China by the Shouk
Usually I leave Tel Aviv’s open-air market, or shouk, having noshed on samples of figs, dates, fresh fruits, and snacking on a large Iraqi pita. But one afternoon last May I found myself craving something different. I was about to cross the street and head for the beach unsatiated when I saw the red awning announcing “Chinese Grocery” in English, Hebrew, and apparently Chinese. As soon as I saw the sign, I knew just what I wanted.
In college, my roommate would bring home crystallized ginger from shopping excursions in New York’s Chinatown. Even though crystallized ginger is carried at Israeli health food stores and some small markets, I never found it to taste as good as the ginger I remembered from Chinatown.
Hoping to find some better-quality crystallized ginger, I rushed into the Chinese Grocery. Inside, the market was filled with Far Eastern goods: about 40 kinds of soy products, tea sets, rice cookers, chopsticks, rice noodles, soba, shrimp, and more. Just as I had hoped, tucked away on a shelf I found crystallized ginger.
At the counter while paying for my purchase, I met Tou Tou Hinnawi, a Christian Arab from nearby Jaffa who owns and operates the market with his brother Raed.
Before opening the Chinese Grocery, Hinnawi had operated a small market in Jaffa with his sister, while his brother had spent 11 years living in New Jersey. New York City’s Chinatown inspired them to bring a taste of the Far East to Tel Aviv.
When the Hinnawi brothers first opened the store, most of the products they carried came from China. Now they import goods from all over the Orient: Thailand, Korea, Hong Kong, as well as produce grown by Asians in Israel.
The market’s clientele is as varied as its goods. Foreign laborers, mainly Thais and Filipinos, and Asian diplomats shop at the market, but many of the customers are Jewish Israelis. “Israelis buy everything,” says Tou Tou Hinnawi, speaking with me via telephone, but “a lot of Israelis don’t dare to touch the shrimp paste and things like that.”
The market’s success with Israeli consumers came as a pleasant surprise for Hinnawi. “When we first opened, we didn’t know that the Chinese Grocery would go into the grocery list when Israelis go to the market,” says Hinnawi. “It takes guts to go into the Chinese store and buy things.” Indeed, at first it was only the Israelis who had lived abroad and had money who would venture into the market, but now Asian food is fashionable in Tel Aviv and all sorts of Israelis shop there. And Hinnawi expects the popularity of East Asian foods to continue to grow in Israel. “Slowly we’re talking about all the nation,” he says.
It makes perfect sense to Hinnawi that a store owned by Arab Christians, selling a lot of Korean products to mostly Thais, Filipinos, and Jews is named the Chinese Grocery. In New York, he argues, “you can get Japanese products in Chinatown, too.”
As for the crystallized ginger, it wasn’t bad, but it still wasn’t as good as what my roommate brought me from New York’s Chinatown.\t\t
–Daniela Gerson
Tai Chi on the Kibbutz
Last spring at Kibbutz Neot Semadar, an older Chinese man could often be found leading a small group of kibbutz members in seamless and soundless tai chi exercises in the pre-dawn twilight. Breakfast time on the kibbutz was announced not by a bell but by the roar of a motorcycle as a distinguished-looking Chinese man clad in a dress shirt rode over the dusty hills. During the rest periods after meals, a young Chinese man would try to improve his English by chatting with young foreign volunteers. And at dinnertime, the kibbutz members coveted the Chinese noodles and stir-fry left over from the Chinese workers’ earlier seating.
Then one hot day early last summer, the Chinese workers of Neot Semadar gathered their belongings and boarded a bus headed toward Tel Aviv. Now, the chopsticks are likely gathering dust in the kitchen and new volunteers are probably looking with curious eyes at the Chinese inscription in the auto mechanic shop.
Kibbutz Neot Semadar, a young, organic agricultural community located in the heights of Israel’s Arava desert, is not where one would expect to encounter such a strong Chinese influence. But from 1996 until early last summer, Neot Semadar employed between five and twenty Chinese workers. And for five years the kibbutz’s Chinese workers were an integral part of the rhythm of communal life.
