One of the things I love about China is the street food. Whenever you need a little snack, you can usually find a vendor making homemade snacks for a very cheap price.  This pancake stall was near the fabric market.

These tiny pancakes are not sweet; can you see the green onions?

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grilled fish with tofu

Emily asked a great question, “Does it insult the hostess if you are not interested in trying one of the dishes?”

Short answer — Yes, of course. (I always have to deal with my own hurt when local friends turn up their noses at my carefully prepared casseroles or desserts. “Cheese is gross!” “This is too sweet!” or of a salad, “These vegetables are not cooked!”)

But it’s not quite that simple. There are some loopholes you can use.

In our family, we believe that overall, we should eat what is offered to us. (There is some wisdom in a very popular book to that effect.) But as we’ve lived here longer, learned the language and culture, we’ve learned acceptable ways to refuse things.

noodles with beef

One popular strategy in my family is to focus on what you LOVE while avoiding what you find gross. That is, keep saying over and over, “This vegetable is delicious! What’s it called? How is is cooked? What’s it good for?” (Everything is good for some body part, and they always know.) This is in contrast to saying, “EWWW!!! Goat blood vessels! How repulsive. I would NEVER eat that. We don’t eat that in America. We throw that away!”

It also seems that if at least one of us eats something, it’s okay. If we all refuse it, that is bad. Between the three of us, we are able to manage to have at least one representative to taste an odd food.

Recently I  ate ocean sand worms. Not bad actually, but I did force myself NOT to picture them in my mind or to look too closely at them. Just eat and keep on moving. Thinking is what gets you in trouble. I could look at the cook and give him some positive feedback, and no one seemed to notice that Sprite didn’t taste the worms.

Here are some of the odd things I’ve eaten in China:

• duck tongue (yes, they are awfully tiny)
• wild cat
• dog
• snake
• eel
• fungus
• pig stomach
• tiny frogs, whole
• rabbit
• pig tongue

eggplant

I need to explain an eating custom in China. It’s a sign of care and hospitality for people to serve you. That is, they use their own chopsticks to select a choice bit and put it into your bowl. Uninvited, unasked. They just do it. And it’s a sign of being polite to serve others in this way. That’s when it gets tricky. What your friend is selecting for you is surely in her mind the best thing on the table. But all you can think is, “Ugh, not more boiled eel!” So you either leave it in the bowl, or choke it down,  or as a last resort use the “oops chopsticks” strategy.

I’ve also discovered that once people truly get to know you and realize that you do appreciate Chinese food, they are more accepting of your personal tastes. I think that if we complained about most of the dishes and hated everything, they would not be as willing to accommodate us. In fact, they would be offended. Most Chinese people take pride in their cuisine, so to reject their food is akin to rejecting them.

And Sam I Am is right. If you try it, you may like it. I’ve become a huge fan of tofu since living in China. It’s not simply because it’s so much better here (although it is). It’s also because I’ve consistently eaten it over many years. Over time, I truly did grow to love it. Now I actually crave tofu and order it at restaurants.

Now you can chime in with your sympathies or your own adventures in eating.  And to comfort some of you who think, “I could never eat some of those things!” just remember that people all over the globe generally like to stick with familiar foods. It’s not really that Chinese people are more adventurous with their foods. These foods are common for them, so they enjoy them. When I offer them something radically different from their usual fare (say pizza or a chicken casserole or a very rich dessert), they tend to merely tolerate it just like I do with the duck tongues. So be comforted that those of us who are adventurous in eating — and I do consider myself one –are in the minority.

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Yeah, don’t you feel sorry for me? I’m just suffering here in China with nothing decent to eat. (That’s sarcasm.)

Scenes from a simple meal at the home of friends. They are from a coastal city, so seafood features prominently.

A pickled turnip dish. Yummy!

Cilantro, jellyfish, and mushrooms are the main ingredients in this very tasty salad.

