chaste_nosferatu

Good points being added by all. I especially agree with you, Ed on the adaptability of Chinese cuisine. Though sometimes I think it gets too far afield to still be "Chinese". Mags, yogurt is almost a staple with the kids I teach, they drink it, the yogurt here is not the thick creamy spoon-needing kind. It is consumed in almost as great a quantity by the kids as the soy milk and there are tons of varieties and brands. I'd like to pass along an interesting social phenomenon I have been recording. Teaching at various primary schools in this one city I have noticed a huge difference in development of the children. Kids of the same age and sex can vary as much as ten inches and twenty pounds from one school to the next. The school districts are strictly by neighborhood. And the neighborhoods are usually very homogenous in terms of the residents' per capita income. The schools that are composed of wealthier children are noticeably larger than those from poor neighborhoods. I have never seen it so graphicly represented how diets can alter the phenotype in real life.

Cheese and butter when on the off chance I find them in a supermarket here I clean the shelf. And people relish your avocados, they have NONE. Upon our return stateside there will be serious damage done to any mexican food that crosses my path. Tonkichi-- Sounds like you were on a "Chinese Tour"... we can commiserate horror stories some time. That's the food I am talking about, it is what the Chinese eat. A "Westerner's Tour" would have been different, experienced one of those for a day in Guilin. Still working on the fermented rice recipes...

My friends' wives use the seeds, not as food, but as a facial treatment. They grind the seeds into powder and then make a masque for their faces, it bleaches them. Here in China, the whiter the face, the better. They were amused when asked if they were a food item, at least around here (NE China) doesn't seem they are.

Pan, in this particular area the Manchus do slightly outnumber the Han but given the political realities of being a minority most Manchu will claim Han status publicly while privately acknowledging that they are of Manchu descent. Jinmyo, still working on the fermented rice recipes. Drew a blank with my immediate friends so they networking and promised to do their best. As for MSG, think of it as salt. That's how they use it. If you or I would add salt to a dish while cooking, they would add MSG. At home or at a restaurant the usage is the same. From my observations a dish that would constitute about two servings (western sized servings mind you) they add about half a tablespoon. On the meat kabobs they sprinkle it on just like it is salt. At the supermarkets the aisle for MSG is about 15 feet long, seven feet tall and packed with about 30 different brands and multiple sized quantities. It is everywhere, in everything that is cooked. Herbicidal, the food is heavy. Very oily and really, by what my palatte is accustomed to, bland. Not all but the common foods that everyone eats a lot of. What do you want to know? I don't want to just spout off indescriminately and tell anyone things they already know.

The best two I have ever seen, B.F. Goodribs-- Colorado Springs, CO USA now defunct, it's some Thai dive now. Something Different-- Indianapolis, IN USA. Awesome, awesome food.$$$$$

Wooden citrus reamer, susi garlic press, and my Swedish surgical stainless steel skinning axe.

And if your banquet is being held in China, one must not forget the obligatory smoking break at about mid-meal.

I remember an economics history class in which the prof. stated this whole thing was started by Sears and Roebuck in their catalog heyday as a way to collect the tax on whole dollar amounts as that was how the taxes were calculated but then got to keep the two pennies from every item ordered. For the visual learners in our midst it went as follows... item cost 1.98 5% tax, taxed at two dollars would make the total 2.10 (they were on an ordered schedule) sears paid the ten cents to Uncle Sam leaving 2.00 they kept two cents of every order tax free.

It doesn't happen here in China, even at MickeyD's and KFC. Whole units only.

Like Patton said, "If everyone is thinking alike, then, someone's not thinking." It's pack mentality FatGuy, everyone else is doing it so it must be right. Or perhaps, just maybe it's all a part of an intricate conspiracy just to needle and bemuse you.

Kim you may or may not be surprised to find out that in the southern regions of China the noodles they make are made from rice. When we ventured down south around new years even the Chinese who were with us were caught off guard by this obscure fact. I am glad that the soups you had were not of the ilk I have been sampling up north here, or in Guiling and Hainan. You're lucky.

