Fooooodddd
The country accounts for 8 different types of cuisine. But brace yourself: American fast-food restaurants have taken the place by storm. Bless the tourists for keeping traditional noodle kitchens alive. Beware of the national culinary art: being quite experimental, anything that moves, from pork to scorpions to “little birds,” will prove good enough for the skewer. Spotted on the menu of a chic restaurant: dog’s tripe, ox’s penis and jellyfish. How very nutritious. Your Mother would be proud of you, practising omnivourism. Full of vitamins and so. I have never eaten so much tofu and pumpkin before as here. Wash each meal down with some excellent Tsingtao beer (it is cheaper than water, anyway), or the bitter beverage drunk in porcelain cups with tea leaves and, lucky you, tiny branches and other organically grown garden produce (which is dead anyway) at no extra charge.
Tea, “cha,” is drunk loose, unsweetened and without any additives such as milk. Common varieties of tea here are black, green, jasmine, and rice. All very aromatic and comforting, though at first they may feel a bit bitter to the taste. Tea cups are small and have a lid to keep the beverage warm. They are, as expected, made of china. Once the liquid has been consumed and the tea leaves remain at the bottom of the cup, more water can be poured into the cup and the drink left to brew for a few minutes, for just a tiny bunch of tea leaves renders several cups.
Snack Alley is an experience not to be missed. The stands look spotless clean and their merchandise, either on a skewer or in a little bowl looks appetizing (you didn’t read me writing that!). But alas, not all that is red has to be a scorpion kebab: caramelised fruit pieces on a skewer proved to be quite a popular snack as well: banana, mini custard apples, tomatoes, and so on.
The first time in a Chinese supermarket can be really challenging, especially if your stomach is grumbling like mine was. More often than not, the packaging is not see-through, and the Chinese characters printed on top are not self-explanatory. So you end up either looking for drawings on the package or going for the obvious, such as bananas and the ever-delicious fuji apples or sharon fruits. Or boasting an adventurous
spirit and thinking to yourself, “whatever!” as you surprise your taste buds with a shrimp paste-filled sweetie or a mouthful of extremely salted prunes. Excellent exercise for the facial muscles.
Common-run Chinese restaurants are best. I really liked these. It appears that the table area gets divided and allocated to the waiters (I’ve seen only waiters). There is one person at the door who will show you to your table, and here comes the fun part: he will scream out, at the top of his lungs, something like, “Xing (or Ming), please, I’ve got 4 customers coming your way!” If the place is too crowded and noisy, the sentence will be passed over out loud from one waiter to another until it effectively reaches recipient. Green tea is usually provided for free by a man going from table to table with a huge, usually copper, teapot.
Agnes, Kenneth, Coco and I went to eat chic one evening. We sat around a big round table. The custom is to order a selection of dishes, which will then be shared among the diners. Each is provided with a small dish, bowl, spoon and a set of chopsticks. If you are struggling, though, you can request a fork and a spoon (cutting devises are not seen with good eyes on the table). Season your meal with soja sauce or other spicy sauces available: salt and pepper are not customary. Do not expect to find too many dairy produce: many Asians lack the enzyme to digest lactose so this type of foods, though available, is not as popular as it is in the West. So we let Agnes do the ordering: tofu, shrimps, vegetables, fish, chicken, and do on. Dishes are brought over to the table as they are ready, so never consider ordering dessert together with the main meal, you may end up eating your sweet before everything else. Just halfway my tofu and pumpkin, the waitress came to the table carrying a pail filled with a bit of water and something inside which was splashing energetically. Agnes beckoned to her, as if saying, “Spare Abigail the sight.” Too late. Inside was one of the colourful fish which had been swimming in the acquarium at the entrance just a few moments before. “Yes, yes, good, please take it away now,” was Agnes’s response, and our diner-to-be was then taken away to the kitchen, where he (I’m sure it was a he: in every case he looked like a he) was ruthlessly tortured, murdered, and then beheaded. Some twenty minutes later our colourless Mr Fish friend rested on a bed of vegetables in the midst of our table.