Food

You may be wondering, what did I eat in China??

Of course, we had plain steamed rice, just like you would expect in China. And tea. Both were available at almost every meal. Other than that, I ate so many different dishes that it is hard to remember them all. A few things that were just like America (or close), a few familiar things that were prepared a bit differently, and some things that were totally strange.

In the category of "just like home," we had potatoes mashed with herbs and onions, and maybe a few other veggies. On day at lunch we were served greasy herb french fries. They did have wonton soup, kung pao chicken, sweet and sour chicken, and tofu prepared different ways. You could get fried rice, and sometimes dumplings (pot stickers). There was usually Coke, Pepsi or Sprite available. (Though no diet--aka "lite"--soda was found in Luxian.) I didn't see any egg rolls, or fortune cookies.

In the category of "I never would have thought of that," they had a dish that I saw rather often, and I actually enjoyed it. Basically, it was scrambled eggs, with fresh tomatoes and sugar. Here is a picture of this dish:

Another dish was tomato slices with sugar generously sprinkled on top. Sometimes meat came on the bone, in small pieces because there were no knives on the table. I would pick it up with my chopsticks, put the whole thing in my mouth and then spit out the bone(s). Ribs were served that way. At one restaurant in Beijing, my teammates ordered a shrimp dish. The shrimp came with its shell, head and legs intact. We weren't quite sure what to do with that! A lot of the food was completely unfamiliar. There were these deep fried things that had a doughy texture inside and were kind of sweet with a pumpkin flavor. I was told they were called nungua bing (or something like that). There was something else that we nicknamed "eyeball soup," because that's what it looked like. Small white, squishy balls in a clear liquid. They had something sweet in the middle, and I thought they were pretty good. Here is PD eating one:

In the next picture, you can see what the table looked like. This is a typical setup from our time in Luxian. We sat at large round tables, and the food was placed on a big lazy susan in the middle of the table. We each had a bowl, a teacup, a spoon, and chopsticks. (The paper cups were for the soda, specially provided because we were foreigners.)

I used my chopsticks to pick food off of the serving dishes and put it into my bowl. But, not all at once like America where I put everything on my plate and then start eating. I would get a couple of pieces of meat from one dish and a little rice, and eat that. Then, I might get some of the eggs and eat that. Also, the food wasn't all served at the same time. Dishes came out as they were ready. The fruit and soup usually were served towards the end of the meal. Everything else was in no particular order. (There was always some kind of soup...in the picture above I think it's pumpkin soup. We also had cabbage soup and chicken soup.) There was a stack of little napkins to wipe your hands or your mouth. In fancy restaurants they had large cloth napkins, strictly meant as crumb-catchers. If you need to wipe your mouth, use the small paper napkins.

Snack time! Here is Steve with one of his green pea popsicles. I don't know why he liked those things. Imagine overcooked peas, mashed with sugar, then frozen. Not something that suits my taste!

I would rather have some more of this! The best way to describe it is to say that it is a lot like flan. Eileen (one of my students) bought this for me on the street. The man put a cube of jello-like stuff into the bowl, cut it up into small bite-size pieces with a knife and then poured a sauce over it. The sauce was a caramel sauce, and it was very good! She said it was leeun cow (or something like that).

Overall, I really enjoyed the food. Most of it was fresh and very delicious!