Eric's Beijing Diary

This evening Raymond took us to an old, traditional Beijing restaurant. He had thought about taking us to eat "Peking Duck," but he decided against it, because that is the sort of thing that anyone who lives in Beijing has experienced. Instead, he took us to a small restaurant which serves the traditional "common man's" noodles. Different than any noodles I have had in China. You pour a black sauce on the noodles. The sauce contains spices and meat. After the sauce, you pour in a plate of vegetables. No soup base as with beef noodle soup. Very delicious, and very filling.

Nothing has impressed me more about Chinese food than the seemingly limitless variety thereof. There are seven our eight different cuisines in China. I am not just talking about different dishes, now. I am referring to completely different cuisines. Cuisines which may be similar in some general ways (rice in South China, noodles in North China), yet fundamentally distinct. I don't think I can remember them all, and I am no expert. I am not a cook, so I don't have the inside story on what all the ingredients are. But even though I am no good at cooking Chinese food, I am pretty good at eating it. So I have sampled quite a variety. I will try to tell you about the ones I can relate to.

First there is the Dongbei (Northeast China) cuisine. Then you have the Northwest (Langzhou) cuisine. Typical of this would be beef noodle soup. Sichuan cuisine seems to be best known for the "hotpot."

Hunan cuisine is one of my favorites. Spicy and full of flavor. Lots and lots of different kinds of vegetables. Dried turnip, mushrooms, and cured pork that tastes pretty much like bacon, but a little meatier.

The dish I think of first when Yunnan comes to mind is the famous rice noodle soup. There is a new Yunnan restaurant by the Haidian Church, now. Really good stuff.

I would think the cuisine Americans would relate to the most would be Guandong cuisine. This is because the mass of Chinese immigrants who went to America beginning 150 years ago were from South China. Cantonese cuisine predominates in American Chinese restaurants. Cantonese cooking is characterized by sweetness. Sweet and sour dishes come from Guandong. Like the sweet and sour fried eggs that I had when I was teaching at the South China Institute of Software Engineering. Very, very delicious.

There are several others, but I don't know what they are. And of course, within each of these cuisines are many, many dishes. So many you couldn't possibly remember them all. Don't get me wrong, there are dishes I have had more than once. But it seems that there is always something new. I was eating at a small restaurant with Eric and Leander one time, and they had ordered a delicious Hunan dish (Eric is from Hunan). I asked them what it was. They said, "We don't know; we've never had it before."

I guess the one down side of Chinese cooking for a foreigner is the complexity of Chinese cuisine in general. The most frequent comment I have heard from Chinese folks I have taken with me to a Western style meal is, "so simple!" To order correctly in a Chinese restaurant, you need some training. I usually go with students, so they order for me. But there have been times when I have been traveling alone in China, and had to figure it out on my own. It's getting better, because I am able to make known what I want, but I am still inclined to find a coffee bar somewhere when I am traveling. Youth Hostels in China often have restaurants, so I certainly don't starve, but it can be frustrating. My Chinese is coming along, but it is still pretty limited. Just so-so. Or as we say in China, "horse, horse, tiger, tiger."