It all began when Neot Semadar found itself over-extended on construction projects. The kibbutz had received governmental and other funding to construct numerous projects: a packaging plant for their homemade jam, vinegar, and olive oil; a wine processing plant; a new neighborhood for kibbutz members; a new kindergarten and children’s center; and a mammoth arts center. Desperately in need of additional laborers, they followed the lead of a neighboring kibbutz and contacted a Chinese contractor in Tel Aviv who matches Chinese workers with employment opportunities in Israel.
Although it is increasingly common practice on kibbutzim throughout Israel to employ foreign labor, this was a new experience for Neot Semadar, a community with a New Age slant that is committed to self-reflection, an intimate relationship with work, and self-sufficiency. All the kibbutz’s members are supposed to learn how to perform every job–small women maneuver tractors and large men stir-fry tofu in the kitchen. Members were concerned that hiring outside help would upset this unique dynamic. They feared that some work would come to be considered beneath members of the kibbutz, and that the community would become dependent on outside help.
Despite these concerns, Neot Semadar decided to hire Chinese employees. Quickly the relationship between the kibbutz and its Chinese workers evolved into far more than an exchange of money for labor. In many ways, the Chinese became integrated into the fabric of the community. The Chinese ate breakfast and lunch side by side with the kibbutzniks, enjoyed a friendly, cooperative working environment, and some chose to share in the 15 minutes of communal silence with which the kibbutz begins each day.
The Chinese organized a special Chinese New Year dinner and musical performance for the entire kibbutz. And the kibbutz’s members introduced the Chinese to all of the Jewish holidays. (The Chinese did not know much Hebrew, but they all knew when to say “Shabbat Shalom.”) “They fit in here very well, very quickly,” says Kobi Gennosar, one of the kibbutz’s founding members.
Neot Semadar’s emphasis on communal living even rubbed off on the Chinese workers. By the end of their stay at Neot Semadar, the Chinese workers were cooking meals and eating communally. “It was really lovely to watch,” says Gennosar. Indeed, some of the kibbutz members and volunteers began opting out of some of their communal dinners to join the Chinese workers.
Unfortunately, the past year was financially difficult for Neot Semadar and the kibbutz could no longer afford to pay salaried workers. Some members of the community also felt they had strayed too far from the ideal of self-sufficiency as a result of employing foreign workers. “Everything pointed to the need to change, the money situation and the shift in our attitudes toward work,” says Gennosar.
Last May, Neot Semadar ended their contract for the Chinese laborers. The Chinese workers packed up and left for B’nai Brak, a predominantly ultra-Orthodox community on the outskirts of Tel Aviv. Now many of them are doing construction work elsewhere. A few of the kibbutz’s members maintain contact with the workers, and many retain fond memories of them. And after the Chinese workers left Neot Semadar, a few of the kibbutz’s members could still be seen practicing tai chi in the pre-dawn twilight.
–Daniela Gerson <
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The Chinese Alternative
It’s not surprising that citizens of a country plagued by a volatile political situation would seek out alternative ways of promoting healing and alleviating stress. Since the 1980s, Chinese medicine has been a rapidly growing field in Israel. Ancient Chinese methods, such as acupuncture, herbology, and reflexology, along with a slew of other alternative medical practices, have been imported into Israel by practitioners who completed their studies abroad and by young Israelis whose post-army travels sparked an interest in East Asian culture.
The practice of Chinese and alternative medicine is burgeoning, despite a lack of support from Kupat Cholim, Israel’s national socialized health care system. Private practitioners of alternative medicine are not reimbursed by the national health care system for their services so their patients have to pay for treatment out of pocket. Even alternative medical practitioners who work out of hospitals but lack degrees in Western medicine have to pay for their own malpractice insurance. And the absence of laws to control the practice of alternative medicine essentially enables anyone to declare oneself a practitioner. For these reasons, practicing alternative medicine can be very difficult financially.
