Food

First, let me begin by apologizing for my recent lull in new posts. The following entry is one I've been brewing for quite awhile now, and after gathering the necessary photographs it is finally ready to be served.

Food, an essential defining characteristic of any culture, is the most important part of my life here. Every dish brings with it a story, every meal an opportunity to try something I never have. In fact, of all the instances of culture shock I've felt since arriving in Beijing, none compares to the overwhelming alien feeling I get from a trip to any Chinese establishment that sells food. The supermarket is no exception.

Someone confirm for me that I have not gone crazy -- the Chinese supermarket is at least ten times brighter and more colorful than the American equivalent. There's so much going on here I could spend hours in every aisle playing 'What the heck is that?' and taking pictures (which I did successfully for about three minutes before a security guard came and told me to stop). And for every additional product and color you can find within these walls, the glorious supermarket administration has hired about two extra workers, such that the establishment is overstaffed to the point of comedy. One woman's sole function is to ask dairy section passersby if they would like milk or yogurt.

The supermarket is an exciting place full of countless potential taste excursions at bargain prices, but is also entirely too overwhelming if you do not yet know what you're looking for. For this purpose we have restaurants and on-campus snack-shacks. For the first few days, whenever I passed by the snack stand on the first floor of the BLCU Conference Center, I made a point to try out one new Chinese drink a day, chosen at random until I had a solid understanding of China's beverage offerings. Aside from the expected Coke, Sprite, and Pepsi (which are slightly less fizzy but decidedly the same flavor as in the US), typical options include iced red and green teas, milk tea, pickled plum juice (insanely popular among natives, but rather difficult to stomach I find), a variety of iced coffee flavored beverages, orange drink (more like Tang than any kind of juice I've ever had), chocolate, strawberry, and regular milks, and Sprite with green tea flavor (someone tell me if this is a uniquely Chinese phenomenon or if you can get it in the US and I just don't know), of which my favorite is cold milk tea. Coffee, as we know it in the States -- hot water filtered through ground beans, is nowhere to be found save Starbucks (pictured below), which has undergone some variation of its own. I had to buy a box of instant packages just to savor the taste. Last but not least I will include yogurt in the beverages category because traditional Chinese yogurt (which you can buy on the street in little clay jars for 2 kuai) is meant to be consumed through a straw. It is also flavorless and delicious.

But it would be a crime to forget solid food. Generally speaking, my experiences at Chinese restaurants have consisted of large numbers of people ordering several dishes and splitting the bill. Because menu-reading is one of my weak points, I don't always know what I'm eating, but I usually like it. Real Chinese food is vaguely reminiscent of the food you'll find in an American Chinese restaurant, the principle differences being that it's a thousand times better and that you don't feel sick after eating it (most of the time). Average, every day food is also impossibly cheap. There's a restaurant on campus that sells 50 dumplings for 20 kuai (about $3.33 US). But the most striking and unique feature of Chinese cuisine are the flavors you can't find in the US. For example, blueberry and cucumber flavored Lays potato chips, red bean anything (don't know why this hasn't caught on, it's delicious), green bean / pea ice cream (pun it up, it's delectable), chocolate and sticky rice covered ice cream, green tea flavored candies, and any number of deserts coated in a thin layer of doughy rice dough (I clearly have no idea what it is).

The 'traditional' Beijing breakfast consists of an egg and a fried dough stick, which I don't particularly care for. I usually opt for red bean paste filled baozi, small rolls made with rice flour. Lunch varies, depending on whether or not we have Zhongwen Zhuozi or 'Chinese Table' with our teachers. On these special occasions twice a week, the teachers take us out to a restaurant where they order massive quantities of food for us to try. On my own or with friends I usually get dumplings or a bowl of noodles with some kind of meat. These kinds of dishes are as similar as they are delicious, so it doesn't really matter whether I know what I'm ordering, or even whether I get what I order. I thank God every day I'm not a picky eater.

The only way I can think of to give you a good idea of the kinds of food I've eaten here is to list some of them, so here it goes: lamb's back, Beijing roast duck (pictured above), spicy beef noodles, spicy string beans, stringed tofu, pockmarked tofu, really old eggs mixed with tofu, beef stew, tomatoes and scrambled eggs (particularly common), red bean pie, taro pie, pork, chicken, and vegetable dumplings (eaten with vinegar NOT soy sauce... something I learned quickly here), zongzi (sticky rice with filling wrapped in bamboo leaves and boiled... sort of like a Chinese tamale, eaten traditionally during Dragon Boat Festival and pictured below), spinach and peanuts (common appetizer), black mushrooms, and various cabbage/lettuce-like leaves soaking in watery dressing. I usually coat everything I eat in the spicy sauce that can be found in almost any restaurant, which is basically ground up chili peppers sitting in their own oil. Chinese people get a kick out of this, a fact that must be related to the quick judgment they pass on foreigners who can't eat spicy dishes.

Well, that's about it for food. Of course, this is the sort of thing that will continue to bring new adventure after new adventure for the remainder of my stay here, especially considering the influence of my HBA-arranged 'Chinese Family', one of many that have volunteered to take students out to eat, see Beijing, and welcome them into their homes. I'll write about them in another entry, but for now...

再见
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