[Beijing] Street Markets

After finishing breakfast, we walked further down. It turns out to be one long market street. There are all manner of fresh produce, fresh seafood, meats, vegetables, and more food stands. This single street contains more variety than your local Super Wal-mart, and then some more.

I think it's simply excellent because all things of produce varieties there are brought in fresh every morning, probably no more than hours since picking time. Every thing has such color and freshness to it that you can't find in the fast-food, flash-frozen supermarkets in the States that have been slowly dying in large produce trucks for days before they get to your local Wal-mart.

Speaking of which, you can look forward to a post covering a Wal-mart in Beijing later.

[Beijing] More Breakfast Curiosities

Other foods served at this breakfast stand include tofu soup (fondly referred to as "tofu brains" for its consistency)


-- and Tea Leaf Eggs, which are hard-boiled eggs named as such because tea leaves are a major ingredient in the brew in which they're steeped and marinated. Other spices that are also used include cinnamon sticks, star anise, cloves and orange peel, along with a little soy sauce and some salt. Mum says the recipe is also frequently known as "Five Spice Tea Leaf Eggs". But I only listed four of the spices because I don't know the English term for the fifth spice...


(My mother makes them at home, too. They are wonderfully tasty.)

It was a restaurant of small but not uncommon size. There were about 4-6 small tables inside and one table outside, all of which seat four people each. If you're not getting your food on the go, your food will be brought to your table once you order at the front. In small or private restaurants like this, what food goes to what table is usually just memorized by those who take the orders. And if course, if all else fails and they forget, a loud call of, "Four grease rods and a tofu brain!" is all that's needed. Sometimes I think yelling is the main form of verbal communication in China anyway.

We ordered a bowl of tofu brains each and a tray (that is likely never washed) of three grease rods. My father walked over to the bao zi maker next door and also bought some of those, some with meat and some with vegetables. Then they hand you some hot sauce in a tiny saucer (that's usually shared communally) and a stack of thin napkin squares, and you have at it.

"Tofu brain" is mainly just a thick, brothy sort of soup with one big slab of fragile soft tofu that you stir up into little chunks when you get it. The tofu is so soft and the soup is so thick that they usually taste like a similar consistency. Most kinds of tofu themselves don't actually have a taste at all. Tofu is a food that is used more for its texture, and the taste of it depends heavily on the other stuff in which it's cooked. This tofu brain soup had all sorts of seasoning and some garnish cilantro in it. Thick but definitely slurpable (of which most people take advantage with no shame). I suppose it's similar to "hot and sour soup" you might find in a Chinese restaurant in America, but with less of the sour, and more towards a salty flavor. A small scoop or two or three of spicy sauce, depending on personal preference, goes excellently with it.

As I've mentioned them before, a bao zi is just a stuffed bun. Both the bao zi and the western dinner roll are made of mostly the same stuff, but the difference is that dinner rolls are baked, whereas bao zi are steamed. Bao zi are springy but much less spongy than dinner rolls. The dough is also a consistent white throughout, unlike the dinner roll that has a brown outer shell. A bao zi with no filling is called a Man Tou (mahn tow), which means, "full/filled head." So it's even more like a dinner roll. They're a little easier to make since they require no additional recipe for a filling, but bao zi are still usually much more popular.

[Beijing] Deep Fried

The second stand sold primarily fried foods.


Not exactly fries and burgers. (Above) The two trays at the bottom are stuffed pastries. They're usually filled with some kind of ground meat and/or vegetable mix. Sitting in the strainer next to the giant wok at the back of the picture are things called You Tiao (yo tyaw).

Literally translated, this means "grease rod". Note this as a prime example of things that sound much more appetizing in native Chinese than in the corresponding English translation.

One of the cooks is frying a you tiao in the wok itself. She's turning it on all sides with a pair of chopsticks in her right hand that are made especially long for deep frying uses. Her left hand is sitting on a dirty shoe box with leaf-piles of money in it -- the cash register.

The you tiao is nothing but two wads of dough that are rolled out into two long, flimsy rods. They're lightly twisted and stuck together, then put straight into the boiling vegetable oil in the giant wok. Several of these are slid in at the same time, so the cook performs a sort of assembly line and puts more in as the earlier ones get done. They're rolled around until the entire you tiao becomes a medium golden-brown, which probably only takes around a minute. The grease strained off from the batches is collected and invariably reused. It's easily recyclable for cooking, and most people actually like the stronger flavor when they're cooked in oil that has been used before.

