Around the World in 80 Dinners - Bill Jamison [94]
“You’ll do great,” John assures her.
The producer, Mr. Lin, shows up with cameramen, a quiet young lady who turns out to be the show’s hostess, and a team of bicycle rickshaws or pedicabs. Two to a carriage, we head out into traffic with as much safety protection as a troupe of naked Rollerbladers. The first stop, less than a mile away, is a stand known for spring rolls. The family proprietors are offering two versions today, one filled with mushroom and baconlike pork, the other with beans and herbs. They make the wrappers fresh at the stall, add the stuffings, and fry them in large woks. Light and crispy, the spring rolls trump any of the lunch dishes, but we would have cooed for the cameras in any case. “If you can’t act better than tofu,” Bill says, “you should stay away from TV.”
From there, Lin leads us across the street to a cart with giant steam cookers. The vendor-chef is pouring a soupy rice-flour batter into tiny teacups placed in appropriate-size holes on the lid of the steamers. The batter firms in a few minutes; then the cook tops it with chopped, sautéed turnip, making it a nice two-nibble tidbit. As we sample the treat, the crew tells us through Vicky that these are popular after-school snacks for children, and a growing band of waist-high kids nods vigorously in agreement. The vendor also sells a loose-textured link sausage of rice, pork intestines, other pork, and seasonings, which he simmers first and then finishes in a wok. It looks and tastes much like a Louisiana boudin.
By this point, the TV action has attracted quite a crowd, with the children swarming in as close as possible and the adults hanging around the fringes. Traffic on the street has slowed to a crawl—luckily for the drivers of a motor scooter and a car who run into each other while craning their necks to see what is going on.
This seems to be our cue to move ahead. The producer hops into the lead pedicab, and the rest of us climb into others to head down to the section of city wall along the broad Han River. The crew films us admiring the ancient main gate into Chaozhou, and just across from it, the reconstruction site for the Guangji Bridge, originally built—some say by a supernatural being—during the Song dynasty as a floating bridge supported by boats, which made it one of the earliest bridges in the world capable of opening and closing for big river craft. The restored version will have stationary supports at both ends, but twenty-four boats serving as pontoons through the center. Lin signals us, in what becomes a continuous refrain, “Just one more hour.”
A half-mile walk along the river promenade takes us to another historic temple, one that did double duty as a lighthouse for night navigation. As the group gathers to leave here, we learn that all the pedicabs have disappeared because their shift ended during our sightseeing. The producer summons their replacements on his cell phone and soon new bicycle rickshaws appear, racing each other down the street to get first dibs on the stranded customers.
The winning drivers pedal us less furiously to Fu Ron Chuan, a street-side snack shop more than one hundred years old. Vicky tells us it’s famous for spring rolls, dumplings, and moon cakes, and stays busy at all hours. After samples of several goodies, Lin invites everyone to join him in an upstairs dining room for tea and a meeting. The producer indicates he has talked with the station’s director and given him a good report on the day. Together, he says, they decided that if we could give them one more hour of time, they would like us to come to the studio the next morning to make one American dish and watch their