Eats

My friend Mandy and I at her family's home/store in Longtan eating dinner prepared by her mother.

Judith Farquhar, an anthropologist of China, wrote a book titled Appetites in which she examines the cultural politics of food and eating. In a country where millions died of starvation when the countryside was mobilized to fuel the industrialization of the cities, food is still sustenance for many Chinese.

Given Chinese people's reputation for eating just about anything, people have asked me a few times what strange things I have eaten. Sometimes eating something unusual is a result of poverty (like chicken feet) and sometimes it is a fetishized dish loved more for its expense than its tastiness (such as shark fin soup). Because the cultural memory of starvation is only one generation away in China, I feel as though I have an obligation to try everything placed in front of me if I am a guest. So, the strangest things I have eaten include shrimp with the shell, deep fried grubs, and chicken feet. I accidentally ate a barbecued chicken head once, but that was my own doing. Jesse's collaborator returned from a conference in China recently and ranted about how the Chinese will eat so many disgusting things (in contrast to the Taiwanese - himself included - who would never dream of eating sand worms).

However, typically, I really like all the food I eat here. Some of it I will even crave when I return to the States (like I crave Mexican food, American style birthday cake, and blue cheese right now).

Eating is, at its heart, a communal experience in Chinese culture. Of course many people eat meals on the run - a quick lunch break - or some noodles to go. All my Chinese friends would never skip a hot lunch. They would not even consider a 'sandwich' - eaten cold - a meal.

So whenever I have visited Chinese friends, I am always served a meal that looks something like this photo on the left. One of these dishes is Hakka food - Hakka is one of the ethnic minority groups in China and Taiwan. Mandy's family is Hakka and her parents speak the Hakka language with one another. The other dishes are more typical and include scrambled egg cooked with radish, steamed fish served with soy sauce and ginger, sauteed or boiled vegetables, and chicken. The fish is always served whole, and you peel back the skin with your chopsticks. And you never flip the fish over because it could mean your boat will capsize, or some other form of bad luck will come your way. Everyone has a bowl of plain rice, and you pick up bites from the communal dishes with your chopsticks, then eat them with your rice.

If you are not with a large group or a family, you probably eat something more like the dishes featured below.


The soup to the left has "soup dumplings" in it. Soup dumpling does not mean a dumpling inside soup, but rather, the inside of the dumpling has liquid. These are pork dumplings, but these are special dumplings which are quite sticky- made with the rice flour in mochi. The broth has all these wonderful fried onion bits in it that are so delicious. I don't care too much for the texture of the dumplings though.


Even more typical is a noodle dish called gan mian. This has ground pork cooked in a brown sauce, green onion, bean sprouts, and an egg boiled in soy sauce. This is delicious and can be found everywhere. There is a place in the Shi Da Night Market which serves this on top of hand made, hand shaved noodles. Yum.






If you are really hungry, you can eat some cold dishes with your soup or your noodles. My two favorite cold dishes are cucumbers marinated with green onion, garlic, soy, and vinegar and the dish pictured here - baked tofu served cold with green onion and bean sprouts. If you are lucky it will served with a sauce that tastes a bit like oyster sauce perhaps?




I have quite a lot more to say about food but that is all I will write for now. My newest favorite food is a noodle soup called 'winter mushroom' that has the most delicious mushrooms I have ever tasted outside of a really expensive truffle. They are served in broth with greens and noodles made from green beans. The next time I eat it I will take a photo to put on the blog.