Taste? Once it's fried, the you tiao can be big but is rather hollow inside. Essentially, it's just another kind of bread, and it tastes like a dinner roll, only.... it's long, somewhat chewier, definitely greasier and definitely more moist. It fills me up more quickly than dinner rolls do, at least. In a nutshell, it's just a deep-fried wad of dough, stretched out a little. Sounds incredibly unhealthy. But in fact, much like bao zi, everyone in China knows what a you tiao is, and they are definitely not an uncommon food on the streets.

(So the question is, how can they all have foods like this in their cuisine and still be tiny??)

[Beijing] Breakfast of Ch... inamen

We moved onward down the street until we came to an alley-like marketplace nearby. In addition to exploring around, we were also looking for breakfast. But of course, finding breakfast in a big city in China can hardly be considered a problem.

We walked down this street nearly every day that we were in Beijing, since it extends for several blocks of solely produce and cooked food. Many vendors have their stands completely set up and ready with tiers of produce on the sidewalk by about 6:00 AM. Some are family-owned, and you can see little kids running around, crying, or playing in their parents' shop fronts. Some stands sell produce only, some sell cooked foods only, but many provide both services. On streets like this, cooked food is more or less always made for you hot. Food stands are usually run by anywhere from two to six people (depending on the size of the business) who are all kneading dough/baking/frying/serving/boiling at a constant rate, with one or two of them in charge who also participate in the cooking but take care of the currency exchange up front.

There were two little stands next to each other not too far down this road. The first one sold... bao zi (see? They are everywhere). It had two big steamers on a cart out in front and a tiny little kitchen area in the building right behind it. The cart had two steamer wells. In case you don't know how Chinese steamers work, here are the basics. It's really quite clever. You have a large reservoir of boiling water at the bottom (in this case, in the cart's large wells). On top of it, you stack circular racks that are traditionally made of woven bamboo. When the racks are stacked and you put the woven-bamboo lid on your "tower", it traps in the heat like a big vertical oven and cooks your bao zi. However, the bamboo inside the racks is woven loosely enough that enough steam will escape to prevent your bao zi from just quickly becoming soggy wads. Also, the entire steamer is round in order to ensure evenness and consistency when it's cooking.

This is all a very clever idea because the steam will always travel upward, efficiently making use of just one stovetop to cook many, many servings of food. Steamers with very large circumferences sometimes have at least 3 or 4 layers stacked. For smaller steamers that have the circumference of a medium-sized round dinner plate, I've seen stacks about 10-15 racks high. Restaurants will also often use two steamers, not always just because you can cook more at the same time, but because you can swap racks at the top with less heat down to the bottom with those that are closer to the heat source. Having two steamers lets you move top racks immediately to a hotter steamer with losing only minimal heat if you keep one steamer less burdened than the other.

[Beijing] Just For Kicks... Feathery Ones

Having arrived only the day before, and consequently feeling relatively fresh (which did not last long comparatively to the rest of the trip), we woke up early and went on a grand little adventure to explore the nearby streets and neighborhoods around our hotel. We were also taking advantage of the early time to beat most of the swarming morning rush. The rush, that is, that swarms continuously (relentlessly, mercilessly) all day long and doesn't stop until much in the evening.

Just a block or two down, we passed an old man playing with a Chinese hackey sack, known as the Jianzi (JYEN dzeh). Rather, he was doing it for exercise, as he told us he did every morning as part of his daily routine. My mother had explained them to me when I was much younger, but they are very hard to explain if you've never seen one... (hence the link above). I was instantly fascinated with it, especially since at first glance if there's one sitting there, it usually doesn't look... "hackey-sack-able"... at all.

Here's the breakdown of a Chinese hackey-sack. To put it in a nutshell, it's basically just:

1) A weighted base (though merely a few ounces)
2) Feathers attached to stabilize aforementioned base

The base is made of a piece of rubber that's flat on the bottom and has another small, hollow tube of rubber sticking out of its middle. To get an idea of that shape, think of a quarter with a cut-off cigarette butt glued on its end to the center of the coin. So far so good? Great. Around this hollow tube part are several washers made of metal -- for weight. (Personally, I like them best because they cause the hackey-sack to make a nice "chink" noise every time you kick it, like barely tossing up a small stack of coins and catching it again). The rest after that is just sticking and fastening feathers of whatever size, shape, or color are preferred into the tube part.

