Another in the series of blog posts by Jenny Morin, inspired by our recent research trip to China.
Go to China. It’s exotic, different, an adventure for your senses and the shopping is fantastic! Just bring plenty of cash; almost no stores or restaurants accept credit cards.
Let’s talk about the food. Many have asked me about this. After walking between 6 to 9 miles each day, we could eat whatever we wanted. And we did. This culture revolves around food, and they really know how to put out a feast. After all, they’ve been creating culinary delights for thousands of years!
Beijing – Northern China
Something really fun we discovered in Beijing is the ‘hot pot.’ You sit down at the counter with a burner. You order your broth type, then whatever goes in your soup. Shrimp, beef, chicken or pork. Add your veggies: potatoes, sweet potatoes, mushrooms, spinach, carrots. Then choose a noodle: rice or dough noodles. It all cooks unbelievably fast. Our meat was cooked in less than 3 minutes. Then eat your soup. On a 2 degree day in Beijing, that is just the ticket. Yum!
Behind our hotel in Beijing sat a little alley packed with tiny little restaurants that I never would have known about without a tip from the guy who massaged my feet. I didn’t see any other Caucasians in any of the restaurants. Though the restaurant was filled with cigarette smoke, the prices were so low I couldn’t believe it. For about $5 US we got the most amazing chicken dish I’ve ever eaten. Chicken in a sweet brown sauce with crisp cucumber chunks. Plus we got 4 small pork ribs, rice and sodas. Simply delicious!
On Thanksgiving night, when we got back from the Great Wall, we had Peking duck and a bunch of other interesting dishes. This is where the menu just made us laugh because of the awful English translations. The duck was delicious, and we had a broth with rice noodles and quail eggs. Lotus root cut into slices was crunchy and surprisingly light. Some of the dishes were too spicy for us to eat and there was only hot water to drink. This is common in China; they believe drinking hot water before eating is good for the digestion.
Xian – (pronounced She-Ahn) – the westernmost point of our journey
The most amazing night for entertainment and food happened in Xi’an. Our guide, Becky, suggested the dumpling
dinner with a cultural Chinese music and dance show. We ate at the theatre, and they brought us each course. Each dumpling was shaped like a different animal. Yellow chicken, pink pigs, brown ducks dumplings complete with black beaks and eyes, and so on.
Our meal was accompanied by a lovely Chinese lute player, quite talented and in traditional garb. The real treat: the dancers with 15-foot long silk sleeves who graced the stage. I was amazed at the movements of the dancers and the amazing floating properties of silk! The boys liked the impressive warrior dances, of course.
I’m including some of those great photos at the bottom of the blog.
Shanghai – China’s modern metropolis
On to Shanghai, easily my favorite city. One of the regional specialties in Shanghai is dumplings. We were lucky enough to get a tip from our guide Chris about a dynamite dumpling place just down the street from our art deco hotel. It’s called Yang’s. A lot of locals go there for takeout—always a good sign. For about 12 Yuan or $4 we got 8 meatball dumplings with broth inside. They were crisp on the underside and deliciously soft everywhere else. They served a spicy soup that helped clean out our sinuses too.
Our favorite baked goodies came from Shanghai. Just around the corner from our hotel, we smelled the most amazing buttery confection. The line usually stretched out the door, but every night just about 7 p.m. it dwindled to only 4 or 5 people. So, most evenings I hopped in line and got some of their famous butterfly ‘biscuits.’ They were like a really buttery puff pastry shaped like a butterfly and they were super addictive. If it hadn’t been for them, I bet I would have lost a pound or two after all that walking in China. Oh well, when in Rome. . . .
My first experience with people brazenly cutting in line happened in that bakery. A well-dressed middle-aged woman slid right in front of me, put her back to me, and that was it. I didn’t say anything; what was the point?
I DID, however, do something when a woman butted in line in another cafeteria-style lunch place to get her food. (We were in Hangzhou, silk town.) We had to carry the slip over to them so they could start making our orders. I grabbed her arm and pulled her to the side. She didn’t say anything or get mad. You just have to stand up for yourself and pick your battles. Especially when you’re hungry.
Remember, though: It’s China, get used to it! People push on the subway, men (especially) stare at us, and I got body-checked by a tiny woman in an uncrowded subway corridor. She had plenty of room to go around me; so I do know some of the pushing is intentional. Maybe they feel aggressive toward foreigners. Though I didn’t see much of that, most people are happy to see us, especially shopkeepers.
So eat the food, try new things, accept the customs, and stand up for yourself. Just remember, the Chinese cities are huge and already really crowded. Adding thousands of tourists to the mix probably gets annoying for them, too. I believe in trying to understand the culture I’m traveling in, and in mixing in and talking with locals as much as possible. That’s why I do research in advance by talking to other travelers, studying a guidebook, and reading a lot of travel forums before I go. Surprises happen, sometimes they are wonderful and sometimes not. That’s part of the adventure; just roll with it!
