07-017 Stogel long-life Kosher Meal

07-017
Stogel long-life Kosher Meal 

After writing many posts on Chinese translations of the Bible and other extra-Biblical texts, I am going to move a bit backward this time. In this post, I will talk about Judaism.

The twin pillars of Judaism are the Hebrew Bible, or the Old Testament, and the Talmud. (For sure, in Jewish point of view, there is nothing called “Old” testament. In Judaism, there is only one Testament always.)

I have listed out all vernacular Chinese translations of the Bible in my previous posts. Some of those translations were based on the Hebrew Masoretic Text, such as the 1970 Lü Chen Chung’s translation (呂振中譯本). So technically, Chinese translations of the Old Testament are readily available. But whether Jews would accept those Christian translations is another case.

On the other hand, translation of the Talmud into Chinese is still underway. Translation of the Babylonian Talmud is being done by the Chinese government and would still take some years to complete. And the translation of the Jerusalem Talmud is not even under any plan. So, instead of talking about the translations of Jewish sacred texts, I would rather share with you my recent Jewish experience.

 

Back in summer 2023, a colleague from Germany visited our office. He is a Jew, born in Ukraine and immigrated to Germany at the age of 10. I learned some Jewish stories from him. I was surprised to know that there are still Jews living in Germany as I always think that all Jews that survived the Holocaust must now be either living in Israel or in the US.

Weeks later, I was given an opportunity to visit Munich. The trip would be in the mid of October. I decided to turn the trip to a religious one. I carefully arranged my flights so that I can have 2 extra days to travel around Munich. I hope I can visit some religious sites in those 2 days, especially to those Jewish religious sites in the city.

However, after everything was planned, things happened. Just one week before my flight, Hamas entered Israel, shooting everywhere, killed more than 1000 Israelis and kidnapped 200 more to Gaza.

Is it still safe to visit those Jewish religious sites? Would I become a target? Should I change my plan? Luckily, it was still the second week of the Israel-Hamas war when I arrived Munich. At that time, the majorities were still supporting Israel. Now, it seems to be the other way round. So, I braved my heart, hopped onto my Finnair flight, heading to Helsinki, then Munich. My Jewish experience started immediately after boarding. Yes, I have reserved kosher meals for my flights.

Before take-off, the cabin crew showed me the meal box and asked if I prefer to break the seal myself or they can open it for me. I let them to open the box for me to reheat the content. About an hour after, my Stogel long-life kosher meal was in front of me during the meal serving time.

Let me show you what is inside.

Stogel long-life Kosher Meal

Like the Hermolis kosher meal on my previous Cathay Pacific flights, Stogel kosher meal was sealed to guarantee kashrut. The ingredients of the meal are also clearly written. But Stogel uses paper box while Hermolis uses plastic.

I was served “Hot Lunch Schnitzel” as dinner. It is a meaty meal and is not suitable for Passover, because of the crackers inside. The meal set has a code, LL-HLM4. Main course is Poultry Schnitzel with Rice & Vegetable (58%), with a missing ‘c’ in the word ‘Schnitzel’. Side dishes include Fish Cocktail, Coffee Pudding, Fruit Compote, Crackers and Halva. Ingredients of the side dishes are printed on the seal. Ingredients of the main course are printed on another label, affixed on top of the main course package.

Inside the Stogel long-life kosher meal box

Kosher certificate

Main course, side dishes and snacks are neatly packed.

I opened the box and found all the dishes were neatly packed inside. The main course was reheated by the cabin crew and the kosher certificate was on top of the side dishes.

I decided to finish the side dishes first, from Fish Cocktail to Coffee Pudding and then Fruit Compote.

First side dish - The fish cocktail

The interior looks like this. Taste is overall not bad.

Second side dish - Coffee Pudding

It is actually a dessert. But pudding with a coffee taste?

The third side dish - Fruit Compote

The taste of Fruit Compote is really awful!

Many on travel forums compare Stogel long-life meals with dog food. The Fruit Compote is just mashed tomato and is horrible. But Fish Cocktail tasted good. Coffee Pudding was so-so. It was not good but not bad either.

