Birthday Banana Bread & Zen Shorts • 香蕉生日蛋糕和Zen Shorts

Hello, my name is Halden Levin, and you are listening to Little Dragon’s Journey. 你好！我叫李靜辰，你正在聽小龍的旅程。

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March 20 is the International Day of Happiness and my mom’s birthday. Subsequently, March 23 is Spring’s birthday. Since I’m currently in Taiwan, I had to get a little bit creative as to how to wish my dear mother a happy birthday. After much thought and consideration, I decided upon sending her a card and making a cake to share with my host family.

Typically, I make handmade cards for birthdays and special occasions since purchasing cards in the U.S. is usually pretty expensive, and handmade cards can also be made to be more personalized to the card recipient. However, this time around, I decided to purchase a card since there are so many reasonably priced and attractive cards available in stationary stores in Taiwan. I ended up buying two birthday cards because I couldn’t choose between the two. My brother’s birthday is May 10, so I always need to write and send a card to him to if I want him to receive it on time.

Since I’ve never sent a birthday card from Taiwan to the U.S., my language partner helped me out. Using knowledge gained from this experience, I will try to send my brother’s birthday card on my own; this time around, as compared to 2018, I’m really trying to push myself outside my comfort zone and be more confident in my language abilities. I’ve certainly still got a ways to go, but I’ve gotten far and shouldn’t doubt myself on the daily. Anyway, I’m 100% positive my mom will not receive her birthday card on time, but it will get there eventually.

With her card sent, my next mission was figuring out how to make a cake or some other sort of treat to share with my host family. Originally, I hoped to make a carrot cake because, the last time I made carrot cake, everyone in my family loved it. However, my favorite carrot cake recipe’s ingredients are a bit on the unique side, so I settled upon banana bread, which is a family favorite. Simple and classic.

After exploring my host family’s kitchen, I determined I needed to purchase baking soda, cinnamon, vanilla, and whole wheat flour (if possible). I did a little research and determined that PX Mart and Carrefour are two popular grocery chains in Taiwan. After class on the Friday before my mom’s birthday, I headed over to Carrefour, which is just a 10-15 minute walk from my host family’s house. Carrefour looked pretty much like a regular grocery store; the one I went to was pretty small, much smaller than the grocery stores I usually go to in the U.S. I was able to find baking soda and cinnamon pretty easily, but they didn’t seem to have any vanilla or whole wheat flour.

There was a baking section, but the baking items they sold were a bit different from those you’d find in a baking section or aisle in an American grocery store. For example, Carrefour sold bread flour, cake flour, rice flour, all-purpose flour, but no whole flour. The ingredients needed to make a cake didn’t seem to be in the baking section; I don’t remember seeing bags of sugar or vanilla, and definitely no boxed cake mixes or cartons of frosting. Needless to say, no vanilla was no problem, and my host family already had all-purpose flour; I just wanted to add a bit more nutrients with whole wheat flour.

Sunday morning, which is Saturday night for my family in the U.S., I made a fresh loaf of banana bread, which was actually in the shape of a cake since I used a cake pan. After letting it cool for a bit, my host family tasted my creation, and I believe I received their approval. The cake itself was still warm and moist, and the flavor was not to sweet. I would say that adding walnuts would have been nice to enhance the texture.

Also, before tasting the banana bread, my host family and I wished my mom a happy birthday over FaceTime. It was a bit difficult to have a cohesive conversation because of the language barrier, as well as the fact that my parents, grandma, sister, sister’s boyfriend, brothers, aunt, uncle, cousins, and family friends were all gathered together (outdoors and socially distanced of course) to celebrate my mom’s birthday. My host parents and host brothers all are able to speak and understand English to varying degrees, but it can be a bit intimidating when you’re suddenly thrown into a situation like I just described.

While celebrating my mom’s birthday and enjoying a relaxing Sunday morning, courtesy of Fiona, I discovered that Spring’s birthday was the following day, March 22. At that moment, I came up with a good idea. While exploring stationary stores in Taiwan, I discovered these big cards that are typically used by groups of people or whole classes of students to send to a teacher or other important people. Since we’re a group of nine, I thought we could purchase a big birthday card and all share a few birthday wishes for our dearest Spring. I also offered to bring along my banana bread to share during our usual Monday afternoon meeting.

First thing in the morning, I hiked on over to the book/stationary store at Wenzao and discovered that the store wouldn’t open for another half hour. No problem. During our first break (in the morning we attend Chinese class from 9:00 am to 12:00 pm with ten-minute breaks every hour), Fiona, Kira, and I sped over to the store, purchased a big birthday card with a cute penguin on the front, and sped back to class. During class and our second break, Fiona, Kira, and I signed and decorated the card and got everyone else to sign as well. During our lunch break, I went home for brief bit, grabbed the container of banana bread, and ran back to school for our meeting.

Luckily, we all arrived before Spring, so when Spring arrived a few minutes late, we immediately burst out singing “Happy Birthday” in Chinese, and I gifted her our card upon the conclusion of our serenade.

Even though it was her birthday, Spring, being her wonderful self, gave little cakes to all of us, as well as our teachers, and since Spring knows me well, she gave me, as well as Jason, hard-boiled tea eggs, which is one of my absolute favorite foods in the world. Given the turn in events, I returned home with a full container of banana bread, as well as tea eggs. I must say, on top of the tea eggs, the following day, Spring gave me a book on Zen Buddhism and some fresh tea. She is too kind.

Her kindness and spirit of giving on her own birthday, a day usually characterized my gift receiving, reminded me of one of my favorite children’s books called Zen Shorts, which is a story about a panda bear named Stillwater who shares stories and experiences with Addy, Michael, and Karl. The stories he shares are derived from Zen Buddhist and Taoist literature and are meant to be short meditations on life, how we live.

In honor of our own Stillwater, Spring, I would like to end with an excerpt from Zen Shorts, the story of “Uncle Ry and the Moon” …

Uncle Ry and the Moon

My Uncle Ry lived alone in a small house up in the hills. He didn’t own many things. He lived a simple life.

One evening, he discovered he had a visitor. A robber had broken into the house and was rummaging through my uncle’s few belongings.

The robber didn’t notice Uncle Ry, and when my uncle said “Hello,” the robber was so startled he almost fell down.

My uncle smiled at the robber and shook his hand.

“Welcome! Welcome! How nice of you to visit!”

The robber opened his mouth to speak, but he couldn’t think of anything to say.

Because Ry never lets anyone leave empty-handed, he looked around the tiny hut for a gift for the robber. But there was nothing to give.

The robber began to back toward the door. He wanted to leave.

At last, Uncle Ry knew what to do.

He took off his only robe, which was old and tattered. “Here,” he said. “Please take this.”

The robber thought my uncle was crazy. He took the robe, dashed out the door, and escaped into the night.

My uncle sat and looked at the moon, its silvery light spilling over the mountains, making all things quietly beautiful.

“Poor man,” lamented my uncle. “All I had to give him was my tattered robe. If only I could have given him this wonderful moon.”

On Uncle Ry’s birthday, he gave Stillwater a yellow tent because, according to Stillwater, “He always gives presents on his birthday, to celebrate the day he was born.”

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Please visit haldenlevin.wixsite.com/littledragonjourney to access the transcript of this episode, and know you are always welcome to contact me through my website, email, or social media. Thank you for joining Little Dragon’s Journey. 謝謝你們參加小龍的旅程。拜拜！