East of Croydon

by Sue Perkins

  Not exactly scintillating, is it? You wouldn’t hop on a boat and go and check out any of those, would you?fn1

  We paid for our tickets at the visitor centre and entered the park. A sleek black coupé sped past, nearly knocking us over.

  VICKY: Dai.

  ME: What? Really? In a sports car?

  VICKY: Really.

  And she was right. It turned out that the income from till receipts had raised the living standards of the Dai so rapidly they now drove flashy cars – with an income way beyond the imaginings of even their parents. I watched them wandering through their town. Surely it’s now impossible for them to live their life like they used to. Surely they have now become actors playing themselves in a performance of life as they used to know it – the reality and its simulacrum almost indistinguishable from one another.

  We wandered around the wooden houses and the golden temples. I wondered how much of the building material was real and historic, and how much was painted plastic tubing made to look like bamboo. It’s hard to know what is genuine and what has been fabricated for the tourist yuan.

  My guides for this part of the trip were the utterly fabulous Wendy and Echo, China’s most magnificent female double-act. Echo was whippet-thin, fluent in English, with a sense of humour drier than silica. Wendy, by contrast, looked exactly like Velma from Scooby Doo, spoke no English whatsoever and had an appetite quite unlike anyone I’d ever met. Whatever Wendy encountered, she put into her mouth – be it animal, vegetable or mineral. If we walked past a shrub, she’d pull off the leaves and munch them, she would lick walls, put her hand in pans and tubs and vats. Once I saw her make a drive-by swipe of a spatchcocked frog at a market and swallow it whole. That’s my kinda girl.

  Of course, I’m not averse to adventurous eating myself: I’m known not only for screaming ‘BAKE’ in a marquee but also for my ability to eat the inedible, particularly during my stint on Supersizers, the chaotic gastronomic gag-fest I presented with Giles Coren. People often come up to me on the street and ask, ‘Sue, what’s the worst thing you’ve put in your mouth?’ Well, that’s a very long answer. But here, by way of a brief diversion, is my top five:

  Ancient Rome (eighth century BC to fifth century AD)

  Nothing said ‘I’m a rich Roman’ at a banquet more than a platter of pigs’ sex organs, which were not only ostentatious, but a real conversation starter. Let me tell you from personal experience, you’re never lost for things to say when there’s a prostate tempura in your eye-line. In this case, we were sitting down to a classic BC feast of porcine fallopian tubes. Gosh, I thought, they’re really spoiling us with this. After three flagons of wine, I plucked up the courage to sample one. Grim. Think inner tube with slightly faecal back-note. It was then, and only then, that I remembered to ask the key question:

  ME: Where on earth did you get these?

  There was a nervous pause. The producer looked at the researcher. The researcher looked back. It was a conspiracy.

  ME: Seriously, how on earth did you get hold of fallopian tubes. In Rome. In winter?

  I said the last bit to try and look clever, as if to say, ‘They never harvest fallopian tubes in winter. It’s more of a spring thing …’

  The researcher broke the silence.

  RESEARCHER: Errrr … Well … We didn’t get them in Rome. We got them in London, from the bottom of a freezer in Chinatown. The restaurant owner said he thought it was uterus. We think it’s uterus.

  ME: You think it’s uterus?

  RESEARCHER: Yes. We think so.

  Of course, the issue of provenance was redundant, since I’d already eaten it. I decided not to dwell, finished a plate of sow’s udder pâté, then headed off to my vestal virgin dance class.

  Coffin Pie (Restoration Period 1660–89)

  Well, if ever a name sold a dish, it was surely this one. What’s not to love about the sound of Coffin Pie? This mortuary mash-up featured a tombola of grey dead stuff, including whole chicken heads, cockscombs and braised pig teats. Oh, and the thick pastry crust was reusable. Imagine that – the hot-water crust that keeps on giving.

