I have the impression that if I had different ears to hear with, I'd also catch the slurping sounds of the growing tomato and pepper and cucumber plants out there, as well as the herbs, sucking up this fresh rain.  

The problem with a rainy Saturday morning is that it does the outdoor farmers' markets no good.  There are two major ones in central Toronto, at Brickworks and at Wychwood, both of them relatively new (in the past five years).  At Brickworks there's a huge roof over everyone, so the rain is a problem "only" because it is apt to discourage shoppers from turning up.  But at Wychwood vendors must rely on tents and canopies, and shoppers are stuck walking in the rain., so it's uncomfortable as well as discouraging.  Those who usually go by bicycle, like me, will most likely stay home, as I am doing today, writing this blog rather than pedalling through the lovely empty early morning streets.

The largest farmers' market here, long-established, is downtown, at St Lawrence Market, in the "north building".  The south building has a permanent market of fishmongers and cheese merchants and butchers, etc etc (open Tuesday to Saturday).  The north market is only on Saturdays, and is packed with vendors selling meat and cheese and vegetables and fruit, and bread and sweet baking, as well as some prepared foods.  There's no hard rule about local only, as there is at the outdoor markets, nor any requirement that foods on sale be organic or sustainably grown, though as consumers' awareness of those issues and labels grows, who knows?

The St Lawrence Farmers' Market is there year-round.  So is the Wychwood Market (it moves indoors in cold weather, into a beautiful galleria space in the refurbished TTC barns).  And so too is the Thursday market at Dufferin Grove, to the west of downtown.  So people who go to those markets can and do develop the habit of going each week ... and it is habit that can sustain a market.  In fact without it, the markets have to rely each week on consumers knowing about a particular market and then deciding to go.  Habit and necessity are much more reliable sustainers of farmers' markets than last-minute whim.

And why am I going on and on musing about this, as the rain intensifies outside?  Well once you've seen how hard farmers work, especially farmers doing family-farm-scale sustainable agriculture, the fact that that hard work is not enough, that they also have to cope with the vagaries of consumer behaviour at fledgling farmers' markets, makes you anxious for them, and in fact anxious for us all.

How can we make the essential-to-life work of farming a rewarding and rewarded part of our community?  How to keep this thing called sustainable local agriculture on track?

The local markets are one element.  And we need to get in the habit of relying on the markets.  But relying in what way?

In North America we are generally rushed and have the habit of doing "one-stop shopping", getting it all over with at one large comprehensive grocery store.  Most of us don't have the luxury of a European-style set of small specialty shops: the butcher, the fish monger, the cheese-seller, all within easy walking or driving distance.  The large grocery store is the substitute for that.  And so for us "reliance" on a market means we feel confident that we will find all the food we need to shop for all at the one location.

Very few of the farmers' markets can provide that.  There is meat, and vegetables, and fruit, but no dairy apart from a little cheese.  The only exception is the St Lawrence Farmers' market in the north building.  And what buyers can't find there they can get in the permanent south building market.  So the larger better established markets will, I hope, continue to function reasonably well for farmers and for consumers, but the very small ones will probably fade away, as the cost of bringing in food for an uncertain result becomes too expensive and discouraging an equation.  

Getting locally-grown and -produced food into grocery stores is the other important piece of the puzzle.  (I'm leaving aside for the moment the CSA (community-supported agricuture) movement, which is hugely important way of ensuring reliable markets for farmers; and also the resurgence of urban gardening (urban farming is the new buzzword)).  

It is happening.  Independent grocery stores like wonderful Fiesta Farms here in Toronto, are developing long-term relationships with farmers and stocking their shelves, especially in the produce section, with locally and sustainably grown food.  Hurrah!

All this is not just about Toronto, or other cities in North America.  Most industrialising countries face the conflicting pressures of on the one hand feeding people affordably in the short term (the most food at the cheapest price), and on the other protecting local food resources and local agriculture for the long-term future (emphasis on local and sustainable).

 

So the question remains:  How do we keep the local food scene vibrant?  How do we discourage the importing of foods that are displacing the locally grown versions ?  (Garlic from China, which floods the market in Thailand and Vietnam as well as in North America, undercutting the better-quality locally grown garlic, is the quickest example, but there are many others.)  This is the real "health issue"...