After the side dishes, it is time for the main course.

Ingredients of the main course are printed on the label
affixed on the package, not on the meal box.

After unwrapped the double layer plastic bags,
I was surprised to see the main course was also sealed.

The main course is turkey, rice, carrot and peas.
It is reheated and the taste is not bad.

After finished all the side dishes, I curiously opened the package of the main course. It was completely sealed in double layer plastic bags. I teared the bags and found that the plastic tray inside was also sealed. The schnitzel is made with turkey meat and rice is mixed with carrot, peas and corn.

Crackers are normal crackers but it is under Stogel's own brand.

And it got a kosher seal on the package.

Crackers were just crackers. But it got a kosher seal printed on its package. Halva was quite nice. We have something similar in Chinese cuisine but ours are made with peanuts. Taste of the whole meal was not bad overall.

Halva

There is also a kosher seal on the package of the halva.

I have never eaten any Halva before. I don't know what it is.
But taste is not bad.

The meal has an expiry date of 02/June/2025. According to the website of Stogel, their long-life meals require no refrigeration and are fully self-contained. I am not sure how can they make this possible. Rice in the main course is soft and the carrot is juicy. How come this kind of food can be stored in room temperature for 2 years without being spoiled? I asked the question on a forum but no one can answer me.

Stogel "Hot Breakfast"

Since it was a long haul flight, I was being served a second Stogel meal in the morning, a long-life “Hot Breakfast”. The code of the meal is LL-HB and this time, it is parve. Main course was Egg quiche with vegetables. Side dishes were again Fruit Compote and Fish Cocktail. The meal set was served with Crackers, Halva, and a pack of Jam.

Inside the "Hot Breakfast" meal box

After removing the meal box, the breakfast set looks like this.

I was given a pack of kosher jam. But there is no bread to spread, only crackers.

Side dishes are the same as the previous meal.
Let us open the main course. Again, the ingredients were printed on the package.

This is the main course, hot and sealed.

The quiche was served with potatoes and carrots. To be honest, I have never seen a slice of quiche in that shape. The taste was not bad but it definitely did not taste like quiche.

Bon Appétit!

Everything in the meal box is kosher.

Even the salt and pepper are kosher.

On the return flight, I was being served the exact same food. My advice to Stogel KSML meal is, if you are picky, try your best to stay away from them. But if you can eat anything and would like to know how Stogel looks like, then give it a try.

So, that was the beginning of my religious tour and also my first Stogel KSML in-flight meals. In the next posts, I will show you more about my Jewish experience in that trip.

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06-009 Вызов

06-009
Вызов

Just a bit more than a year after Russia invaded Ukraine, a very special movie premiered at the State Kremlin Palace in the Moscow Kremlin. The movie is called Вызов, or The Challenge in English.

Вызов

What makes the movie so special?

The Challenge is the world’s first feature-length fiction film to have scenes shot in space by a professional filmmaker. The premiere date of the movie was also specially selected, being 12^th April, 2023, the World Cosmonautics Day celebrating the 62^nd anniversary of the first human spaceflight by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.

Part of the movie was filmed on ISS

I have heard of this movie before the Russo-Ukrainian War. Back in early October 2021, “Russians beat Tom Cruise as first to film a movie in space” already became the headline of CNN. Principal photography of the movie began on 5^th October, when the main actress Yulia Peresild and the director Klim Shipenko, accompanied by cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov, flew to the ISS. The mission lasted 11 days, 22 hours and 13 minutes. While on the ISS, Klim Shipenko shot about 30 hours of material. He also worked as director, art director, makeup artist, and production designer. The footage shot in space became approximately 35 minutes of the final runtime of the film.

Is The Challenge really the first movie in space?

If you are talking about anything that shot in space ever ending up on the big screen, the answer is definitely no. Over all these years, we saw at least 5 documentaries being shot in the space and 2 of them were showed on IMAX theatres. But if talking about feature-length fiction film, then … let us find out together.

