Trip to the People’s Republic of China
The Food
In Beijing, people greet each other by asking, "Have you eaten?" or "Come to my house for tea." The last expression has a similar usage to "Let’s do lunch."
The question, "When do we eat?" became a laughing matter among the bus group. The meal times seemed to come very close together. Yet, offloading the bus was most efficient when we were about to be fed. I didn’t worry about dieting during the trip, yet didn’t gain weight, because of the massive amount of walking and stair climbing each day.
We were all surprised that the Chinese meals that we know in America are not standard in the home country. For instance, rice is not served with the main entries, and soup is not an appetizer. If rice is served with the meal, it is considered fast food.
Once the main dishes were served and consumed, the arrival of rice announced the end of the meal. Rice was considered a filler food in case we were still hungry. Next to last came the soup. The finale was fruit. We generally saw slices of watermelon or oranges. Our biggest treat was pear apples. Only rarely did small pastries accompany the fruit. Pat was disappointed at not discovering a new exotic fruit the entire trip. My mother, meanwhile, expressed longing for a banana.
Because of the size of the tour group, every shared meal was a banquet. We were seated at rounds of 10 with a lazy Susan in the middle. The "special" banquets included the following:
Peking Duck Banquet – served with small pancakes and plum sauce
Imperial Dumpling Banquet – more than 21 different kinds of dim sum. We were supposed to count the number of dumplings in our soup bowl, since each number has a different meaning.
Noodle Banquet
Imperial Dumpling Banquet in Xi'an
Each meal included a variety of dishes, including vegetables, seafood (generally white fish but rarely shrimp or squid), pork, and poultry (generally duck instead of chicken). We did not see beef. Some dishes were sweet enough to be desserts. Among these were buns filled with a bean paste.
In spite of the plate balancing acts that we later saw at the Chinese circus, the Chinese waitresses do not compete with American servers in the art of carrying multiple plates along their arms. In China, they use trays.
A joke shared by the group was that the dinner plates kept getting smaller. I had a hard time figuring out exactly how much I was eating. All dishes brought to the table were shared with nine other people. We each spooned our share onto a plate the size of a tea saucer. Pat was upset that most dishes arrived without a serving spoon. She did not relish sharing germs with her dinner companions. At her urging, our soupspoons were commandeered for serving. Forks were also a special request, but each place setting had chopsticks. The table was often covered with plastic-coated paper.
A help-yourself buffet was our usual breakfast at the hotel. In Beijing, we could choose either an American or an Oriental breakfast. The American was all you’d expect, with bagels, omelets, bacon, sausage, pastries, juices, and fruit. Along with dishes that would usually be considered dinner food, the Oriental breakfast included congee (bland rice porridge) with condiments, such as minced green onions, bacon bits, and marinade items, to add flavor.
We also had a couple of hotel buffet dinners. One unusual dessert consisted of a bowl of cold soymilk with small chucks of watermelon swimming in it.
The guide told us that the favorite starch served at meals varies by region. The northern areas of the country prefer noodles or dumplings to the familiar rice. The tea also varies by area. Beijing favors jasmine, Xi’an – oolong, and Shanghai – green tea.
I preferred the food in Beijing to that of the other cities. It was better suited to my western palate. Regional cooking differs in its ingredients. In other cities, I passed on many dishes because they included such items as squid or chicken feet. On our free day, Pat and I had a dinner in our room that consisted of two over-priced mangos from a street vendor and our stash of emergency food—power bars and peanuts. It was a welcome break from our routine of feasting.
A lady that we met from another tour bus had a very hard time choosing what to eat because she was a vegetarian. The buffet breakfasts were no problem, but she was concerned with eating anything that was made with animal fat. As a result, she often made do with her jar of peanut butter.
Shortage of Beverages
We carried water everywhere and bought refills of bottled water at the tourist stops. Many natives carried glass jars of tea with floating leaves. The tea in China is brewed from loose leaves rather than tea bags or tea balls.
We suffered from a shortage of beverages at meals—except for hot tea. We were given the first bottled beverage as part of the meal. The next had to be purchased. Choices included Coca-Cola, beer, Sprite, or water. A request for a diet or sugarless beverage was not understood. I saw Diet Coke at the Beijing airport and nowhere else, and even it had the kind of pop-top that I haven’t seen for 20 years in the States. Pat, my mother, and I drank beer at most meals, since it was tastier and not as sweet as the other choices. My mother is a teetotaler at home.
American Food
On the night of the Chinese opera, several people dropped out in favor of an evening of burgers and rock and roll at the Hard Rock Café. A McDonalds was located next door to our Beijing hotel. Although we passed on having a meal there, Pat, my mother, and I treated ourselves to ice cream cones. Mother ordered by pointing at pictures on a plastic placemat. The cost was about half that of the U.S.
KFC is more popular than McDonalds in China, probably because fried chicken is a known entity. In Xi’an, KFC sponsored streetlights with its logo every few feet on the road to the restaurant. The restaurant itself was a two-story building with more than a passing resemblance to a 1930s movie palace.
