8 grand traditions of chinese cuisine: guangdong (cantonese)

To be honest, I'm not sure this counts...dim sum is certainly Guangdong food, but by eating these delicious lunchtime snacks, am I missing what makes Guangdongese food Guangdongese?  I have to reevaluate menus and wikipedia, and I'll get back to you.

Disclaimer aside, the food was great at the Gloria Plaza hotel.  We had a wide range of dim sum dishes, including the requisite Char Siu Bao, or pork buns (fluffy dough stuffed with sweet sauce and meat), Hargao, or shrimp dumplings, and Char siu sou, a flaky pastry stuffed with pork.  

Everything was to my expectations, and this is part of the problem.  With Anhui and Fujian food, I wasn't sure what I was getting, or I didn't realize that this food was from those regions.  Dim sum, however, my experience runs a little deeper.  The one thing that was new was the durian sou, which was a sweet pastry stuffed with that bizarre fruit, yes, you guessed it, the durian.  

Every time I pass a durian on the street at my local fruit stand (well, no longer, it's out of season) I was too intimidated to pick one up.  The large spiky shell and reports of its off-putting aroma always kept me from purchasing it.  If this flaky dessert type thing is any indicator (which I am definitely unsure it is), I would have enjoyed it.  

I'll have to get some back in the states.  Until then, I will be pondering whether I should go to another Guangdong restaurant, or leave it be.  Thoughts?

8 grand traditions of chinese cuisine: fujian

So, I have about 3 weeks before I leave, and I'm already almost halfway done with the 8 Grand Traditions of Chinese cuisine.  I am very impressed with myself.  

Fujian food was good, but didn't eclipse Anhui.  We had a broad range of dishes, ranging from Iron Pan Chicken Balls to Jellied Seafood.  The Iron Pan Chicken Balls--balls of Chicken meat, I'll have you know--were served mixed with onions, peppers, and oil.  This was a dish that I have had and enjoyed before, without realizing that it was Fujian dish.  

The Jellied Seafood was a bit disappointing.   The texture was very provocative, but as an American, with a somewhat limited appreciation for what the Chinese call and I translate as, "mouth-feel", it wasn't very flavorful.  However, it was served with a delicious sweet chili sauce that was very reminiscent of Thai food.  Is eating sauce with a spoon wrong?   

My favorite dish of the night was the sweet and sour pork balls.  Like most Americans know, the balls were served fried under a bright orange sauce.  It reminded me of Tasty-Goody's 2 lb. meal deal, but of much better quality.  The sauce, although it didn't look subtle, had a nuanced taste that I have yet to experience in an American restaurant.  In addition, the pork balls were stuffed with water chestnuts, which added texture to the dish, something I often find lacking in its American counterparts.

One of the more bizarre dishes was a tofu and egg dish (upper lefthand dish in the photo).  It was simple--cubed tofu and egg in clear sauce--but I have never had an egg prepared this way.  The egg was unrecognizable to the foreigners at the table, tough and lacking flavor.  It could have been soft cartiledge, for all I knew.  Again, it's a question of mouth-feel versus the tastebuds.  In my mouth, the tastebuds always win.

Another chicken dish (the lower lefthand dish), this one cold, was served in a red sauce, with a hint of baijiu.  There were guesses at the table that the flavor came from fermenting either the sauce or the chicken. That hint of baijiu was enough to bring back many a night (and terrible, terrible mornings-after) in Ningxia, getting drunk on baijiu with officials and heads of ngos.  It was at the cusp of putting me off, just due to my history with the infamous alcohol, but I decided it was good, and ate the majority.  I wonder how someone who had never had a baijiu hangover would feel about the dish.  I imagine pretty good.

But all in all, it was a delightful dinner.  Next up, Guangdong (Cantonese) food.  

(photo credits Adam Hines)

real winter

So yesterday, I talked about the beauty that is the Beijing winter.  Snow encrusted trees and signs, black tar beneath my bike tires, blah, blah, blah.

Then I rode home.  

Travel note: Heading west along the train tracks, fully into the wind, on a cold, smoggy night is not the best idea.  But as the sand and crystalized snow found every unprotected crevice of my person, I started to enjoy myself.  

Almost no one was out.  And those of us who did brave dirt-blown night were bundled up into anonymity.  Still I felt there was a communion here.  Passing the fully wrapped girl  in the pink parka, crossing paths with a man in black walking in the street, the boss bringing in the pots from outside his store, there was some connection.  Clearly, I did not stop to ask them about their day...nor did they me.  But I felt at one with Old Beijing.  

Riding down a dark alley, the Chuar man flipped his collar up as his charcoal flame sputtered in the harsh wind.  I have the romantic idea that this was what Beijing used to be like.  No laowai walking around, just locals braving the cold and filthy gusts to do what they must.  