Amazingly, I didn’t even like seafood until I moved to China. That’s when I started to eat fresh seafood, cooked well. Then I discovered how wonderful it is.

Do you like fish and seafood? Would you try the jellyfish salad or just stick with the crispy fried fish?

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You may think that mashed potatoes are distinctly American. Surprise! Chinese people eat them too, albeit in a much dressed up form. Usually, they are mashed with bits of garlic and pork or ham.

This ultra-fancy dish in the photo has ham, green onions, and carrots mixed into the potatoes. There’s also a savory sauce and chopped carrots and cucumbers poured over the shaped mound.

Don’t you love the fresh lotus petals? Too pretty to eat. (But of course, we did!) It was delicious!

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The last time I bought a chicken at the supermarket I wasn’t very observant and made a big mistake.

It was whole — head, feet, you know, a WHOLE chicken — hanging by its neck on a hook in the meat department. I took it down (yes, you have to touch the thing with your bare hands), put it in a bag with its legs hanging out because the bags are always too small, and had it weighed.

When I washed it to put on to boil for chicken and dumplings, I thought, “Hmmm.. this chicken looks odd. What is odd about it?” Then I realized that it had not been gutted. Groan! It still had all the innards. It was plucked and dead, but that’s as far as it had gone.

I couldn’t throw it away. So I decided to steel myself and think of the pioneers (shoot, just think of my own grandmother!).  It was gross, gross, gross, but I cleaned that chicken. And the dumplings turned out good.

Several weeks went by after that without my buying a chicken. (The memory of the guts probably did something for my appetite for chicken meat.) But Sprite has been sick, and  I wanted to make her some chicken soup.

I found two chickens because Chinese chickens are tiny, and it takes two of them to get a good amount of meat. (By the way, the entire supermarket – biggest in our city — had only THREE total.)

I was “smart” this time. I asked, “Do these have the guts inside?” Yes, was the answer. “Can you clean them for me? I want these two. And I don’t want the head or the feet. I know I have to pay for them. But throw them away.” The man agreed. I didn’t want to wait, so I went on to the veggie department and told him I’d be back later for the chickens.

When I passed by to get my chickens, the bag did not look like a bag with two chickens in it. It was a big blob. The meat man had not only gutted them but also chopped them up into TINY pieces. Raw, tiny, practically bite-size pieces of chicken, chicken skin, chicken fat. What a disgusting mess. I told him, “I didn’t ask you to chop it up!” He just laughed at me.

So I paid for it, brought it home, washed it, and put it all into the crockpot. It was quite bit harder to debone, and there were lots of tiny bone particles, but at least I didn’t have to gut two chickens.  Sigh.

Live and learn. Next time I’ll be even MORE specific or stand and watch my chickens being prepared.

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One of our favorite things to eat in China is “shao kao” — grilled foods usually sold by outdoor vendors. If it can be skewered onto a bamboo stick, then it can be served as shao kao! Tofu, meats, and vegetables are all grilled. Here a whole eggplant is being prepared. It will be cut and served on a dish instead of on a skewer.

The foods are sprinkled liberally with hot pepper, cumin, sesame seeds, and other spices for a mouthwatering punch! The shao kao vendors most often set up at nightfall and arrange small tables and chairs around their grill so groups can come eat a late dinner. But daytime grills can also be found  selling a few skewers at a time that can be snacked on as people stroll about.

As would be expected, Chinese friends often ask me about foods and eating habits in America. They are surprised that we usually grill at home in our backyards. They are also surprised to learn that there are no (okay, few) street vendors.  But then I get to explain drive through restaurants to them. I think that’s the closest equivalent to a street vendor. With both, you pick up a quick, cheap snack on the go. But I have to think that grilled tofu on a stick is healthier than a bag of french fries, even despite the hygiene risks of the street stalls.

