[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.