Love that Food (sometimes)
China is heaven for a foodie. Walk onto any patchworked streets, and you'll see steam wafting out of large noodle pots and steamed bun trays, roasted meats dripping with juices hanging bright red next to roasted nuts and fresh corn, fish, squid and meats grilling on makeshift pits, their flavors smoky and tangy from being slow-cooked, bread dabbed with spices freshly birthed from their secret kilns – rows and rows of fresh fruits and vegetables and raw foodstuffs that defy categorization lying in bushels and crates, advertised by the incessant cries of their vendors from early dawn til late night.
One afternoon in Nanning, I walked through a winding mud-spattered street, south of the stream on Chaoyang Lu (Street), ogling the generous display of ingredients and dishes. Each section of the street is devoted to a specialty.
Families are slurping down congee, milky white and fragrant with bits of meat and egg and sprinkled with scallions at one popular stall. Rolls of fried bread are made in the same stall by a smiling vendor, the yeast rolled fresh, spiced, and dunked in a bubbling pot of oil. In the next stall, there are groups of workers on plastic stools hunched over rice noodles lathered in some sort of brown sauce, and piled on top by some strange assortment of offals, livers and meats.
A display of some 15 different kinds of meats neatly skewered – pork, beef, innards, mutton – lie next to fresh cabbage, greens and different kinds of beets, cucumbers and roots down the street corner. I see a kid not yet twelve dunking the meats in a makeshift hot pot and feeding it to his kid sister.
Stacks of wooden steamers hold meat filled and crushed vegetable buns. Thick doughy white buns are sold next to steamed and fried wontons; steamed noodle pancakes wrapping coriander and pork lie next to pots of broth, and shumai, translucent and shrimp-filled, gleam in the morning sun.
There are old women sitting on short benches selling roasted nuts; watermelon and papaya seems to be in season; stacks of sugarcane, lychee, rambutans, longans and star-fruit jostle for space, their rinds near the gutters evidence of their popularity as post-lunch snacks.
Away from the street, family run restaurants are setting out their wares. You can combine any dish you want at these places for 1 yuan each. Sizzling meats and roasted vegetables and soups are then ladled onto steaming bowls of rice.
Further down the winding alleyway, fresh crabs, oysters, mussels and fish are displayed from the day's catch. For 12 yuan ($1.50), you pick your own fish swimming in a bucket, have it cleaned, grilled, sauced, and served with pickled vegetables and greens right before you eyes in about 10 minutes.
There are some dangers, especially if you are somewhat picky with what you eat. Thumbing through my guidebook to find my way out of the alleyways and lanes, I learned that I was in the famous Gourou Qu – the Canine Cuisine District. So that's what those hanging meats were. I had remarked offhand to YuppieNomad that there was something oddly familiar in the naked smile of that last row of teeth. I thought that I couldn't be grossed out, but China has proved me wrong. There is something oddly beastly and captivating about the spectacle of a skinned canine, leering with grinning pointy teeth.
I also ran into sections where threats of the avian flu seem to not matter to the Chinese, as cages of hens, roosters, ducks, wild game and other fowl clucked and shrilled, waiting to be de-feathered and put into some waiting pot down the street.
silly josh. you can't get avian flu by eating it... (wait, can you?)
on a separate note... so you are hooked up with yuppienomad? post a pic, i wanna see!
Posted by: jojo | January 10, 2006 at 12:28 PM
ah - I'm bringing along a Canon film SLR and YuppieNomad has a digital. Once I get a USB cable for the digital I'll start posting pics.
(those chikins are crafty – they can totally sneeze on ya or something.. )
Posted by: j.fisher | January 18, 2006 at 04:42 PM