Happy Bunny Year!

Happy New Year! February 3 marked the beginning of the Year of the Rabbit in the Chinese lunar calendar. While it's by far the most important holiday in Chinese culture, this is definitely a non-event in Turkey, which in Ottoman times utilized a different lunar calendar and now uses the Gregorian calendar exclusively.

Since I'm stuck in a gloomy sunless mid-winter while everyone in Asia is on a two-week vacation from school, Chinese New Year has been a nice catalyst to pull me deeper into that stage of culture shock when your whole body and mind start to reject a new culture like a bad organ transplant. This week the predominant symptom of homesickness was gastronomic in nature: I could think of nothing but Chinese food.

Fortunately for my cravings, this is a big city, and like any big city anywhere in the world, there are a few Chinese restaurants. So lunch today was provided by a place called Guangzhou Wuyang, which was full of Chinese tourists getting their home fries before hitting up the one museum in Ankara. They even had a little altar set up in front with food offerings and incense for the ghosts. Hmm, okay, maybe that wasn't something I missed about Asia.

Happy Valentine's Day and Chinese Year of the Rabbit, it says, also advertising their special set meals. Two foreign holidays in one!

So is Chinese food in Turkey any good? Well, this place we went to today is probably just as good as any Chinese place in the United States, which is to say it's nothing like the gong bao chicken from my favorite place in Chiayi. The waiter's gift of a plate of Korean kimchi was probably the best part of the meal. Still, Chinese food is comfort food, and when you're homesick, mediocre Turkish-Chinese noodles are a little piece of heaven, and chopsticks feel like a hand-held security blanket. Some days are just like that.