So now you get to see some photos of this guy in action. And note, if you will... this man is at least in his 60's.








We found some of these big ones in a market in Beijing. I got three of them and precariously carried them by hand in a bag so the feathers wouldn't get crushed. They're sturdy, but the feathers are brittle enough to be bent or snapped at the shafts. I brought them ever so carefully all the way to Shanghai!... only to lose them in the taxi from the airport when we left. Unfortunate. But then again, we made up for it when we bought 11 ones of the smaller variety in the Shanghai markets. (As a side note, the big 4-feathered ones could only be found in Beijing. In Shanghai they only make the smaller tufted ones, which is why I had been disappointed when I lost the big ones).

[Beijing] Seventy-Elevenses

And down the street from Jade Garden is...


The pictures don't really need much explanation, I suppose.



















Well. Except maybe these:


They also have other manners of little Chinese-exclusive munchies at their 7-Elevens. In the bins you see above, it's mostly small pickled or boiled goods that can be kept out for a while as long as they're kept in water or some kind of broth. And I told you that Bao Zi really are everywhere in China, as you can see from Exhibit B above.

[Beijing] First Night

After we got settled in the hotel, the second cousin (look, I'm really sorry... but I was never told what her name was. For most of your elders in China that you don't know, you're just told to call them by their "title" relation to you, e.g. generic "auntie", generic "uncle", etc.) took us to dinner at a restaurant nearby called Jade Garden, which was a somewhat higher-end restaurant.

Instead of going off for a while to let you take time for a look at the menu, the server stands there from the moment you're seated and takes your order as you're looking at the menu. And you can ask him about virtually anything. The servers somehow know the menus so well that it often seems like any of them are put on chef duty whenever the restaurant needs it. They're frequently much more honest than servers in America. This is tasty but kind of salty, this takes longer to make, this isn't very popular, we even got one restaurant where they came back after we had ordered and told us to pick a replacement alternate for one of our dishes, because their recent shipment of one vegetable used in the dish had been found to be a little stringier than usual.

There were also men and women in suits and earbuds all over the restaurant. They're put there to ensure faster communication between the outer restaurant and the kitchen, but you'd think the FBI was either watching you eat or failing to subtly infiltrate a suspected criminal location. Right. But it's really not so bad, and the food was very good, of course.








Above: So what are these?
1. the famous Beijing Duck
2. "Bao Zi" (BAW dzeh) - meat pastries that come in different types and sizes, and are eaten everywhere in China. There's no good Chinese who doesn't know what a Bao Zi is. Really well made Bao Zi are known and valued for having a puddle of broth inside, and that's exactly how these were. They were amazing.
3. Spicy fish head (it's cut down the middle and splayed out flat)

Usually at restaurants, you're given a clean plate to start with. All of the dishes are in the middle of the table, and the usual manner of going about the meal is that everyone just digs in, chopsticks and spoons. Maybe that sounds kind of messy if you're not used to it, but what people don't realize sometimes is that chopsticks are very versatile when they're used correctly, and they're nothing less than an extension of the fingers. In China, chopsticks and a spoon are always provided. It is rare to see forks and knives.

At nicer restaurants, your personal plate is usually changed out at least once for a fresh clean one when yours gets dirty or begins to pile up with discards (i.e. bones, shells, etc). Tea is usually poured for you, and you order it by the teapot (or in a few places, the tea is complimentary). Tea is basically served at any meal in a restaurant. You can ask for water in most places, if you really want it, but the truth is that they almost never serve water in restaurants as it's commonly done in the States. From our personal experience, you'll get one of two things if you ask for water:

1) A bottle of water, the kind you can buy in a grocery store
2) A really weird look, followed a few minutes later by a pitcher of water that is obviously unfiltered stuff straight from the faucet, in addition to the fact that it may or may not have ice in it. (Ice is also not served nearly as commonly).

If you'd like something cold besides the tea, it's typical to order a pitcher of fruit juice. Orange juice is common, though it's much sweeter and is not as tangy as it is in the U.S., for whatever reason. While we were there, we also had pear, watermelon, plum, and a several other juices.

Speaking of grocery stores a few lines back...