I imagine they're weren't nearly as many Audis back then, but who really knows?

all sorts of precipitation

Snow has finally fallen on Beijing, and finally I am content.  It is no longer a grumpy, long-in-the-tooth fall I'm experiencing, but actually another season.  Where tires tread, the snow is blacker than coal, but resting on the plastic, lightbulb filled characters of various stores, the snow is almost peaceful.

The bike-riding is a bit more hazardous, but if you take it slow, and follow the trail that has been worn through the snow to the pavement by cyclers ahead of you, it's not too dangerous.  Riding my bike through the snow-covered leafless trees in the embassy district gets me very pre-nostalgic.  

I've had a good run in China, it's been a good time, and the snow almost makes me want to stay.

The key word there is almost...

anhui food and the other 7 chinese grand cuisines

Before I leave China, I have one single goal: to eat the eight grand cuisines of China.  These are the provinces that were around back in the good old days, before the...well, before.  

The list is: 徽 (Anhui), 粤 (Cantonese), 闽 (Fujian), 湘 (Hunan), 苏 (Jiangsu), 鲁 (Shandong), 浙 (Zhejiang), and last but certainly not least, 川 (Sichuan).

Last night, we experienced Anhui cuisine at the Anhui Hotel Restaurant, which is run by the Anhui provincial government.  A light, spicy group of dishes, consisting of, and I quote:

"Mutton Noodle Hotpot"

"Three Rivers Slightly Fried"

"Hakka's Attrition Bean Curd"

"Casserole Celery"

The mutton noodle hotpot was your normal noodle hotpot suspended above canned heat.  Which is quite good...It begins as a lamb noodle soup, but as the meal moves on, the broth slowly evaporates, and imbuing the noodles and lamb with a delicous flavor.  

I'm not sure what the three rivers in the second dish were, but one of them was dou ban, or a type of tofu...I think...whatever...it's flavors were subtle and the kick was in a pleasant aftertaste.

Anhui is known for it's tofu, and if this restaurant is the bar, they should be famous for it.  The texture (tofu is certainly not known for it's taste) of the tofu was the lightest I've had.  It was like biting into a soft custard.  The sauce over it was tasty as well, but I was too focused on the delightful texture.

Finally, the Celery Casserole.  I have never seen celery like this.  As thin as grass, it looked like someone had fried up a cow's favorite meal, and sliced some incredibly spicy peppers on top.  This long grass looking stuff, if examined closely, did have the curvature and tubular structure of celery.  It was incredible.  And extremely spicy.  A nice clean crunch followed by some strong spice.  My favorite dish.

This meal was a homerun.  If the rest of these meals are as good, I will be a happy fellow.

beijing rain

As the drought wore on, the weather got warmer, and Beijing became livable--walking outside was pleasant with a light jacket, and groups of old folks were beginning to loiter outside my apartment building again, lending a sense of community to my concrete block.  

Then they seeded the clouds.  At least, I think they seeded the clouds.  That's what the newspapers say...but I have met a few ex-pats who don't believe it.  I think the idea of farmers firing rockets full of chemicals into clouds is too sci-fi for them.  I love the idea of weather control...as I like to say, "we live in the future."  

Just where I want to be.

The existence of futuristic weather control technology aside, the rain sucked.  It brought the temperature down, slicked the streets, made everyone miserable.  Damn the Chinese government for caring about the well-being of their farmers and food supply! (For the cadre who is no doubt scouring this long defunct blog for anti-Chinese sentiment: That was sarcasm.  I am glad the government is caring about those things.)

But it did make life a bit more difficult.  First, midway through the gray morning, my power went off.  Wind blow the powerlines down?  No.  Ice storm?  Nope.  Unpaid electric card?  Nailed it.  

Every so often, I need to travel to the bank and reup my electric card.  You give them the card and money, they add it to card, then you slide it in to the meter at your apartment.  So I ransacked my house looking for my electric card (they are expensive to replace) and then rode my bike to the bank.  That all went well, no hitches, and then on my way back I took a corner too fast, and slid out, giving my arm a bit of road rash and my new jeans a bit of character.  As with my other bike accidents in Beijing, no one seemed to concerned.  I like to think that it's because I'm always sure to jump up immediately, to show how unfazed I am by the pavement, not that the Chinese people as a whole don't care for my well being.  

*this gets a bit heavy here*

On the flip side, the rain did finally wash away the bloodstain from the accident outside my house.  I left my house one day on a quick errand and passed a crowd of people, and ambulance, and a poor man lying on the ground, his sleeve soaked with a fair amount of blood.  At that time, I was able to hope the man was okay, that he would survive, it was a bad break, but he'd survive.  On my way back 5 minutes later, the crowd, ambulance, and man were gone, leaving behind a hat sitting in a pool of blood.  I think if that hat hadn't been there I would have been much more hopeful.  From then on, every time I passed that spot, the base part of my human nature searched out the stain, and I would utter a refrain of horror under my breath--"Oh god, oh god, oh god."  But now the rain has come and washed the stain away, and hopefully, it'll turn back into a just another stretch of street by my place.  

