How to Eat Your Dragon Fruit: My Chinese Eating Experience

I ran as fast as I could, but it was too late. I pounded against the white, tin door futilely as I watched the Chinese lady wheel her cart away. In that moment, both my heart and stomach shattered. I had missed dinner.

It has been over half an hour, and I am still crying inside about it. I ate three pieces of bread with peanut butter for dinner, but my stomach is still waiting for white rice with a side of whatever-boiled-vegetable-they-want-to-serve-us-today. Needless to say, I am not in the best of moods, but that is hardly a surprise since a hungry Liz oftentimes equals a not-so-happy Liz.

Oh, well. I still have my peanut butter!

I am pleased to report that I am happy even though I’m usually hungry here in China. Chinese food just doesn’t fill me up. Now Panda Express—THAT fills me up. But that’s American Chinese food, and there is a BIG difference between American Chinese food and Chinese Chinese food.

For instance, did you know that fortune cookies are a big fat lie? Wait… that came out wrong. Yes, sometimes those little slips of paper inside fortune cookies aren’t completely true, but what I meant is that fortune cookies are NOT a thing here in China. I have not eaten a single one yet, and I have been to plenty of Chinese restaurants now. The truth about Chinese fortune cookies is that they are really American fortune cookies.

Perhaps you would like to know more about the food here in China. Shall I tell you?

Ordering Food in China

In America, you walk into a Chinese restaurant and look at the menu. It is in English, so you can read it and order exactly what you want. Here in China, I resort to looking at a picture, deciding if it looks edible and tasty, pointing to it when the waiter comes to get my order, and then crossing my fingers and hoping  I got something good. Sometimes, I try to communicate with the waiter more, but it never ends up going too well.

Waiter walks over to my table.

Me: Ni hao.

Waiter: Hello. (I guess it’s obvious to him I don’t speak Chinese.)

Me: Wo yao baicai jien jow. (It’s supposed to mean “I want a cabbage fried dumpling.”)

Waiter: (Looks at me blankly)

Me: Uhhh… Wo yao… (look at my phone and double check that I’m saying the right thing) bacai jien jow.

We look at each other for a moment. I think maybe, just maybe, despite my terrible Chinese, he understands what I mean.

Waiter: I no speak English.

*Sigh. That’s how heavy my English accent is when I speak Chinese. It’s so thick that they still think I am speaking English when I am really trying to speak Chinese! My goal in the next two months is to become good enough at speaking about food to order something off a Chinese menu without having to resort to pointing at pictures and gesturing. I do know a few food words in Chinese though. Here is a little Chinese language lesson:

·         Mi fan- rice

·         Mian- noodles

·         Dan- egg

·         Ning meng shui- lemonade

·         Yong- lamb

·         Niu- cow

·         Zhu- pig

·         Suan nai- yogurt

There are other words you can add onto your dishes like “chao,” which means “fried.” So “chao mien” means “fried noodles” and “chao mi fan” is fried rice. You can also combine words to create a more specific dish. For instance, if I want egg fried rice, I would say, “dan chao fan.”

Here is a picture of some fried rice I bought for only 13 yuan! (That’s a little over $2.00 in American money.)

Ordering food in China can sometimes be an adventure, but more often than not, it is a tasty adventure!

Food You Will Find at the Store

Whenever I go into the produce section of the Da Fu Yuan, (the shopping center ten minutes from where I live) I have to hold my breath because it smells like a mixture of briny fish and bad fruit. That actually makes complete sense because they sell lots of smelly fish (the dried sea food is especially potent) and the fruit doesn’t smell too heavenly either.

You can find some very interesting things at the Da Fu Yuan if you look around. Here are just a few examples of what you will see:

Chicken feet. These ones are uncooked, but at the school cafeteria, they serve them fried.

Dragon Fruit. I love everything about this fruit from its brilliantly pink outside to its white, polka-dot seeded inside. It is my absolute favorite, and I buy at least two every week. It has the same texture as Kiwi and has a softly sweet, juicy flavor. Doesn’t it look like it could be right out of a Dr. Seuss book?