Feeding Your Face

You're not really visiting China if you go there and don't try out all the FOOD. And there is incredibly much of it, everywhere. Food is a big deal not simply as a basic need and enjoyment, but a very large social and economic factor. Sure, that's how it is all over the world, what's your point? But to say the least, it stuck out so prominently to me in China. In earlier decades, especially during harder times, people in China literally used to say, "Have you eaten yet?" as the standard greeting instead of "Hello/How are you?". It's not used so much in modern times now, but it's still a very frequent follow up of, "hello," especially if you're meeting up with friends and family or close acquaintances.

When we were in Shanghai, where my parents (who are both from Shanghai) still have a lot of friends and relatives, there wasn't a single time when we would meet up with any of them other than over lunch or the dinner table. I suppose this is fairly similar anyway to meeting up with a friend at a coffee shop, but it's usually on a much bigger scale in China, i.e. no coffee, unless you mean it with a whole meal, usually with anywhere from 6 to 20 dishes for us, depending on how many in the party. (Picture at right is from a dinner in Shanghai with many of my father's relatives. This doesn't even cover the final total number of dishes that were brought up! Um, as a random observation, I find it funny that the the whole left side of the table is drinking plum juice and the right side is drinking orange juice. Everyone poured their own drinks. Pure, strange coincidence...)

Another thing about China that the U.S. wouldn't be able to match in eons: sheer variety. Understandably, I never noticed this until I went on the trip. Compared to China, American grocery stores have seemingly no variety. Friends of my mother would ask, What did we eat in America? And they would always be surprised at the limited selection of produce that my mother would use in cooking. It's not to belittle the abundance and produce in America at all, but it is quite a shock to go through China and just see how many foods you couldn't even imagine getting in the States.

Firstly, half the streets of all the major cities in China are lined with produce markets. At least every morning, fresh produce is brought in. I don't know where they get it all or how, but typically, most of the green produce you find on the streets was probably harvested that morning. That's how fresh it is. Huge selections of leafy vegetables, melons, radishes, bamboo shoots, lettuces, chives, cilantro, celery, peanut and soybean oil that's groundright in front of you by demand, squashes, tomatoes, spinach, clovers, seasonings, spices, seeds, roots, mushrooms, fruits, berries, nuts, beans, rice... there is no way for me to successfully portray to you the sheer measure of all that is available to buy off the streets of China, because 1) there are countless sub-varieties of all the produce items, and 2) I don't know what in the world they're all called in English.

And that's only touching on plants. On the other side, almost remarkably equal in abundance, is meat. I use that as a generic term -- it covers red meat, white meat, dark meat, name-that-meat, seafood (so much seafood!), shellfish, and food-fleshes that I have no idea how to categorize (in what group does edible turtle fit?).

(right: An assortment of live aquatic food. See the little netted sacks? The red ones are holding some turtles and the green ones are holding live toads.) Walking down the street, you can see any of the following. As far as just fish go, there's bass, carp, bullheads, flounders, sturgeons, trout, salmon, "belt fish", butter fish, fishes from the rivers, fishes from the seas. And here's the thing: they're all kept alive. In fish tanks out on the sidewalks consisting simply of open-top styrofoam chests with bubbler tubes draped over the edged into the water. Most of these fish look like they were just hauled out of a river just a few miles away.

And other seafood? Clams, shrimps (both river and sea), oysters, crustaceans I can't name in English, lobsters, squid, sea cucumbers, snails, more things that I can't name in English (this is getting to a problem)...

(left: Whoot! FDA violations for the win!) And everything else? Well, beef, pork, and mutton are pretty ordinary, I guess. Chickens are ordinary, too..... but.... I don't think you buy chickens in America by selecting one out of several dozens in a cage and having it slaughtered in a bucket while you wait. More on that later... Finally, there's the slightly less "ordinary," which includes ducks, quails, turtles, frogs, toads, snakes, and more -- in most cases, all alive and breathing.

All of the above is raw produce or otherwise unprepared grocery goods that you can find in China. Telling about all the foods that I personally tried myself is a whole different post.

(So what do you call something that
has four legs, no skin, and has definitely... croaked?)

[Beijing] First Looks

(left) Here was the first toll gate we drove through in China. They certainly don't all look this extravagant, I suppose this one was some attempt at a good first impression for those who are just driving out of the airport exit.

In case you didn't know, Beijing is hosting the 2008 Olympic Games. Obviously, they're very proud, and there's Olympic souvenirs, gifts, clothing, and whatever that's sold everywhere.

So anyway, most of Beijing looks something like this (these are some apartment complexes):


And there are bits of modern or artistic architecture thrown around here and there.