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I do remember being taught that tomatoes are a fruit. And in China, cherry tomatoes are sold at the fruit stand along with bananas and apples. The fruit tray you eat at the end of your meal in a fancy restaurant has cherry tomatoes on it. And peeled, quartered tomatoes are sprinkled with sugar before being served. So I guess it’s logical and consistent. But it still felt odd, so I bought a pack to show you!

They taste sweet, just sweet, not like tomatoes at all. But if you meditate on the tomato image on the package, you can just barely imagine a hint of tomato flavor.

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Traditionally in China, the time from noon to two PM is a break time.  In Chinese it’s called (literally) “noon rest.” That time includes both eating lunch and taking a nap. It used to be that most every office closed totally for that two hours, but things are changing. Now banks remain open through the “rest time”. But we’ve learned not to expect the same service during “noon rest” that you would get earlier or later in the day. The few employees at work at that time are apt to be cranky. And although the business is open, it is very likely that the particular individual who you need to help you is not at work but is, in fact, having a rest. So we’ve learned that for the most part, getting things done needs to be done before or after “noon rest.”

Street vendors like this lady don’t have the luxury of closing shop. She’ll eat right beside her wares (slippers) and possibly doze a bit seated upright.

This picture is part of my 100 Strangers Project.

Just like anywhere, workers like to grab a quick meal during their “noon rest.” These are some ready made dishes, just waiting for the noon rush.

It’s something akin to the “blue plate special.” You can get a bole of rice and three vegetable choices for a set price.

Often these types of lunch deals are set up in ugly metal serving trays, cafeteria style. I think the blue and white plates make it look much more attractive!

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This is a repost from two posts in April 2007 on my former blog. This topic is so fascinating that I even created a lens all about the Chinese Wet Market.  It’s something of a virtual field trip to buy vegetables and meat along with me at my neighborhood market. The photos there are all newly taken.

After you get used to shopping an an open air market (literally vegetable market in Chinese), you are never satisfied with supermarket produce again. Why?  It’s cheap and fresh!

This is pumpkin here in the front. The shape is different, but the flavor is the same.

In this picture above you can see how the vegetables are weighed to calculate the price. There is a weight that is suspended from the wooden pole. Wherever the weight balances along the pole indicates how many jin the veggies weigh. The pole has notches on it to signify one, two, three jin, etc.  A jin is also called a catty in English.  But I’ve never heard anyone use that word. I’ve only seen it written in various literature.  It’s approximately one pound or half a kilogram.

Warning — those with a weak stomach may be troubled by the next section of pictures.  For those of us who live here in China, these images are normal, daily scenes.  But if you find meat disgusting, please select another entry to read here at my blog.

Here are the meat stalls.

Selecting meat with a daughter’s help.

A friendly meat vendor.

Yes, every stall has bare light bulbs hanging at head height.  It’s hard to see the faces of the vendors, but you can see the meat.  (That’s important!)

You can see that in a market, there are multiple meat vendors.  These stalls all sell pork.  Beef is fairly rare.  In fact, I’ve never seen it at the two markets I frequent.

I’ll bet you’ve never seen a toddler this close to a butcher knife! 
Safety means something totally different here in China.

Continuing our tour of the open market…..

Besides meat and vegetables, there are many other things we can buy at the market.

These are blood cubes. I believe one is from chicken and one is from pig, but I’m not totally sure about that. I’ve never bought it. I have eaten blood before.  But I didn’t like it. It’s not something that I ask for.

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I saw a new snack being sold from streetside vendors — potato chips on a stick. Aren’t they fun? Only about 25 cents for a stick. We were considering trying it when we realized that you get your choice of toppings.

You can have the spicy coating (the red powder).

Or your choice of strawberry, blueberry or lemon gel. Yeah, hard to choose, huh? One boy had a rainbow stick — he got a bit of each flavor.

After we saw the toppings, for some reason we just didn’t want to buy one anymore. Not too hungry.

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