Real Chinese Food

I'm sure many people are wondering about what I have been eating here in China. No, I haven’t had General Tso’s chicken, orange chicken, crab rangoons, or even fortune cookies. All of those are American Chinese food. So I wanted to introduce some Chinese culture and cuisine.

Street food 

Though I haven’t had any yet, it can be seen on many streets here in China. They can sell things like fruit, veggies, or even full meals like pork sandwiches. It shocks me sometimes as to what they can whip up on the street within five minutes. Some will be on carts like this one which is attached to a bike and others will be pulled by a donkey which I actually saw the other day

Hotpot 

 
 This is one of my favorite dishes. The idea here is you have a boiling pot of water and spices in the middle, and you put whatever meat, noodles, and veggies into it, wait for it to cook, and then eat it with a peanut butter-like sauce. It is also common to have this with an extra-large Coca-Cola, but I am not quite sure why.

American Franchises

KFC, McDonalds, Starbucks, Pizza Hut, Subway, and an occasional TGIF or Hooters can all be found in China. I haven’t had any of these yet either, but last time I had KFC, the meat seemed a little more real than in the United States. Of course, they adapt the menu to the taste of the Chinese so there is rice and pork on the menu. The nice part about having these here is that most of them deliver. Pizza Hut is also a fancier, sit down restaurant where you would take someone on a date, and they serve alcohol.

Traditional meals

The typical Chinese meal will consist of many dishes being shared in the middle of a circle table on a lazy Susan. Sometimes the meal seems to be never ending so make sure to pace yourself, but it allows every to try a little bit of everything. You will normally have your own small bowl of rice to eat towards the end to fill you up. At the end of the meal, Chinese will fight for the bill because one person wants to treat the rest of them. Dividing up a check here is not common to do, but we still find a way to divide it as equally as possible. I have added some pictures here of a chicken dish, some pumpkin buns, dumplings, an egg and tomato dish (which is one of my personal favorites), green beans, as well as a picture of the table with my wonderful co-teachers.

 IKEA food

With moving into a new apartment soon, we needed to get some things at IKEA so we decided to check out the food there. I don’t recall ever eating at an IKEA in the states, but I do know about the Swedish meatballs. We couldn’t say no to trying them, and I was rather happy with that choice. They were delicious, but the salmon lasagna on the other hand wasn’t as good. The cheese here just isn’t the same.

So after just a week of being here, the food is just as good as I remembered. I did not include any pictures of Chinese eggplant dishes (simply because I forgot to take pictures whenever I ordered it). With that being said, keep an eye out for more posts about food in the future.

I wanted to leave this one for last because I honestly have no idea what this guy was doing today. He had a turtle tied to a stick and just standing in the road. If anyone knew what his goal was or even had any guesses as to what he was doing, I would love to hear them.