Celebrating Beauty at a Thai Loy Krathong Festival with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Celebrating Beauty at a Thai Loy Krathong Festival with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget 

When I read about the Thai Loy Krathong Festival in the newspaper, I convinced my family to go by noting they would have traditional dancers, an orchestra, and good food.

Loy Krathong usually falls in November and celebrates the goddess of water named Phra Mae Kongka according to the brochure handed out at the festival, which was held at the Filipino American Community Club in Marina, California.

The brochure further stated that Loy Krathong began in the thirteenth century during the Kingdom of Sukothai.  Queen Nang Noppamas, who may be a mythical character, made a boat with candles and incense in it and floated it down river to honor Phra Mae Kongka.

Beauty contests are run during Loy Krathong to honor Queen Nang Noppamas and one was held for a junior king and queen at the Loy Krathong Festival we attended.  All the children were dressed in traditional Thai costumes, and the girls had their hair done up in buns to resemble crowns.  I knew the deciding factor for the winners would be something like who had helped the most at the festival.

My family participated at the festival as audience members and diners.  My husband Laurent, daughter Florence, and I admired the Thai dancers.  There was a small orchestra set up with Thai xylophones called ranads.  Ranads have 21 or 22 bars and get their vibrating sound from a boat-shaped resonator.  Unlike Western resonators, Thai musicians play ranads with two mallets. 

We watched the entertainment as we sipped Thai iced tea made of strong, sugary tea with condensed milk over ice.  I bought fried plantains for my family and a dish called palo, which was a pork stew with boiled eggs that had been flavored with cinnamon and star anise.  It had a wonderful aroma and tasted good, too.

We sat with an American man whose wife was Thai.  He was the chief winemaker at one of Carmel Valley’s best wineries.  He had studied at the University of Bordeaux and had fun speaking in French with us.  He invited us to a Christmas wreath-making party at the winery with a barbecue and cellar tour.  We heartily accepted.

You never can tell what will happen at a Loy Krathong Festival or any other festival for that matter.  Festivals are truly a fun way for communities to learn about each other.

By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

Ruth Paget Selfie

Visiting the Louvre's Egyptian Galleries in Paris (France) with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting the Louvre's Egyptian Galleries in Paris (France) with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

My husband and I took our daughter Florence on a trip to France when she was in the fifth grade.  She had been studying ancient Egypt in school, and we asked one of the family cousins who was a retired school teacher to take us on a tour of the Louvre’s Egyptian collection.

Laurent’s teacher cousin had taught the history of ancient Egypt to middle school students in Paris and had brought many classes to the Louvre.  She had a set tour and points to cover, which we did at an American pace however.  I knew she was accustomed to students who walk in a line like those you can see pictured in Ludwig Bemelman’s Madeleine picture books.

The entire American family stopped to ask questions about works that interested us during our lecture.  We walked around exhibits and stooped down and stood up on our tiptoes to get better views of the artwork.  Florence made commentaries, too, which children are not supposed to do in France.

When she was shown canopic jars, she asked, “What goes in those?” which translator mom asked teacher cousin.

“Viscera such as the hearts and lungs of the dead pharaohs,” was teacher cousin’s reply.

“Gross.  That’s nasty,” was Florence’s loud reply.

We examined the writing on all the exhibits we saw to determine which kind of Egyptian writing it was.  Florence had learned to draw hieroglyphs at school, but within hieroglyphic writing there are variations.  We looked for the highly wrought artistic hieroglyphs that appeared on religious art, stylized cursive hieroglyphs that captured the essence of the form, and angular hieratic hieroglyphs used for everyday communication. 

Teacher cousin asked, “What kind of school does Florence go to?”

I knew my answer would be unpopular when I said, “Waldorf.”

I could almost hear teacher cousin saying to herself, “German schools set up by an Austrian.”

I loved France, but I knew that the culture of Austria’s Habsburg Empire was perpetuated with German teaching methods through Waldorf.  The Habsburg Empire was multilingual and multicultural; it had lessons for intercultural relations and education in the United States I thought. 

I loved Waldorf’s arts curriculum for which it is famous, but the social studies and foreign language curriculum for children are what made me want Florence attend this school.  I was very happy that Florence could distinguish among different types of hieroglyphics, for example.  I knew she would be able to identify Chinese, Japanese, and Korean writing with no problem in the future, too.

Aside from the hieroglyphics, Florence’s favorite artworks in the Louvre’s Egyptian galleries were the papyrus pages from the Egyptian Book of the Dead.  Florence’s class had written and drawn pages from this book in class.  The afterlife is when life really started for the Egyptians, so it was not a morbid topic for the class to study.

We stood in front of one Book of the Dead text, and Florence showed teacher cousin what she knew:

“Anubis, who has the jackal head, leads the dead to Osiris for judgment by the Goddess Maat.”

“Where’s Maat?” I asked.

“She’s a feather here,” Florence responded.

After viewing this Book of the Dead page, Florence let teacher cousin finish our Egyptian gallery tour uninterrupted. 