And of course, always the occasional but ever-dependable Western remark here and there.


Through some fortunate pre-booked circumstances, our hotel in Beijing was a five-star called Jade Palace. That was the nicest place at which we stayed during our entire 3-week trip (by far). Service, as it is especially in China's larger cities, was excellent. I think the maids came in at least twice a day, and took care of everything including scrubbing the bathtub and shower. The hotel was always spotless.

That might seem like relatively expected service and conditions, but you really might not understand unless you have gone to China and lived there for at least several weeks. Compared to most Chinese hotels, this was rare luxury. But there will be more in later posts on all of the other places at which we stayed.

Whoot! 5-star elevation...

[Beijing] Dust in the Wind

"Excuse me, are those mud splatters on the back of your windshield?... and your windows?... and... the roof of your car?..."

No, my friends. Those are spots of residue... from Beijing's rain.


Believe people when they say that China has some pollution problems. Personally, I'm also just glad that it didn't rain in Beijing during the five days that we spent there.

Pollution isn't the only thing that contributes to the overall dustiness in the capital city. Beijing is located in the northern half of China. There are a lot of desert areas scattered around up there. The city gets sandstorms almost every spring, about February through April. The second cousin's son told me that some years, when it gets really bad, the skies over Beijing are completely red. And the pollution definitely doesn't help, of course. Beijing is quite a neat city, but if you're out on the streets for a whole day and you blow your nose when you come home, your boogers will be dark gray. Not to gross you out, but trust me. We learned from experience.

[Beijing] Culture Shock... -Absorbers

Naturally, one of the very first things I see after stepping off of the plane to China is....


Starbucks.

... Which, upon a second glance, is neighboring none other than... a KFC. Didn't I just fly away from the West for the last 13 hours?

My (coolest) uncle, who lives in California, has a few connections here and there. Being the cool uncle, he arranged for us to be picked up by a second cousin of his and an extra (to drive another car for our big luggage) to take us straight to our hotel so that we wouldn't have to flag down a taxi after coming right off the plane.

The extra guy made it there first, and we found him by reading all the signs people were holding up at the exit for expected pick-upees. He waited with us until the second cousin could get there. The four of us were sitting on some airport benches, waiting, when from the extra's pocket comes a very sharp,

"... SOOO, I'll tell you what I want, what I realleh realleh want! SO tell me what you want, what you realleh realleh!--"

And as he turned away to answer his cell phone, I burst out laughing and just thought... You've got to be kidding me.

Culture shock-absorbers? Well thanks, China. That's very considerate of you.

Setting out from the Shire

My last exam (MUSL 147 American Music) was on May 03, and I headed home on the evening of May 04 via parental pick-up. I had three days at home before our flight at around 5:00 AM on May 08, during which I consumed sushi with two friends who were also back, had my eyes dilated, and half-arsedly unpacked everything that had been in my cell-- ahm, dorm room -- at college.

I got an idea some time before we left for the trip to China, considerably influenced by this guy, who really became an enormous inspiration to me after I saw one of his videos and what he's done with his traveling experiences. So on a twist of the idea, I asked my mother to hep me make four balloon-tennis-ball juggling balls, and we happened to have some very happy ones around the house, which worked out pleasantly. And these I brought with me to China.

The Birmingham Airport is apparently considered "International," but I seriously don't think they'll have any direct flights to China any time soon. So our first flight at the butt-crack of dawn was to Chicago, Illinois. O'Hare Airport in Chicago is immense and is usually infamous for being a royal pain to navigate, but we hopped the next plane with minimal trouble. The flight flew directly to Beijing, China... over the North Pole and Siberia.

Flying over Siberia looks something like this:




One of the coolest things about Siberia is the winding, iced-over rivers that snake across the frozen landscape. If you don't already know how this river formation (right) is created, you can have a look at this diagram. Basically, a river will snake around as it forms because water will flow to all the lowest points possible, naturally. Over time, it deposits sediment in certain areas, while in other areas it begins to erode, or gets blocked by the built-up sediment. The eventual result is a much straighter river than before with remnant curves left over on the sides that have now been isolated from the main stream. If I remember correctly from learning about it when I was younger, it takes a good long while, so any formation like this is sure to indicate a very old river. However, I'm not entirely sure how long exactly.

At any rate, the flight from Chicago to Beijing took 13 hours and 14 minutes, in case you were wondering, which I'm sure you were.