Raise your glasses for a toast to a little bit of chicken

I am blogging again for work, though not about my work.

The cultural section of the French embassy in Beijing asked us agricultural counselors to write a series of articles around Christmas-time French food culture for Chinese readers, who are more accustomed to dipping all kinds of ingredients in boiling soup within hot pots during winter. 

After discussing various possibilities and topics, we agreed I would write a series of three articles on French traditional poultry Christmas recipes. I have tried to write the articles so that they are reader-friendly for both French and Chinese readers. 

The three recipes come from my family's cooking books:

Hen in the pot

Roasted capon with chestnut stuffing

Duck magret Rossini style

Ironically, I did not cook any Christmas meal this year. Although I had moved into my new apartment on the 22nd, my cooking utensils have still not arrived from France. The more important consideration for me was to be with family for Christmas. So I flew to Shanghai where I enjoyed a very juicy roasted chicken for Christmas lunch with the only family members I have in continental China: my Singaporean cousin Annie and her family.  

 

Chicken fried

Zac Brown band, Home grown, Atlantic

In the bleak mid-winter, frosty wind made moan

It is already bitterly cold in Beijing with night temperatures always below freezing and only just above freezing when the sun is shining. So, in the weeks coming up to Christmas, I am delighted to be preparing the festive season with warm friendly feelings, hot comforting mulled wine and carol singing. After five years living in France where the tradition of carolling has unfortunately disappeared, I am very pleased to renew with Christmas carols, although I have to sight-read and learn a whole lot of new tunes, in German! I have joined the Deutsche Kantorei Peking (DKP).

Having just arrived in Beijing, I immediately started looking for a choir to start singing again. I was particularly keen on finding a good quality choir as choral practice has been virtually banned since last March in France because of covid-19; I needed my fix of community singing.

I was first confronted with the obsolete nature of the worldwide web in China. All the references I could find to international choirs or choral societies in Beijing on the Internet were outdated from 2018, if not earlier. I finally found a QR Code for the Chinese instant messaging app Wechat to contact a singer in the French-speaking Maurice Ravel Choir of Beijing. Unfortunately, the French choir was not recruiting new members until February next year. However, I asked whether there were other international choirs in town and the lady I was in contact with said she would ask around for me.

On Friday afternoon of last week, I got a Wechat message putting me in touch with another person who could introduce me to the German DKP. Only 30 minutes later, after a series of instant messages on Wechat with a British DKP singer now stranded in Hong Kong, I was in contact with a German Beijing-based singer and the Japanese Chairwoman of DKP. The latter asked to give me a call. They were singing carols the next morning for the German Christmas market in Beijing; could I come join the singing? All I needed was a very warm black coat because we would be singing outside. I usually do not like busking concerts, but this opportunity was too good to miss. So, the next morning, I was given a folder with the music and off we went into the cold singing carols in German beside giant plastic Christmas tree and snowman. We were glad to enjoy warm mulled cider, mulled beer, hot dogs and sauerkraut in between the carolling sessions. 

One week later, choir members were invited to a private teatime party in one of the German members’ clothes shop for more carol singing, more mulled wine, raisin bread and ginger biscuits. We sung through most of the German carol song book together for over an hour. I left rather tired but elated just as the pianist was starting to get “jazzy” on my more familiar English and American carol repertoire. I hope he will stay inspired until next week. We will be carolling again at the Beijing German Embassy School next Sunday!

In the bleak mid-winter
Gustav Holst, Stephen Cleobury and choir of King’s college Cambridge, Holst: the composer of the planets, Warner

Photo DKP, snowman and Christmas tree: Christine Bérillon