Afterwards we ate at the international food court, which is always crowded.  You have to order, get your food, and then wait for a table to be vacated before sitting down.  Laurent and Florence ate Mexican food; I had a Lebanese sampler plate; and teacher cousin ate French.  I hope teacher cousin had fun with her Americans in the Egyptian collection.

By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

Ruth Paget Selfie

Touring San Francisco's Japanese Tea Garden with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Touring San Francisco's Japanese Tea Garden with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

My husband Laurent and I took our daughter Florence to the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park to support her grade-school studies of Japanese.

I had lived in Japan as an exchange student and had gotten my bachelor’s degree in Far Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago, so I was looking forward to the family field trip.

The Japanese Tea Garden’s website says that it was originally created as a “Japanese Village” exhibit for the 1894 California Midwinter International Exhibition.  The Japanese landscape architect who created the village stayed on and made many additions to the park out of his own pocket. 

He was later sent to a Japanese internment camp during World War II and not allowed to return to the Tea Garden to live once released.  I did not know this when we visited, but details of the story are on the Garden’s website.

When my family began its visit of the Garden, I told Laurent and Florence, “The orange pagodas here with the gray roofs are like the ones you would find in Nara, Japan.  Nara had the most Chinese influence and is one of Japan’s oldest cities.”

The Tea Garden is taken care of very well with trimmed plants and bushes everywhere.  We walked all throughout the five-acre park.  I pointed out things that were on the trail and let Florence know what they meant even though they had been studying many of them at school.

She loved scampering up and down the drum bridge.  I was afraid she might fall off of it, because the arch is so high.  Drum bridges were built to let barges pass beneath them while people could still cross canals.

The Garden’s paths were lined with toro, Japanese stone lanterns.  These are Buddhist and Chinese in origin.  In Buddhist temples, they line the pathways leading to the temple.

Florence had fun looking at the koi, colored carp, which were darting about in the ponds.  Most people call “koi” goldfish, but they are carp that are bred for color.  Their most common colors are orange and red and white together.  Their colors often match the flowers grown in Japanese gardens.  If the Japanese could breed carp for a pink color to match cherry blossoms, I think they would do that, too.

Stepping stones throughout the Garden encourage you to slow down and admire the architecture as well as the foliage.  The Japanese plant symbolic plants and trees in their gardens.  Leaves on stepping stones often lead the way to tea ceremony houses in Japan. 

The Japanese Tea Garden has a zen garden that favors San Francisco’s foggy climate.  There are many bushes and pruned trees in it instead of rocks and raked gravel as at the Ryoanji garden that I had visited in Kyoto.

San Francisco’s Japanese Tea Garden reminded me of the Suizenji Garden that I had visited in Kumamoto that featured the landscapes of Japan’s Tokaido Road between Kyoto and Edo (modern-day Tokyo).  A representation of Mount Fuji on the Tokaido Road figures in Suizenji and the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco.

We finished our visit with tea in the Tea House, which overlooks a pond.  I had genmaicha (a green tea blended with brown rice); Laurent had Chinese jasmine tea; and Florence had delicate sencha, because it came in a teapot.

The Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park is a slice of Japanese life; the people of San Francisco are very fortunate to have this resource available to them.

By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

Ruth Paget Selfie

Sampling Seafood Dim Sum in Millbrae (San Francisco suburb) with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Sampling Seafood Dim Sum in Millbrae (San Francisco suburb) with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget

My family went out for dim sum with my friend, who was the Vice Consul of the Japanese Consulate in San Francisco at the time.  (I had worked with her twenty years before finding sponsors for the first Japan Festival held in Chicago when I was a new graduate of the University of Chicago.)

We went to a restaurant in Millbrae, a town south of San Francisco.  Chinatown is cramped and more of a tourist attraction now.  Chinese families, who have been in the Bay area for several generations, tend to move to the suburbs.  Millbrae is one of the new enclaves of choice for Chinese-Americans.

Millbrae refers to an owner of the land, Darius Ogden Mills who bought the land in the 1800s from the Sanchez family.  “Brae” in the word Millbrae comes from the Scottish word for “rolling hills” or “hill slope.”  The hills are still there even if the original inhabitants are not.  Parking on the hills requires hill parking, so your car will not roll downhill.

We had arrived before the appointed lunchtime and walked down El Camino Real, main street, and looked at Chinese stores and markets.  There were many restaurants along this street.  The restaurant where we went, Fook Yuen Seafood Restaurant, is now closed, but many of the dim sum dishes that we ate can be found in other establishments around the world.

Dim sum literally means “touch the heart.”   According to the book Southeast Asian Specialties: A Culinary Journey through Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia edited by Rosalind Mowe, the Chinese Dowager Empress Tzu Hzi (Chi) (1835 – 1908) had her cooks prepare something to alleviate boredom with her food; dim sum are the result of her command.

Dim sum are dough pockets that are served for breakfast or lunch with tea.  They can be steamed and served in bamboo baskets, fried in a wok, or baked.  Traditional restaurants wheel carts around a dim sum restaurant offering dim sum delicacies.