The 1984 Return from Orbit

Back in the 80s, the Soviet movie Возвращение с орбиты, Return from Orbit in English, featured scenes filmed in orbit onboard Salyut 7 space station and Soyuz T-9 spacecraft. However, the film's actors did not travel to space for any filming. All footage were captured by the Russian cosmonauts. So in general, this movie was not qualified as “the first movie in space”.

The 2012 Apogee of Fear

In 2012, a short film Apogee of Fear was shot entirely in space by private astronaut Richard Garriott. The completed film is just over 5 minutes in length. Since Apogee of Fear is not a feature-length film and it has never reached any big screen, so this also does not count.

The 2016 Yolki 5

But the 2016 Ёлки 5, or Yolki 5 in English, should count. Yolki 5 is an omnibus comedy film with 7 segments. Each segment features everyday Russian life. And one of the segment was filmed by cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko and Andrey Borisenko on the ISS. They acted as themselves in the movie. So, why The Challenge is the world’s first feature-length fiction film but not Yolki 5?

Where to watch?

Due to sanction from the West, The Challenge was only premiered in Russia and some ex-Soviet countries. The movie did not make its way to any Western cinemas. It is not on Netflix, Disney, Hulu, Prime Video or any major streaming providers. The Challenge was not showed in the Chinese cinemas also. Technically, there is no official way to watch this movie outside Russia.

Luckily, I was given a link to watch the movie. I need to confess. This is not a proper way. But I am so excited to see the completion of “the first movie in space” and I desperately wanted to watch. I promise when I find a DVD, I will buy.

Is The Challenge good?

Warning: Spoilers ahead

I think most people know the plotline of the movie without watching. The movie was completely spoiled by those news articles surrounding it – a cosmonaut was injured and Yulia Peresild, starring as a surgeon, was sent to the ISS, performed a surgery in zero gravity, and both of them came back to Earth, save. Mission completed. Simple and easy. But it is actually more than that.

Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center (GCTC)

The movie gives everyone a tour inside GCTC

The main storyline of the movie is definitely around the mission – how the cosmonaut was injured, the decision on sending someone to ISS, the selection and training part, and finally the mission itself. This took up about 3 quarters of the movie length. Astronomy enthusiasts must be very excited when watching the movie. A lot of footages were shot inside the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center (GCTC). You can see many training equipment, such as the neutral buoyancy pool, the 1:1 ISS training module, and the centrifuge. Instead of those still photos shared on the official website of GCTC, the movie shows a more dimensional views of those equipment and also how they actually operate.

A 1:1 ISS training module

The centrifuge

The movie shows how some of the equipment inside GCTC work

Other interesting part of the movie is the Ilyushin-76 flying laboratory for zero gravity training. Astronomy enthusiasts must have heard of this plane. But how it actually works? What does the cabin of the plane look like? And how long can you experience zero G in each free fall? The Challenge tells you everything about this.

The Ilyushin-76 flying laboratory

Every free fall of the plane creates a moment of zero gravity

Treasure your moment!
Zero gravity only lasts for 25 seconds in one free fall.

For sure, the most exciting part of the movie is the space travel. We all know that the zero G surgery is fake. But the Soyuz spaceflight and ISS are real. At the end of the movie, there is even a spacewalk. You will find out how small ISS actually is. It is hard to imagine 13 people squeezing into this small compartment altogether.

The operation is fake

But the Soyuz MS-19 is real

The ISS is real

And the spacewalk is also real

But apart from the mission part, the movie also tries to include some romance into the storyline. Dr. Evgenia Belyaeva, acted by Yulia Peresild, is a widow. Her daughter is in teenage and has just caused some troubles in school, that needs Evgenia to do with. Her old mum is living with them, with poor health. And there is also romance with Dr. Vladislav Nikolaev, a young and handsome doctor that works together with Evgenia in the same hospital. By adding all these ingredients to the heroic space mission, the director wants to show that the protagonist is not a hero. She is just a human that also has similar problems as we face every day.