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It's still raining.  There was a heavy downpour and now we are back to drizzle.  I went out for several hours (a few paragraphs ago) to have dim sum with my friend Dina.  We found ourselves eating three-layer pork and other rich and hearty fare, as we sat in our sweaters - on June 20!  Bring on the hot weather, say I!!

And once it comes, the summer heat, I promise to be a little more light-hearted here.  Something about the chilly damp brought on this serious questing tone today.  Hope you stick with me nonetheless.

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A final note, that brings me back to the garden and the rain:  The garlic and shallots that are planted in odd spots around the edge of the garden have strong aromatic leaves that I harvest in handfuls, then chop and stir-fry.  Now their lovely curling scapes have formed, and those too I snap off, chop and stir-fry.  Other green candidates in the garden include arugula and tat soi. The fresh gathered greens are all part of a mid-morning addiction that starts with leftover rice put into in my favorite bowl of the moment and then set aside.  Into a hot wok goes olive oil, then a little mustard seed until it pops, then a fresh egg, which is fried and flipped over before being lifted out onto the rice.  The wok goes back on the heat and the chopped gathered green stuff goes in to get a quick hard dose of heat.  I turn it out onto the egg and rice, then squeeze on some lime juice and drizzle on some nam pla prik (fish sauce with hot chiles chopped into it).  Sometimes some torn fresh herbs (shiso, parsely, arugula...whatever!) go on top.  There's nothing better!

I have a feeling I may have written about this earlier.  Sorry if I'm repeating myself!

YIELDING WITH GRACE AS WE MOVE FORWARD

The sky is a welcome soft blue, the air soft with a tinge of coolness, the sun generously warming: Chiang Mai in January. I feel so fortunate to be here.

Yesterday, as I was in the main big market (the name has vanished from my brain as I write this), I was reminded of how different things are here. Of course there's the climate, and the amazing variety of fresh fruit (dragonfruit, jackfruit, papaya, etc etc) and vegetables (where to begin listing them???) as well as aromatics (galangal, krachai, lemongrass, lime leaves, beautiful small purple shallots and on and on). But the more profound difference is how people conduct themselves in the street.

The market feels like a maze, at least the first times you visit, but is actually organised as a grid of lanes and side alleys, with covered areas in between, where trucks loaded with produce sit in rows parked, waiting for buyers, and rows of small stalls offer food, tools, and more food, of every description.

The alleys and lanes are lined with shops and impromptu sellers of everything from meat or frogs or fish or produce, to sticky rice with sankaya, or grilled pork on a stick. And the narrow space down the centre of the alleys and lanes is packed with people on foot, as well as the occasional motorcycle and even more difficult-to-digest truck. Some people push a trolley that carries a huge basket, into which they load masses of raw food as they work their way through their shopping list; these are people buying for restaurants and street vendors. Others are there to shop for just a household's daily needs. And apart from these buyers, there are also guys carrying huge loads or pushing carts loaded to the max, bringing supplies or produce into the market.

The difficulty is that the crowds, moving in all directions, with their awkward loads, mean that no-one gets anywhere very easily or quickly. There's a lot of stopping and waiting, while a truck extricates itself from a side-lane, or two guys with trolleys headed in opposite directions thread their way past each other.

In North America and in many places in Europe, this would lead to shouting and swearing, frustration and intensity. In the market here in Chiang Mai, people just accommodate: they pause, let the other guy through, step aside, weave in and out in a kind of unorchestrated very mindful and complex ballet, pause to joke with a friend or a stranger in passing. It's a lovely entertaining and enlightening human spectacle.

Out on the roads here, the approach is the same. People pass even when they can see another car coming, not to court a head-on disaster, but because they know they can rely on the other guy to slow a little to let them get by. And the other guy, instead of honking in outrage, does in fact yield.

Foreigners who have business dealings in Thailand can be heard to complain about this lack of sharp edges. It leads people to think that Thais cannot be relied on. But yes, they can. It's just that their priority tends to be to avoid conflict (or collisions) and to try to accommodate differences or inconveniences, rather than fighting them head-on.

And for the foreigner who spends any time here, it is a great lesson in "jai yen" - keeping a cool heart rather than getting heated over short-term frustrations.

The Year of the Rat is coming to an end. It's been a big one for us, with the publishing of Beyond the Great Wall and lots of personal changes and new horizons. I'm hoping for a lighter-hearted less pressured new year, myself. May your next year be as you dream it should be.