At Fook Yuen, they had carts as well as waiters bringing baskets of steaming hot dim sum out of the kitchen.  If you do not speak Chinese, you can point and choose your dish.  The waiter will note what you have chosen on your bill with a chop, a Chinese ink marker with a character on it.  They will note how many dim sum you have chosen and add the total up at the end of the meal for payment.

A sample of some very popular steamed seafood dim sum follows:

-Shao mai – pork, shrimp and mushroom dough pocket with crab roe on top

-Xia jao – dumplings of fresh shrimp and bamboo shoots

-Jia Cai Jao – rice flour pastries filled with ground pork, shrimp, water chestnuts, and chives

-Dai zhi shao mai – shrimp dumplings garnished with scallops and crab roe

An example of a fried dim sum is zha yun tun, which is a wonton with pork and shrimp filling.  An example of a baked dim sum is a dan ta, tartlets with egg custard.

During lunch we talked about the book my friend had written on East Asian etiquette.

“Americans need your book in English,” I said.

“You write it,” she said.

“You could spend a lifetime just on the Japanese imperial family’s language.  I’m passing on that idea,” I said.

We laughed, finished our meal, and enjoyed the bustling Hong Kong atmosphere of the restaurant.  It was a great cultural outing for all of us.

By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

Ruth Paget Selfie

Celebrating Chinese New Year's in San Francisco (California) with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Celebrating Chinese New Year's in San Francisco (California) with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget 

Two of my Chinese-speaking American friends invited my daughter Florence and me to the Chinese New Year Parade in San Francisco in 2001.  I immediately accepted their offer, because I wanted Florence to know about Chinese culture.

Chinese New Year falls in mid-February.  Each year has a different animal featured in it in addition to the permanent lion dancers and dragon (mythical, but still an animal).  We would be going in the year of the snake, which would be a year of many long, jostling floats.

San Francisco’s Chinatown was largely created by inhabitants of China’s southern Guangdong province.  Canton, modern-day Guangzhou, is found close to Hong Kong in Guangdong.  The name of the restaurant where we would be eating was appropriately called the Canton Seafood and Dim Sum Restaurant on Folsom Street.

It was opened in the 1980s and was my family’s favorite restaurant in Chinatown.  My favorite dish was clams with black bean sauce.

Florence looked at the clams with black bean sauce and tried some.

“You can have that all for yourself,” she said.

“We like it,” one of my friends said.

We also ordered prawns with honey walnuts, prawns in lobster sauce, and Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce.  We had eggrolls to start and rice with our meal.  The dishes were served family style – served on one plate in the middle of the table with each diner taking a portion.

We all ate with chopsticks.  I taught Florence how to use Chinese and Japanese chopsticks at a young age as well as twirl spaghetti with only a fork.  My friends spoke English to order.  Mandarin Chinese is understood, but Cantonese is the language of Chinatown.  Mandarin and Cantonese speakers share a written language, but their spoken languages are as different as French and Portuguese.

After that delicious and nutritious meal, we took a walk in Chinatown, which means shopping.  We looked at traditional Chinese clothes for women, bought some Chinese instrumental music that sounds like water flowing in fountains, and looked at calligraphy supplies in an art store.  Florence did not want the calligraphy supplies I was trying to get her.

“I do calligraphy in Japanese class at school,” she said.  I had Japanese calligraphy supplies at home, too, but wanted a few things just for Florence.  My calligraphy items would be hers one day, so I did not press the issue.  They were gifts from my Japanese host family when I was an exchange student in Japan.

We also peeked our heads into a Chinese herbal pharmacy and wanted to smell the contents in all the jars.

Finally, it was time for the parade to start.  We went back to the car and got foldable lawn chairs and set up by the playground with equipment that looks like pagodas.

Chinese New Year with parades is said to have begun during China’s Han Dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD).  The inspiration for the lion dancers comes from India.  There are over one hundred floats in the parade, lion dancing troupes, and acrobats that stream along the street for more than four hours.  Firecrackers fill the breaks between floats.

There are two types of lion costume – a northern and southern type with many variations within each of the main divisions.  Northern lion dance costumes have gold heads with orange and yellow hair.   Southern lions like those found at the San Francisco New Year Parade feature lions with papier mâché heads and bamboo frames with fur decorations.

The southern lion type found at the Parade can be distinguished by swirling eyes.  The teeth pop up as does the tongue.  This type of lion is the Fo Shan type of lion from Guangdong province.  Different lion styles can be identified by the head decorations.

It is hard to tell the difference between lion dancers and dragon dancers for first time Parade goers, but there are identification clues.  Two people man a lion dance costume where you can sometimes see their heads.  Lion dancing is very physical and gives its practitioners strength exercise to practice Chinese martial arts such as Wushu and Kung Fu.

The dragon dancers’ faces can easily be seen as the dragon is held up on poles.  The dragon comes at the end of the parade and is decorated with lights.  While we were watching the end of the parade, a bat flew overhead.

“Bats are auspicious in Chinese culture,” one of my friends said.  I certainly felt lucky just for being able to see such a great parade.

By Ruth Paget,  Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

Ruth Paget Selfie