  Bread and Butter Pudding (Restoration Period 1660–89)

  Sounds delicious, doesn’t it? That evergreen British pudding, rich with butter and raisins. Now imagine it without the sweetness of raisins and substitute bone marrow for the butter – so that once cooked down it looks like a hot and leaky beef duvet. It was a favourite of the Puritans, and certainly accounts for the rather pursed look on their chops.

  Eel (Lamprey) Pie (Restoration Period 1660–89)

  What could be more wonderful than an eel, fresh from the Thames? I have a list. Come round my house and I will read it to you.

  The first thing that alerted me to this dish was not the smell, but the sound – to be more specific, the sound of chef Allegra McEvedy screaming downstairs. I rushed to the kitchen to find her convulsed at the sight of chunks of eel, freshly killed, bouncing around the pie crust. They didn’t stop moving for another twenty minutes. If Stephen King did pastry …

  Battalia Pie (Elizabethan Era, 1558–1603)

  This was described, by historical recipe books, as a pie filled with ‘small, blessed objects’. The mind runs riot, conjuring all the small, blessed things it can think of – a Cadbury’s Mini Egg, the Ashes trophy, Janette Krankie. Nope. Not even close.

  Translation: testicles, mainly testicles, an avalanche of testicles spilling all their gonad-y goodness as they tumbled forth from the pastry.

  I followed that up with Carp with a Pudding in Its Belly, before vomiting in a bucket and heading off to a lute lesson.

  And finally, as an addition:

  Butterscotch Angel Delight (1967–)

  I know. How could I? It’s outrageous. How could I demean the food of our youth, the very nectar of childhood! Well, let me pose a question. When was the last time you tasted it? Twenty years ago? Thirty even? Prepare for the sweetest of napalms to lay waste to your taste-buds as this cocktail of e-numbers hits you in the mush.

  Back to the Human Zoo.

  It turned out that Wendy was not one of the 0.0285714285714 per cent of the global population who’d tuned in to watch the Supersizers series. She didn’t know I’d eaten weird stuff in a corset for money. She just had this sixth sense that I was a fellow gastronomic adventurer. Either that or she’d witnessed me eating that odd fried thing at the theme park, and after that saw me as a worthy wing-man and eating partner. If true, this worried me – because it meant that the odd fried thing must have been something truly, impressively awful.

  Wendy would sense that I was coming to the end of an interview and would wander off to a stall or market. Out of the corner of my eye, as I wrapped things up, I could see her buying deep-fried rats from a roadside trader and proffering them in my direction. I’d do a piece to camera, and her hand would venture into shot holding a tangle of noodles bathed in what looked like engine oil. I’d be silently communing with a bunch of animists in the forest and she’d hove into view with a fistful of ants for me to try (citrus flavour, surprisingly tasty). She’d half crunch something left on a table as we took our seats in a restaurant and pop the rest, unbidden, into my mouth. We had nothing in common other than our piratical palates, and the fact that the very sight of one another caused us to spontaneously roar with laughter. We didn’t need translators – everything we needed to say got more than adequately expressed in a giggle, a grimace or a mouthful.

  Wendy and Echo led me to the main concourse where the tribal celebrations were to begin. In Dai culture, there is a large water festival each New Year, to bless the community and thank the river gods. Of course, tourists can’t be expected to wait twelve months for such an experience, so now, in the theme park, this meaningful ceremony takes place at 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. every day, including weekends. Instead of praying, meditating and making offerings over a three-day period, here you dress up in an acid-pink frock, stand in a swimming pool and pour buckets of chlorinated water over each other
for ten minutes, while a man shouts frenetically on a microphone and an abused elephant walks past carrying a bunch of VIPs.

  The festival, which is over seven hundred years old, originates from a legend that once upon a time, a demon, who wished to do great harm to the world, forced seven princesses to marry him. The youngest got her revenge by chopping off his head with his hair, and the others held the demon’s head in their hands until it had entirely rotted away. Happier, simpler times.fn2

  Which is not to say that the whole thing wasn’t fun. What’s not to like about being issued with a plastic bucket, standing in a fountain and trying to soak your neighbour? Especially if your neighbour is the four-year-old kid you saw trying to kick the poor, wretched elephant earlier that day.