Afterall, Dr. Evgenia is just a normal woman

She has a troublesome daughter and a mum to take care

But the mission part has already occupied 3/4 of the movie. Adding all those romance lengthened the movie to almost 3 hours long. However, The Challenge is a standalone installment. Dr. Evgenia is not a Marvel character. No one has any knowledge of her before watching. The romance part is too short to draw the audience to get a grasp of her struggle, but too long to bore those astronomy enthusiasts who only interested in the sci-fi part. If the director can shape the movie into pure action and cut down the running time to just over 90 minutes, The Challenger would be perfect.

Nevertheless, I still recommend this movie to all astronomy enthusiasts, if you have such a chance. And no matter you like Вызов or not, the movie keeps reminding its audience one thing – Putin is watching you!

Every bond you break
Every step you take
I'll be watching you

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07-016 Swedenborg, and Chinese translations of his works

07-016
Swedenborg, and Chinese translations of his works

After Ellen White, Mary Baker Eddy, Joseph Smith, and Sun Myung Moon, I am going to talk about another person who has also claimed to have received direct revelations from God. His name? Emanuel Swedenborg.

Emanuel Swedenborg

The mysterious stories of Swedenborg are everywhere on the internet. There is a long article about him on Wikipedia. Many podcasts are also available on YouTube talking about Swedenborg, if you don’t want to read.

Like others, Swedenborg wrote down his revelations in many different works. People refer to those works as Swedenborg’s Theological Writings. According to this source, a total of 18 books on spirituality were published during his lifetime, together with many shorter articles. A further 25 titles were published posthumously after his death, and 15 miscellaneous works were discovered later on, mostly short or incomplete works.

Different from the other four ‘prophets’ I have mentioned in the earlier posts, Swedenborg did not start his own church. Only in 1787, 15 years after his death, his followers started the New Church movement in England. Compared to the Seventh-day Adventist or the Latter-day Saints, Swedenborgianism is not very large. There are only around 10,000 Swedenborgian followers nowadays, mainly in English-speaking countries.

Swedenborgian Christianity has never set foot in Asia. Swedenborg was almost unheard of in Chinese culture. But everything changed in 2010 when a mysterious book was published in Taiwan. The book has a Chinese title “通行靈界的科學家”. It is published by “史威登堡研究會” and claimed to be a translation of the book “Swedenborg’s Great Gift”.

Swedenborg’s Great Gift

However, no information about the publisher or the original title can be found on the internet. The name of the publisher can be roughly translated as “Swedenborg Research Center”. There are many Swedenborgian organizations bearing a similar name, which I could not identify which one is the publisher. And searching the book title “Swedenborg’s Great Gift” returns nothing. A Singaporean blogger said the original title is not written in English but in Korean. And the Unification Church of Taiwan shared an article on their official website, praising this book. Could the original title be a work of the Moonies?

The book is not a direct translation of Swedenborg’s works. It is more like a biography of Swedenborg and a rendition of his works. Nevertheless, the book became one of the top sellers in Taiwan for more than a year. Since then, the fandom of Swedenborg began to bloom. In the next year, Heaven and Hell / 天堂與地獄 was translated and published in Taiwan, being the first Swedenborg’s work to get an official Chinese translation.

Heaven and Hell

Now, Swedenborg has a big fan club in mainland China and Taiwan. Since Swedenborg’s works are not exactly the Bible and Swedenborgianism is not exactly a religion in Asia, the Chinese government allows the fandom to exist, treating it as something similar to Marvel, D&D, or Lovecraft. Different volunteers have been translating his works into Chinese over the years. Nowadays, all 18 titles published during Swedenborg’s lifetime are translated and available for download. Translation of the posthumous works is underway. At the time of writing, 6 of the 25 posthumous works were translated.

In the next post, I will move away from Christianity to other religions. Of course, extra-Biblical texts are not limited to these. For example, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and the Rastafarians include more books as canonical. But since those churches have no branches in China, I do not mention them specifically. As far as I know, none of their extra-Biblical texts have been translated into Chinese.

 

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