Jon, for breakfast here the most common items sold on the street are these big flatbreads they cook in heavy oil and then eat with hot soy milk. Also they have flakey cakes about the size of "moon cakes" filled with fruits like lychee and pineapple though not very sweet, they taste heavily of baking soda. IN hotels and restaurants breakfast is usually some gruel, very very watery stuff with a few pieces of rice in it, absolutely NO flavor to this. I am told there is nothing different between northern cuisine and manchu food primarily due to the fact the manchus ruled China and spread their influence in broad strokes. The popularity for KFC is because they serve chicken and the chinese relate to eating chicken. But Mickey D's and their chopped meat patties are repulsive, the children love it but the adults who were raised on an almost exclusively veggie diet find it gross. Even when they would eat beef it certainly hadn't been ground and pressed, its too foreign, kinda like me and eating silk worm larvae, which I think taste of nothing but my wife says they taste like over-cooked bacon. Pizza hut is here too, but they are sooooo over-priced only the wealthy eat there and even then once in a blue moon. And personally the local interpretations of pizza are better, go figure? Very strong Korean influence, lots of dog. The stereotype of the koreans eating dog is unfair because the chinese have been eating it in the northeast right along with them for centuries too. They only eat the large breeds as the small ones are fabled to have saved an emperor's life once and thus are forbidden to eat. Besides they're scrawny . The restaurants will kill and skin them and then hang the carcass outside to advertise how fresh the meat is at their establishment, it's surreal. Surprisingly we do have a strong muslim influence from Xinjiang here, in food their most notable contribution in this area is the lamb skewers sold on the street, they are to die for. They season them with caraway seed, cumin, little red pepper, msg and salt, if you ask. I cannot help myself when I am out and that smell of the lamb fat burning on the coals hits me, it is the siren's song. Which made me recall my very first impression of the food here- it is lacking in salt. Everywhere I go I have to have some yan (salt) brought along because they salt nothing. That was the first thing I noticed and all our other foreign teachers did as well. Not just americans mind you, south africans, brits, italians, and aussies all had the same comment... where's the salt? And then there is mi jiu...

The soups with noodles here are not classified as soup by the Chinese, they call them noodles, broth notwithstanding. The soups in Hong Kong, Macau and Shanghai are very westernized from what my Chinese friends tell me. The soups in the north where I am and in Guilin and Hainan are all very bland and lack in spices whatsoever. My chinese friends tell me that it is not traditional to put more than the vegetables and meat if there is any into a soup. All I know is what they tell me and what I've tasted.