  Wendy’s greatest moment came after the Dai water celebrations. We dried ourselves off and headed to one of the wooden huts on stilts, where several of the womenfolk had prepared a traditional feast of things that (a) I didn’t recognize, (b) couldn’t name, and (c) was frightened of. Wendy bent over the assembled plates, wiped the steam from her bottle-bottom glasses, and dived in, sucking chickens’ feet, slurping at soups and occasionally roaring as the chilli burn came upon her.

  I was a little more cautious. I now approached all hospitality with a light unease. The schedule was so tight I couldn’t afford to get sick again, so I would routinely rub every chopstick and utensil in hand-sanitizing gel before I tucked in. This meant that everything tasted faintly of ethanol and an old lady’s knicker-drawer. After this massive banquet, I settled down, cross-legged, to get serious with the community, talking to them about their ancient traditions and whether or not they felt they were being eroded or compromised by the Park.

  Things started out well enough, but around about five minutes in, I became aware of a deep rumbling noise to my right. I carried on, gamely, until I started to notice that both Olly and Matt were shaking with laughter, the boom and camera with them. I persisted, desperately trying to rein the conversation back to the traditional customs of ancient Yunnan. The rumbling was loud now, rhythmic and deep. The Dai women started laughing too. I looked over in the direction of the noise, and there was Wendy, flat on her back, magnificent stomach in the air, dead to the world and snoring her head off. Not just any snore. This snoring was the stuff of legend. The sort of snore you’d imagine Brian Blessed or Tom Baker would produce, after eating a cheese fondue in the middle of a sinus infection. The sort of snore that no one, not even the most skilful of editors, could remove from the proceedings.

  Wendy finally awoke, with a fulsome belch, jackknifed upwards and dipped her finger into a boiling pot. We watched her, transfixed. After a few minutes of sucking and slurping she looked up as if to say, ‘What are you looking at? Seriously, have you guys got nothing else to do?’

  Then she laughed, coughed something up from deep within her lungs, chewed on it, spat the rest out on to her hand – and without thinking passed it over for me to try.

  21. You Don’t Know What You’ve Got Until …

  Next morning, Wendy and Echo took me to see their mate Li-jin, a proud curator of Aini custom who lived in a traditional shack perched on a newly tarmacked A-road. I was used to the co-existence of old and new but, boy, this was a tight-knit collaboration. Her bamboo cottage rocked every thirty seconds as another vast haulage truck sped past on the freshly laid asphalt outside.

  Li-jin’s passion for all things Aini stemmed from an awkward dinner party many years earlier, when a fellow guest had started asking her questions about her culture. She found she was unable to give an answer. She was so ashamed that she decided to devote her entire life to the commemoration and preservation of the traditional Aini way. I remember a similar thing happened to me when a fellow diner asked me why the westernmost corner of the second level of the NCP car park in Croydon was being used as a latrine. I am ashamed to say I did not go on to devote the rest of my life to finding out the reason why.

  The deal was simple here. I’d ask some questions. Echo would then translate those questions from English to Mandarin. Wendy would handle the translation from Mandarin into the local tribal language, whereupon Li-jin would answer. Then the process would get reversed. It was literally a game of Chinese whispers.

  That’s how it was supposed to work.

  Once we’d arrived and said hello, and I’d been hugged, prodded and laughed at (a ritual that accompanied me for the entirety of my trip), we sat down for a meal. The Aini are famed for their hospitality. It turns out Li-jin was making fourteen different dishes, all while giving me the low-down on the local menfolk (to cut a long story short, she claimed they were only good at two things – hunting and bullshitting. And hunting, it transpires, is illegal). I pounded red chillies with a pestle, and tried to ask relevant questions, but found myself distracted by the horrific sight of Li-jin casually ripping the heads off live shellfish.

  I was prodded again. Li-jin said something and Echo and Wendy laughed. I knew, from her tone of voice, that it wasn’t a compliment, but I had to sit there with an idiotic grin on my face until the official English version of the insult landed.