*end heaviness*

The rain also pushed me into a little hole in the wall serving Guilin noodles.  A new experience, and a delicious one.  What really made appreciate the place were placards over each table, much like no smoking signs, warning people of the hot pepper sauce.  A rough translation:  Our hot pepper sauce is really hot.  Please be careful how much you add to your noodles.  

It was spicy, but I'm not sure a sauce could ever be spicy enough to warrant such a sign.  Makes me think of the overly litigous society I come from.

This rain was yesterday, and today it is clear, bright, and beautiful.  Makes me happy that yesterday was yesterday, and I'm in today now.

skiing

As we approached Nanshan, I'd have had no idea I was nearing a ski mountain, were it not that I was on a ski trip. Everywhere was a deep winter brown--grass, trees, and buildings all. Beautiful.

Nanshan is an hour and a half outside of Beijing. It has maybe 6 or 7 real runs, all of them pretty short. The snow is completely manmade. But it does boast two mogul runs--both maintained by hundreds of farmers with shovels*--and a pretty sick snowboard park. There are 5 or 6 bunny trails besides the 'real' trails, and that's where I spent the first half of my day, smacking my incredibly hungover body against the slushy snow again and again.

I am not a snowboarder, nor do I claim to be. (That might have been a bit redundant there.) But thanks to someone who wanted to be sure he wasn't the worst snowboarder on the mountain, my alcohol enfeebled mind was convinced that I should slip into a snowboard instead of skis. Horrible, horrible choice. I bounced and flipped down the bunny trails, cursing my convincer, then I got up, popped one foot out of a binding, and tried to use the rope tow. Couldn't even do that right...fell out of the tow, which made the cable bounce and land on my shoulder, which through my clothes was able to give me a nasty steel cable burn.

This is the way my morning went. I made about 4 'runs'.

When we stopped for lunch, I was miserable. Luckily, through some smooth talking, I was able to procure some skis (caveat: the equipment is not great). The day was 1000x better from there. I miss skiing, and I like to think the terrible time I had snowboarding made it that much sweeter. Swishing through the slush, passing those in the very flattering wedge tuck position, it was nice to be riding parallel to the ground instead of intersecting with it.

As you might have guessed, there were a huge number of ski patrol at Nanshan--many more than I've seen at any other ski resort. They seemed to outnumber the skiers down at the lodge. Great thing was, once you got on the mountain proper, there was not a patrol to be found. Makes it great for horseplay and dangerous jumps.

The one rule of Nanshan that was enforced was 'put the bar down!!!'. The chairbumpers (who incidentally could not ski or snowboard) would chase down chairs and scream at people to put their bars down. Hey, don't worry about the 6 year old kid careening down the sole black trail out of control--you better get that bar down. You might fall off--or worse. We all saw those mortifying pictures of that dude (but I guess that had little to do with the bar).

My one real complaint, as it has been throughout, is the lack of lines. Man...and I thought the bus was bad. Instead of queues, everyone just crams in where they can.  When you have something attached to your feet it gets very political...whose skis are on top? How far are your skis between the legs of the person in front of you? Could I push you down without anyone really noticing? I am not a big fan of Western lift lines. Chinese lift lines made me want to scream.

But besides the BS, it was a great day.

For those of you traveling to Beijing in the winter, this is a great deal for you. 350 RMB (50 bucks) for transportation, tickets, rentals, and a beer and a burger when you return (the dinner alone is worth 100 RMB). Check Cityweekend or Localnoodles.com when you arrive.



*estimation by one George Scott--it might be a little high and/or completely incorrect.

guess who's back

back again...After an extended, shall we say, sabbatical, I am back again, writing like my life depends on it. Besides a self-conscious worry about the boring nature of my day to day life, I have no excuse. I guess a blogger really needs to be able to put those things aside.

So what has happened in my life since the last post over a half year ago? Nothing much...my Mandarin has improved substantially, I've gotten used to Beijing, and I have decided that I still have no idea what I want to be when I grow up. But at least it has been a character building experience.

Now I have less than a month to go in Beijing before I begin traveling throughout Southeast Asia. I'm getting prenostalgic, and so I figured I'd start blogging about my thoughts before I start my trip...the things I'm gonna miss--my friends, my landlady, be able to eat to bursting on less than five bucks--and the things I won't--getting black stuff on my handkerchief after blowing my nose, lack of lines, people trying to sell me sexydvds (yes, that's one word).

So let the writing begin, and god help me stick with it.