Yikes! Sorry if I came off as rude and condescending, that was most definitely not my intention. Perhaps its my job as an English teacher rubbing off into all my writing, sorry for offending any and all. I re-read the post and I completely agree I sound like quite an ass and I am sorry it was not intentional. I spend most of my time online duking it out with other teachers on Dave's ESL cafe and I think I should have taken a breather before coming over here and posting. Please accept my apology. I guess it takes more than a smiley face on the post eh? Jon Tseng-- My wife and I are in Northeastern China about 100 km NW of the North Korean border, Liaoning Province, Anshan is the name of the city it is 2 hours south of Shenyang. So by the nature of where I am the info I can provide by and large will be restricted to the tastes of Northern chinese with the vast majority here being of Manchu descent. Jinmyo-- the area I live in the people cook with red fermented dof and green fermented dof. I haven't seen or heard of it as yet but will ask around. Fat Guy-- every Chinese person I have asked here knows nothing of a General Tso and have never heard of the dish we know in the states as Gen. Tso's chicken even when I made it for them they professed ignorance and consulted with friends and family and all came up blank. As to your point about the cuisine changing my chinese friends and co-workers tell me that is not true. Yes, people starved during the Cultural Revolution but it was due to a lack of rice and wheat, the other foods are and have always been grown by yourself for yourself- veggies, fruits... One of my research projects here has been interviewing Chinese veterans of the Korean War and when I asked them about their diet they said it was no different than when they were children until now, the last six years it has changed. These are 80 and 90 year old men and they are quite sure of it. Recently they have begun to eat more meat whereas before they were too poor and relied heavily on family gardens for their vegetables which were the bulk of their diet. Prior to this meat was eaten maybe once a week. Funcook-- there are no fortune cookies to be had in restaurants here. In fact the desserts the Chinese have when they rarely do eat dessert consist of fresh fruits. Actually the only truly healthy aspect of the common Chinese diet as it is here. Beverly-- the quality of the produce is a real crap shoot at best. It never seems to become an issue with most Chinese as they do daily grocery shopping for that evening's meal. When we go shopping they all stare as it looks like we are anticipating a typhoon to hit and we're stocking up. The meat is scarey. The butcher section of a supermarket is not refrigerated and the slabs of meat are very fatty and in the summer it smells of sweet sickening rot. They way they butcher meat is VERY different. Steaks as we know it do not exist, the beef is usually sliced on a Hobart and then grilled. Our favorite restaurants here are the Korean b-b-q's, there is because of where we are a large Korean population. Back to the quality, most fruits will last a few days if refrigerated but veggies are mold or fungus covered in 36-48 hours no matter what. The meat we buy we freeze immediately and defrost the day we cook it. Confusion-- where we live lunch usually is Korean barbecue or a large bowl of noodles with a few pieces of chipped re-hydrated beef or yak. The korean bbq is awesome. They bring out plates of seasoned thinly sliced beef that looks and tastes like Kobe and you grill it yourself over red hot coals at the table. Or you can get chicken feet, chicken knuckles, dog (a very expensive delicacy), organ meat, sheep kidneys are very popular, potatoes, sweet potatoes, lots of pork and carp is a very common food. Where we are near the sea we also get served a lot of squid and octopus. The people with the money when they indulge themselves and eat the western food of choice it is, brace yourself, Kentucky Fried Chicken. KFC is Ruth's Chris Steakhouse to them. If I was in China to make money I would open up as many of these darn franchises I could, they are packed day and night, breakfast, lunch and dinner. Also locally everyone makes their own pickled chinese cabbage, pickled garlic(incredibly awesome and have a recipe if anyone wants), and big huge spring onions are dried out on window ledges all winter along with stockpiling turnips for winter. Lots of cilantro and coriander seed in the cuisine here, that is the major feature spice-wise in our region. And almost forgot, beer, lots of beer at lunch, hey its a two hour lunch break so why not? Dinner here is dumplings if it is anything. And there are so many different kinds, beef, veggie, pork, dog, lamb, but donkey is the all around favorite stuffing for the dumplings in NE China. And honestly they are delicious, a lot easier to stomach than the fried Silkworm larvae and chrysalis or the fermented eggs. The poster who said their recollection of chinese food being greasy and heavy was right on the money. If its cooked in oil it IS COOKED IN OIL. But they have lots of what they call "cool dishes" which are very good, I'd call them salads and there are as many different varieties as there are restaurants and man are there a LOT of restaurants. One thing of note, when we have toured and stayed in the "chinese only hotels" it is very different from both what they make at home and what they make for westerners. Living is quite different from touring and has been very enlightening I only wished to share what I have seen and learned for not everyone is as lucky and blessed as I have been to come and live here away from Shanghai, Canton, Hong Kong and Beijing which are very westernized and all my chinese friends will tell you it is not China, it is something of a melting pot or as they put it "it is China diluted for western minds and tongues".

Folks I have been cruising through this forum and I am struck by one thought, you are by and large discussing American Chinese food. My wife and I are living in China and rather than spend the next eight hours replying to posts trying to enlighten a few posters I have started this thread for one purpose. If anyone wants to know about real honest to God authentic Chinese food as it is made in China ASK ME. I will tell you and if I don't know the answer I will find it for you as some of my close friends here (guanxi baby!!) are traditionally trained chefs born and bred in the PRC. I am not the expert but I will translate for you what they say and give you this westerners take on the culinary landscape. So let 'er rip people...

Folks I hate to do this to you but all this raving about Chinese soup is STRICTLY a western invention. I am living in China and have travelled throught a broad stretch and I must tell you soup in China is something of an enigma. It amounts to hot water with something dead in it. They add no seasonings and nothing to thicken it, it has been quite a shock to yours truly as well. At people's homes or in the nicest restaurants it matters not, Chinese soup is a non-event. Don't believe the hype.

My grandpa would keep Blatz in his fridge for when guests were by he was trying to get rid of... I remember it smelled like a wet dog we used to call it "Kennels". I got all nostalgic reading through, in high school we would drink Schaeffers because it was actually cheaper than coke or pepsi, less than 25 cents for a 12oz can and this was 1986 in Colorado Springs... my best friend was into Little King's... I found some years later and marvelled at the crap I once consumed with so much gusto.