Nevertheless, private alternative medicine colleges are full, according to Ofer Apel, Dean of Students at Medecin, Tel Aviv’s most competitive alternative medical college. Such colleges, which are concentrated mostly in Tel Aviv, are bursting with young Israelis willing to invest thousands of dollars to “have a modern profession with a holistic perspective,” as one student at Medecin puts it. Apel says that “people are fed up with the Western way of life and want something else.”
Effi Kfir is the author of the only two books written in Hebrew on herbology. After receiving a master’s degree in traditional Chinese medicine in San Francisco in 1993, Kfir continued his training under the supervision of experts in China and Japan. Kfir sees similarities between Jewish and Chinese traditions in that “the wisdom comes from an ancient source that affects life throughout eternity,” but he says the growing presence of alternative medicine in Israel is part of a “world trend since Western medicine is not doing the job as it should. In the past the general practitioners did everything, now you have to go to a specialist who doesn’t know you. People are longing for someone to listen to them and a system that relates to them personally.”
–Cheryl Weiner
Hard Work in the Holy Land
Twelve hours a day, seven days a week, I know I couldn’t work that much. But for 22-year-old Xiu Chang from China, the work seems almost too easy. He’s used to the long hours; he says he doesn’t even get tired on the job anymore.
Nearly 70 nations are represented in Israel’s foreign work force; the largest numbers of the estimated 200,000-300,000 foreign laborers come from Thailand, the Philippines, and Romania. The Chinese, with numerous restaurants and residential pockets of their own, also constitute a significant component of the foreign work force. Many Chinese, like Xiu, can be found in kitchens of Israeli-owned bars and restaurants.
Originally from Zhong Zhen, one of China’s largest cities, Xiu came to Israel two years ago in search of work. While most visitors are given an automatic three-month visa, Xiu was granted just a two-week stay upon arrival. Now one year and eleven-and-a-half months later, I ask if he is afraid of getting caught by the police and deported. With confidence and self-assuredness, he smiles and explains that the police have already “caught” him.
One evening a few months ago the immigration police showed up at the restaurant where he works in central Tel Aviv demanding to see his legal documents. They wanted proof that he was both in the country legally and permitted to work.
Xiu assured them that he had these papers and told them to speak to his boss. His boss then phoned, in Xiu’s words, “the big Chinese Ba’al Ha’bayit,” which in Hebrew literally means “master of the house.”
When I inquire further about this character, Xiu doesn’t have many answers, only that this individual had somehow appeased the authorities with sufficient documentation. If there were any documents they must have been completely false because Xiu is indeed here illegally. Apparently the Ba’al Ha’bayit’s job is to help keep Chinese workers out of trouble.
Chinese fixers with colorful titles aside, foreign workers still face serious problems, ranging from the threat of deportation or imprisonment to poor living conditions, pay below the Israeli minimum wage of approximately four dollars per hour, and even complete withholding of their salaries by their employers. All of this is in addition to the feeling of isolation that comes from living in a foreign country, where the culture and language are as different from home as falafel is from tofu.
Surprisingly, Xiu says he isn’t too homesick. Maybe it’s because he lives with two other Chinese (both of whom work in the kitchens of Israeli restaurants). Or perhaps it’s because he knows that he is his family’s main source of income. In any case, he still calls home every week. I ask him if his family worries about him being in Israel during these turbulent times. He says his mother is the most upset, but that the family accepts that he must be in Israel.
Xiu says he will return to China in another two years and will work for his family’s beer distribution business. He assures me that the company is growing, and by the time he returns the family will be very rich. The smile on Xiu’s face widens as he speaks about his family’s impending prosperity. But for now he must do all that he can to help them. For Xiu this means working in Israel, twelve hours a day, seven days a week.
–Annie Huntley
