Reflection: Chinese Food in China

Having grown up in a Chinese-Canadian household, my exposure to Chinese food was typically of the Cantonese variety.  Of course, I was not aware of this until my first trip to China in 2008 when none of the food I was accustomed to at the Chinese restaurants in Canada were available.  

When I first visited Beijing, I remember the food being extremely delicious – perhaps it was because I was part of a western tour, so maybe they adjusted the food to be more suitable to western tastes?  Regardless, it wasn’t until I moved to Shenzhen that I realized that all of the Chinese food I knew about, was just a very tiny portion of what Chinese cuisine is really like. 

My first few weeks in Shenzhen included tasting and trying all sorts of food that I had never seen before.  I remember my welcome dinner being at a BBQ place, which I later found out was of the Xinjiang variety.  There is a significant Xinjiang Muslim population in Shenzhen and the area around my neighbourhood had many Xinjiang restaurants.  I wasn’t a huge fan of the Xinjiang soup noodles, as I couldn’t quite get accustomed to the soup bases, but I learned to really enjoy Xinjiang BBQ.  

I was then exposed to Northern cuisine.  There was a really good restaurant by my workplace that always looked really sketchy and probably had about a thousand health violations, but I tasted some of the most delicious foods there.  Menu items such as Beijing Shredded Pork (京醬肉絲), Sweet & Sour Fish (糖醋魚) and Thousand Layered Crepe (千層餅) were things that I enjoyed so much while living in Shenzhen.

Then, there was the supermarket food.  I had this a few times at the beginning (before I discovered the food choices around).  Salted chicken with peanuts, cold appetizers like cucumber in vinegar.  These were things I had never heard of before.  I was really surprised at the use of vinegar in so many dishes in China.  I even learned later on that it was also quite tasty to pour vinegar into your soup noodles.  Cantonese cuisine does not use much vinegar or peppers, so it was quite shocking for me to find out that there are regions in China that primarily eat spicy or sour foods.

By the time I moved to Guangzhou, I was much more experienced and knew that I really enjoyed a great deal of Northern food.  Muslim or Northwestern foods were still a bit foreign to me, with the exception of a lot of the Xinjiang BBQ, which I had a ton of in Shenzhen.  One of my first meals in Guangzhou was with a colleague who took me to a Muslim noodle place.  I had already tried something similar in Shenzhen and I wasn’t too fond of the taste of the soups, and the restaurant in Guangzhou confirmed that it wasn’t for me.  Aside from that one time, I don’t think I had any other Northwestern food in my 2 entire years in Guangzhou.  So different from Shenzhen, where the BBQ place was a common gathering place for my co-workers and I.  Unfortunately in Guangzhou, I lived far from Cantonese food, but thankfully there was a Noodle King (a noodle franchise restaurant) right by my school.  I wonder how many times I must have eaten there.  Food seemed to be more familiar and not as strange in Guangzhou, but I’m not sure if that’s because it was more similar to Cantonese or whether it was just that I’d been in China too long.

I also had the opportunity to travel much more while living in Guangzhou.  And more importantly, I traveled with locals on some of these trips, which meant that I was able to try more local food.  In Changsha, I had stinky tofu (臭豆腐) and veggies in a huge stir fry pot with more chilies than I’d ever seen before.  In Fenghuang, I purchased a street snack of tiny crabs on a stick, In Chongqing, I tried the famous spicy hot pot (麻辣火鍋), although I have to admit we ordered the dual pot because I knew that I wouldn’t be able to eat a whole meal of spicy hot pot.   In Nanjing, I tried the specialty salty duck (鹹水鴨) and lastly in Xi’an, I was able to try a beef bun (肉夾饃).

I often think back on all the things I learned living overseas and can’t believe that I even learned about food!  Basically, everything that I thought I had known about Chinese food turned out to be just one small little part of Chinese Cuisine.  There is still so much more to explore and learn and I can’t wait to go back.