23. 八宝饭 (bā bǎo fàn)
八宝 (bā bǎo) is an expression you quickly get used to seeing and hearing in China. It literally means ‘eight treasures’ and is applied to all sorts of things, especially foods. Eight treasure congee may or may not contain exactly eight ingredients. Neither might eight treasure soup or eight treasure picked vegetables or eight treasure tea. It generally just means a selection of ingredients. Eight is just their favourite lucky number.
I first met today’s offering in a Miao peasant farmer’s home in the middle of nowhere in the Guangxi countryside. I’ll never forget it.
Basically it was (is) a dessert dish of glutinous rice flavoured with unrefined cane sugar, peanuts, lotus seeds, sesame seeds, fox nuts, wolfberry (goji), jujubes etc. It is a favourite at the luni-solar New Year festivities.
It certainly reinforced in my mind that glutinous rice is often called sticky rice. This was like eating mouthfuls of superglue. I couldn’t get my mouth open and could feel the rice lying on my stomach wall for hours after I ingested it.
It is usually home-made, but occasionally can be bought pre-cooked in the market. Bundles can be seen in my picture.
You may take it that this is not a recommendation – unless you have a crush on your orthodontist.