Crocodile tail. Who’s ready to dig in?

Packaged lobster. Chinese people like to package their meats A LOT. I’ve found packaged chicken feet and a whole host of other packaged meats at the convenient store just across the street. It looks slightly disgusting, but I suppose it preserves it!

Porcupine Fruit. That’s not its real name, but I don’t know what else to call it. I believe someone told me that it’s gross, but I have never tried it.

Eating at a Chinese Restaurant

I absolutely love eating at Chinese restaurants. There are many different types; some are family-style where there is a big rotating plate in the middle of the table and everyone just scoops out what food they want from big platters and bowls with their chopsticks. There is usually A LOT of food. I can definitely get full on Chinese food when I go to a family-style restaurant.

At one family-style restaurant, they served raw salmon. I didn’t think it would be too good, but it wasn’t bad!

At the same restaurant, they also served squid. Here is a picture of a plateful of them. The eyes were still attached, (which I did not know until afterwards) but I only ate the middle, so I’m pretty sure I avoided eating them. Not my favorite thing, but it wasn’t bad either.

For dessert, they served these delicious sweet rice jellies. Although this looks like it would be a cold dessert, it was actually served warm. It was basically a warm, gooey, sweet rice paste sandwiched between two jellies. They stuck in your mouth, but they were very delicious.

At a different family-style restaurant, they served this sugared corn dessert. It was basically a crispy corn dish covered in sugar and stuck all together in one sticky, starchy heap. There was an enormous plate of it, and we definitely did not finish it.

Before you eat, you will usually wash your dishes in tea or hot water that the waiter brings to your table. The first time I experienced this dish washing custom was when I went to a little restaurant where they served dumplings. The owner brought out this cute tea kettle with pink flowers.

You then fill up your dishes with the tea and then dump the tea into a bowl. I usually get tea all over the tablecloth, but it’s a fun little custom they have!

There are other family-style restaurants where you all share the food, but there is no rotating table in the middle (much less convenient). We went to one for my roommate Kim’s birthday!

My two favorite things I ate at this restaurant were my strawberry cheesecake smoothie…

and, surprisingly, the fried squid.

Eating the fried squid was just like eating French fries. Pop one in and then another! So good!

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things…

Some of my favorite things to eat here in China are fried and boiled dumplings filled with cabbage and other yummy things. We got to make some one day at our apartment, and they were so good! I ate at least twenty, and I am not ashamed in the slightest.

The breads here in China are also very good. You can almost always count on them being at least a little bit sweetened. They also don’t fret about having lots of oil on their rolls.

Another find I made were these delicious little desserts that I have dubbed Neapolitan Swiss Cake Rolls. Basically, they are little strawberry, chocolate, and vanilla cakes wrapped up in a thin dessert bread shell with cream in between the cakes. I love them!

Other favorites include fried rice, eggplant, and deep fried potatoes. I had the deep fried potatoes at the Avatar Mountains, and they were just like dessert.

To close this blog post, let’s just say the food in China is fantastic! “Fantastic” is the best word I can think of to describe it because although it is not always yummy, it is always interesting and exciting. And oftentimes, it IS very yummy! You just have to make sure you don’t get something that is way too spicy, and you have to make sure you know what kind of meat you are looking at. (Once, I thought I was looking at normal bacon, and it ended up being pig’s ear.)

Despite the plates of chicken feet and the cafeteria trays of soupy tofu, I really have to say that I have loved my Chinese eating experience so far. I am learning how to be adventurous with the foods I eat and I try new things almost every day! I am also learning to be less picky. So what if the fish are full of bones? (Actually, that one is a bit scary. The fish they serve at lunch are full of miniscule bones that are so thin that they can get stuck in between your teeth.) Bad example. But it’s all part of the adventure.

And now, if you will excuse me, I need to go to bed so I can wake up in time tomorrow morning to get breakfast rolls from the cafeteria. Zaijien!