  ‘Soft body!’ came the interpretation.

  SOFT BODY. Man, that’s harsh.

  We tottered down the wooden stairs, bearing plates of freshly decapitated shellfish, and headed to the courtyard below. The table was laid. Two metres away, an articulated lorry roared past, sending a cascade of loose chippings into the seafood gravy.

  Once again, the first part of the translation process went well – Echo seamlessly doing her bit. But when it got to Wendy’s turn, she’d be too distracted, either sucking crabs’ brains out of their shell or gnawing at what looked suspiciously like an obese squirrel. Added to which, my interviewee, Li-jin, had produced a two-litre bottle of moonshine from under her voluminous skirt, and was more intent on forcing it down our throats than discussing the complexities of cultural erosion in the face of profit-driven homogeneity. And, frankly, who could blame her?

  Each time a drink was poured, we’d say the Aini equivalent of ‘Cheers’ – a rather extended ritual, which involved Li-jin saying ‘Gibaduo’, then ‘Swae’, five times. We would join in on the sixth. Then the grog would get tipped down our throats and off we’d go again.

  Around about the third shot, even Echo started to break down. By the fifth she informed me she’d gone blind in her right eye. I tried, desperately, to be a professional and carry on with the interview, but I was losing the battle of sobriety. Here is a potted version of how the conversation progressed from thereon in:

  ME: So, Li-jin, what was it that kick-started your interest in preserving Aini culture?

  (Echo translates to Wendy. We look at Wendy to do her bit. Wendy is nibbling at a leg of something, oblivious. Li-jin refills our glasses.)

  LI-JIN: (raising her glass and toasting) Swae swae swae swae swae.

  ALL: SWAE!

  (We down it. It tastes of fire. Li-jin mutters something to Wendy. Echo waits expectantly for the translation. Nothing is forthcoming. Wendy does a little burp. She looks at me and laughs. I can’t help but laugh back. My head is starting to swim. A silence descends that may have lasted a few seconds or a full hour. I can’t tell. Time is becoming increasingly meaningless. Still no answer, so I decide to venture another question.)

  ME: Do you worry that the next generation will lose their identity? That they will be assimilated into mainstream Han society?

  (Li-jin is already pouring another glass. Her left eye is completely shut. Wendy starts talking to her. Echo kicks her. Wendy laughs again. I laugh. Echo looks at me, glassily, and asks me to repeat the question. I can’t remember the question.)

  LI-JIN: Swae, swae, swae, swae, swae …

  ALL: SWAE!

  (Down it goes and I get to my feet, quickly, like a reflex – in case I need to vomit or sprint to the local hospital.)

  LI-JIN: Swae, swae, swae, swae, swae …

  ALL: SWAE!

  (By now, I realize there will be
no answers to any of my questions, but I carry on, regardless. Weirdly, the drunker I’m getting, the more interminable and pretentious my questions are becoming.)

  ME: Do you think that all cultural artefacts are worthy of preserving, or do we tend, as societies, to only want to keep those that appear the most totemic?

  (Echo looks at me, as if to say, ‘How am I supposed to translate that, you utter prick?’ Wendy laughs and upends the booze bottle into her face. Li-jin grabs me round the waist and we start dancing to a hypnotic guttural tune she is singing. It may be a famous Aini folk song, or it may be gibberish she is making up as she goes along. Equally it may just be a vocal symptom of gastric distress.)

  LI-JIN: Swae, swae, swae, swae, swae …

  ALL: SWAE!

  I am, indeed, swae-ing, at this point – barely able to keep my feet. One side of my face has become numb, and I keep slapping it in an increasingly desperate manner. I cannot feel a thing. Is it palsy? Is it reversible? Will my girlfriend leave me? I am never going to leave this goddamn continent alive. They are all trying to kill me.

  Wendy is hunched over a bowl of noodle soup, ramming it into her mouth at breakneck speed. She looks at me and guffaws, spitting a long carb-worm back into the bowl as she does so. I laugh right back at her as Li-jin hands me another drink.