Ive long wanted to visit China before the new completely overwhelms the old.
So last Sunday night, my wife, Jean, and I arrived in Beijing. Our first stop was to be a food tour of Beijings Hutongs–one of the fast-disappearing areas of traditional homes, shops, and restaurants. These older areas are being torn down and replaced with modern apartment buildings and shopping malls at a rapid pace. Just drive around Beijing for a day, and you are blown away by the scope of the development. The gleaming office and apartment buildings extend for miles and miles and miles–multi-block-size furniture, jewelry, and electronics markets, along with universities and five-star hotels. A tidy city of 20 million.
So what were were doing at the start of our food tour at a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet? Like in the U.S., fast-food locations make good meeting places, since its easy to find a place to sit down, and to use the toilets. But more significantly, fast-food places are spreading like topsy in China, and one of the biggest is apparently Kentucky Fried Chicken. Indeed, it even has a location adjoining august Tianmen Square.
The rapid spread of fast-food places is symptomatic of changes in traditional eating habits. Large supermarkets are full of glistening plastic packages of meats, of cartons of milk imported from Australia. There is concern everywhere about the quality of all food, thanks to previous food adulteration scandals and recurring poisoning of the soil.
But once we met our tour guide, Adlyn (of Hias Gourmet), and escaped the Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet, we were able to appreciate traditional Chinese eating habits. The Chinese, of course, have a proud and diverse culinary tradition. Madlyn quickly had us sampling all kinds of fried tofu and red bean snacks and various dumplings and fish and chicken dishes. Among the traditions that stood out to me:
*The preference for fatty meats. Chicken legs and thighs are more expensive than breasts, and pork bellies, which have lots of fat, are similarly highly prized, versus lean cuts.
*What you see is what you get. The Chinese like hard evidence of their foods origins. So when I ordered some filet of fish at an area restaurant, it came with the heads. This is a lot different from Americans, who generally want the fish heads and other messy evidence of where their food came from to disappear, and certainly not show up on their plate.
*Nothing goes to waste. The Chinese are proud consumers of the innards of all animals they consume. Tripe is a popular dish, as are various concoctions based on pig and other animal blood.
*All kinds of animals are fair game for different tastes. At Beijing’s famous Night Market, we saw live scorpions and worms on sticks, ready for frying. At another place, there were goat testicles–all I had to do was give the order and they’d be cooked right up. Our guide insisted we sample a hamburger at one small restaurant. It tasted somewhat beefy when I bit into it, but not quite the same as ground beef I am used to. What animal do you think it comes from she asked. Uh-oh, I thought. Dog? Cat? No…donkey. I have to admit, my stomach turned, and I left the remaining half of the concoction on the plate.
*Fermented foods are still big. Stinky tofu, fermented bean curd, and yogurt (at least in the north of the country) are all big-time foods.
There is a big issue around food safety, as in intentional adulteration and contamination of the soil and food with all kinds of toxins and pollution. And the air pollution in and around Beijing is as bad as advertised–it smells awful, it looks awful, and cars and plants of all sorts are quickly coated in dust and dirt, giving them a gray-green look. This past week I’ve been in Beijing was supposedly a “good” week pollution-wise…I’d sure hate to see a bad week.
Just as big a threat, though, seems to be those all-pervasive fast-food places. One of the biggest landmarks at the Great Wall? A Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet.
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And if you want a taste a blatant censorship, try to access the New York Times on your hotel (or any) Internet connection. It won’t come up, apparently because of reporting the Times did on hacking of its news site by Chinese operatives recently.
I think the chicken thighs and legs are more flavorful, fat is good! How awful a fast food joint planted at the Great Wall.
Enjoy your trip and stay safe.
How is that supposed to be sanitary?
“keeps the tail from dragging in manure”
Gee, if they weren’t standing in their own poop, they wouldn’t be dragging their tail in it.
“By cutting off the part of the tail, some farmers believe they protect workers from disease and helping to keep cow udders and milk clean.”
ROTFLMAO They’ve got to be joking?
http://news.yahoo.com/colo-bill-ban-cow-tail-cutting-worries-farmers-183249813.html?nopharma=1
Who is going to eat your cheese?
http://www.heirloom-organics.com/or/organicgrainseeds.html
1. flavored yogurt- no mention of the added chemicals
2. choose packaged cookies- again no mention of added chemicals
3. popcorn- first; who eats only one cup? GMO?
4. Go for flavored seltzer water for a fizz sans caffeine and chemicals.-OMG even encourages you to consume chemicals!!
5. Slow-cooked oats- one positive so far!
6. egg..olive oil on a whole-wheat English muffin- yuck, I’ll fry my eggs in real butter or bacon fat.
7. dry rub- make your own; doesn’t suggest what to use for salad dressings
8. bars naturally low in sugar- processed has added chemicals=toxins
9. Finn Crisps- chemicals? http://www.finncrisp.com/crispbreads/round-crispbreads/finn-crisp-multigrain-round/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E471
http://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/9-processed-foods-ditch-now-152600581.html
http://reason.com/archives/2013/03/08/seeds-of-invention
This is more about Vernon Bowman: http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_22617165/vernon-hugh-bowman-will-take-monsanto-supreme-court
It’s true. Money talks no matter what is at stake.
David, oriental food of any kind has never been my favorite, in fact I go out of my way to avoid it. My uncle tells me I have a boring palate, but then he’s been all over the place in his lifetime and eaten some stuff I wouldn’t touch with the end of a stick. But I hope you’re having a great time and taking lots of photos so you can put up a page of them here so we can all have an armchair tour.