First post for me, and I thought I'd jump in because what I have to add, when compared with chaste_nosferatu's (CN) post, will illustrate the regional diversity of Chinese food and demonstrate what alot of previous posters have noted, that is the futility of trying to define a single "Chinese cuisine". I lived in Chengdu mid-80s, Shanghai mid-90s, and have spent alot of time in Nanjing (3 hrs by train from Shanghai) and Dalian (NE, on the coast) mid-90s as well. What Chinese have available to them varies so much region to region, even in these days of improved transportation. CN reports that the quality of the produce available to him is a "crap shoot"; this is a function of his geographic location, not indicative of the situation in all of China. In Chengdu even back when private produce markets had just been allowed to make a reappearance early 80s, the produce was mind-boggling in its variety and its quality. Sichuan is China's breadbasket, and we would stagger home from the market with some of the biggest, most beautiful tomatoes seen outside of New Jersey, sweet corn on the cob, peas, and shell beans in the spring, cukes that actually had flavor, crisp greens (it's where I learned to love rabe) --- you get the picture. The produce situation in Shanghai 10+ years later was not as good, IMO -- simply because the variety wasn't as great. But overall quality in the wet markets (we never bought fruit/veg in the supermarket, unless it was imported) was/is high, even if we were sort of stuck with a constant repertoire: sturdy lettuce, cabbages, green beans, eggplant, cauliflower, green peppers and, in season, beautiful tomatoes. As for fruits I recall sweet mandarins and "Asian pears" in Sichuan in the fall. In Shanghai everyone looked forward to peach season mid-to-end summer .... almost-too-sweet white ones and tarter, but equally as delicious peaches with a startlingly bright school bus-yellow flesh. Yeah, the meat/poultry sections of the market are kind of gross, and you definately want to shop there early in the day ... in the summer, certainly not after 7am. But what poultry! I roasted the tastiest chicken ever in Shanghai, I don't know if the variety of bird is special or the fact that what we were eating for dinner has been alive less than 12 hours earlier --- but the flavor was just beyond compare. What I liked, as a cook, about the meat and pork in China is that the fat hasn't been bred out ... resulting in some truly memorable pork chops and roasts, and beef daube. I'm not so crazy about the fish, OTO, primarily bec most of it was not ocean fish and tasted muddy. The exception is places on the coast .... like Dalian. Those cold ocean waters produce some mightly tasty crab, lobsters, and prawn and fish. I guess what I'm trying to emphasize is that depending on where you are in China (and not just in big cities) the variety of fruit and especially veg can be great .... and usually the quality is very good. At least, in my opinion, meats poultry and produce in China (like alot of Asia) still have real *taste*. But again --- region counts. It's not the same everywhere (I've been in Beijing in the winter and been faced with a choice of cabbage, cabbage, or cabbage. Maybe some carrots.) As for what do pple eat, at breakfast zhou (congee) is common in the west, south, and east, though the consistency varies from thickish in Guangdong to more watery northward. Big fat steamed baozi stuffed with pork were a regular breakfast for me in Chengdu. In the north? CN can answer that. I fondly recall enjoying mantou (steamed bread) with a little soup in Dalian, but don't know if this is the case in all the north. Lunch is usually a noodle-type thing (or maybe I should say "noodle dough -based"). Wonton in a mild poultry broth with a few chives thrown in are more common in Shanghai and that part of the eastern coast whereas in Chengdu, fat jiaozi (dumplings) stuffed with pork and jiucai (garlic chives), steamed and dipped in lajiao (chili flakes steeped in oil), or more delicate-skinned, pork only-filled dumplings served in a sauce of chili oil, soy, sugar, and ginger are favorites. Noodles are everywhere .... in Shanghai la mian ("pulled noodles") float in a slightly curryish broth speckled with chopped coriander. Thick, uneven noodles cut by hand from a loaf of dough into a boiling pot are preferred in Chendgu, in soup or fried. Cool noodles too, either with a peanut or sesame-based sauce or simply dressed with la jiao, sugar, soy, and ginger/garlic pounded together with a bit of water. More variations, too much to cover. Obviously folks eat regular dishes at lunch too, if they go to a restaurant, but your average office worker will run out to the local noodles shop for dumplings, noodles, or dim sum-y type things. For dinner, friends (mostly couple who both worked) would stir-fry at home one or two simple dishes --- pork with beans, pork with tomatoes, egg with tomatoes, anything along those lines --- and perhaps prepare a thin soup with greens floating in it. Even in "big city" Shanghai alot of pple still shop for dinner at lunchtime as they did 15 years ago. Workers will head back to offices with a bag or two of greens and put them under their desk, to avoid having to shop before or after what is often an hour or more commute home. Factory workers (not many of those in Shanghai anymore) and govt workers have a longer lunch break and usually go home. In Nanjing the library where I was doing research closed for 2 1/2 hours at lunchtime. Everyone went food shopping, then home for a meal and a nap. I'd like to, in a friendly way, counter a couple of CN's observations. I've also interviewed elderly people in China, but in the mid-central area. Diets have indeed changed and improved, at least for these folks, over the last 50 years. It was during the Great Leap Forward (late 50s) rather than the Cultural Revolution, that most of the deaths due to starvation occurred (Chinese govt has yet to acknowledge the extent of the disaster), and they occurred most heavily in the middle of the country. There were a few years where folks were not allowed to grow their own vegetables on small plots, and even when this restriction was loosened in some especially poor areas no money was available to buy seeds or fertilizer. So again --- great regional variation. And Shanghai is indeed China, the real China as much as anyplace else in the country (what exactly is the "real" China anyway?). And Shanghai food is purely Chinese food, as much as food in Liaoning or Sichuan. I myself prefer less touristed and, perhaps, less "cosmopolitan" parts of China to Shanghai, Beijing, etc. And I frankly prefer northerners and westerners to easterners and southerners. And I'll take Sichuan food over any food from any part of China anyday! But I had to laugh at CN's friend's description of the big cities as "China diluted for western minds and tongues". Chinese living outside the metroplises denigrade the metroplises all the time, just as ludicrously as Shanghainese and Beijingers, etc. denigrade the "country bumpkins" living in places like that which CN calls home. And folks from Jiangsu or Sichuan would probably suggest that folks in CN's neck of the woods are not as "Chinese" as they are bec. they have been "Koreanized". Anyway, Chinese love to argue. If not about food then about who's province or region is "better" than the other's. And overall I agree with CN's observation (why I started this longwinded post anyway) that Chinese food in China tastes nothing like Chinese food in restaurants elsewhere. The photographs in Ken Hom's Taste of China really convey the deciciously homey quality of what IMO is the best Chinese cooking ... in all its oily glory ('cept for Guangzhou food).
