I'm currently traveling in China with my buddy Robin Goodfellow (in the picture below).
I've been here a few days now and I thought I'd share some of the things that have struck me so far as interesting. I'm also sure that I'll come off as horribly naive in parts of this post, but I don't really care. I'm being totally honest.
Oh, and also, I'm saying "China" meaning really Wuhan. I'm sure things are different in other parts of China, but I'm not sure which things. I'm going to make this post about the food. I think food is one of the most widespread ways of sharing culture that we have in the world, and since we all eat several times a day, it's one of our most direct ways of experienceing other cultures.
The Food
First thing about the food, and I know this sounds obvious but, what you can order in a Chinese restaurant in the United States is pretty much completely different from what you can order here. I'm told that in Beijing and other cities with a lot of American travelers that there are restaurants that actually cater to "American Chinese," but in a real Chinese restaurant you will not find any Moo Shu or General Tso's or whatever you're used to in the US.
Another strange thing about the food here is that it seems like every place we go has the same menu, or at least it is all pretty similar. The only differences have been when we went to a Thai and a Korean restaurant. The restaurants here have menus with pictures in them for the most part, so you don't have to know Mandarin to be able to order.
My first night in Wuhan, Leo, the sales lead for the Gemini office in Beijing, took us out to dinner at a very nice restaurant. I think he was trying to see what he could get me to eat. It was my first time eating almost everything at the table including Snake, Bullfrog, Sea Turtle, and Chinese Lake Crab. All of it was interesting, and most of it tasted pretty good. One thing that I think is interesting is that food in China is less "prepared." What I mean by that is that the food takes more work to eat when you get it, and if it is meat, it is more likely to resemble the animal you're eating. They do not serve chicken without the bones, and the turtle they served me came as a whole turtle. Here is a picture of the some of the dishes once they arrived at the table.
Leo also ordered this fun dish called "sprinkle soup." If you look at the picture, you can see that the soup actually has ice cream sprinkles in it. The soup itself is very sweet, and it is served as a dessert soup.
The last thing about that meal, I have to share this funny moment when I pointed my chopsticks at this and I asked "what is this?".
I was about to eat a hand towel.
The last point I guess I want to make about the food is that there is basically no dairy industry in China. According to this website, "China's per capita consumption of dairy products is only 13 kilograms a year, much lower than the average 300 kilograms reported in the developed countries and the world average of 100 kilograms." About all the dairy products I've had here have been imported. I took a picture of the labels from the hotel's continental breakfast.
Butter from New Zealand, Marmalade from the UK, and local sugar. They also aren't consistant in how they serve milk. Normally they do bring milk when I order coffee, but sometimes it's hot, sometimes, it's cold and sometimes it seems to be room temperature. Also, the milk is all whole milk. No skim milk here. There are more pictures of my trip posted on my flickr account. Also, check out my posting from earlier today of Leon playing a Chinese Drinking Game.
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