The Food

We've all come to agree that the best way to experience a new culture and country is by being a very open-minded food tourists. And that we are. Actually, the first thing we did in Beijing was to buy a deep fried piece of dough. They're everywhere and always taste different, so we have to try them in every city.

And China makes it so easy to try out the food. You can't walk down a street without coming across some street stand that sells food (steamed corn on the cob or sweet potato, sugar glazed or au naturel fruits, some kind of pancakes fried in a LOT af oil or a piece of deep fried dough). So no one can blame us for wanting to try all these things, and since they all cost under one euro the price isn't even a problem. We don't have to choose what to eat because it's so cheap we can afford all of it (maybe that's a bad thing, but we don't see it that way). And we've come to an agreement; our food budget will be the last budget we make any cuts on.

Oh, and the supermarket. They have a whole section of tofu(!!). It would be an understatement to say that we go crazy buying food there. We have to try all the different kinds of tofu, the marinated, the fried, the dry, the twisted, the beef-like... You can also mix your own salad or buy steaming hot fried rice or noodels. And after all the fried and greasy foods, nothing tastes better than a fresh orange or those berrie-like fruits that taste just like apples, only sweeter, that are found in the enormous fruit and vegetable section.

But there isn't so much candy here. The Chinese seem to eat dried fruits when they crave a sweet snack. We have found some American candy, but since they taste only of the artificial flavours they're full of, we usually give them a miss. My personal favorite sweet-thing is puffed rice mixed with sugar (rolled into a ball), yumyum! On the train from Russia we were tipped by Lien (also a veg) about one sort of Oreo cookies that we could eat. So now everytime we buy food, a package or three of Oreos always find their way into our basket. Thank you Lien for the tip!

By flashing our Vegan Passports (they're a lifesaver!) we can easily communicate with most venders over the language-barrier. They point out the ingerdients and we (most of the time) know what we're eating. The page with a happy face shows pictures of vegetables, beans and fruits, and the the page with a sad face shows meat, egg and milk products. Most people understand what we want them to do, but some just stare at us in bewilderment and then shout for reinforcment (it's not unuasal for our passports to be surrounded by loads of Chinese no matter whether they are passerbyes or another salesperson, they're all just as curious). At least I think we do a pretty good job at pointing at the, for example, dumpling and then a the passport with a questioning face. Our Chinese knowledge is practically non-existing but one word we DO know is 'mei you' which means 'there's none'. This we frantically keep repeating while pointing at the meat page.
We've come to note that the pictures are better to use, the text is too long (few read it thorougly, we've been served eggs even after they read it) and the word 'vegan' is pretty unfamiliar to most so to just ask if there's meat in it with pictures is better than explaining why we don't want the meat.

Some awkward situaions have come up when the Chinese person actually speaks English. He or she looks at us like we're stupid pushing a picture book in his face and says 'would you like to know what's inside these?'. Since we most of the time feel stupid talking English to a Chinese, who clearly don't understand a word we say, we've started to skip the step where you ask 'do you speak english' and hop right to pictures and hand signals.

They signal numbers quite differently than we're used to. This created some confusment in the beginning, but we're starting to learn. Touching your thumb to your indexfinger, forming a circle, and lifting the rest of the fingers up means three. Making a cross with your indexfingers means ten. We haven't even tried to understand the jians(cents). They lift their thumb up and (somehow) signal with the remaining fingers how many jians. But since they probably lost us at the yuans we have to wait until the seller understands that we don't, and writes the amount on a piece of paper.

I'll give you a run-down of what we ate yesterday, as an example of out eating habits (I know, I know, intressesmurfarna hoppar. Please bear with me, we need to prove to the folks back home that we're actually eating something).
For breakfast we started off with some nuts (okey, we ate the entire bag. 'cept for the plastic), but only to get enough energy to go out and look for some more food. We ended up with some fruits, yes we do eat healthy things too.
For lunch, not long after breakfast, we ate noodles and vegetable soup with "soijarouhe" in our room. Then we walked towards the shopping street (with most restaurants and snack bars centered around it, hehe) and on the way grabbed some steamed corn on the cob.
Arriving at the shopping street we bought a pancake-like thing with a very spicy sauce on it and some water.
We try to drink a lot of water. We have our fancy refillable water 'bags', made of soft plastic so you can fold them up as they empty, which are very handy when you have to carry them around in your backpack.
(Hanna says: See Hanna's parents? We honestly use them ALL the time, and are so thankful we brought them along, so there.)
Then we bought some overpriced apples (as we were on the biggest tourist street in town there's no wonder the prices had sky-rocketed).
At the top of Solitary Beauty Peak we ate (well deserved) ice cream.
While walking back towards the restaurant street, we walked by a man popping popcorn and puffing rice over a fire. When we continued our walk with two huge bags of both popcorn and puffed rice we reflected on the fact that in China popcorn are sweet.
So note, that when you crave salt in China, don't buy popcorn. Even the potato crisps are sweeter than back at home. And with the weirdest flavors, ever heard of cucumber or fich soup chips? When trying out the first one, we found out that the Chinese are far too good at artificial flavours (the chips tasted just like cucumber, and that's two things that shouldn't be mixed).
Back to our food diary, we then bought a cup full of very spicy tofu slices and six deep fried dough pieces (mostly made of sweet potato). This because we had lost hope in finding the dumpling restaurant where we'd been planningt on eating dinner.
But then we stumbled across a street kitchen kalled 'Little Brother's Bbq' and, some moments later, found ourselves sitting on very small and very low plastic chairs eating deep fried vegetables and pieces of tofu that we'd picked out ourselves (much like Megabite).
A swedish couple walked by looking for a place to eat and went to check out our place. They gave the place a glance and exclaimed 'definitivt INTE' ( definitely NOT) and walked away. Quity picky people, we thought, since the place didn't look any shabbier that the rest (on the contrary it looked fairly decent) and the food looked fresh, except the meat (which attracted all the flies). But since we wouldn't eat the meat and everything would be deep fried we didn't think twice about eating there.
Back at the hostel we ate what candy we had left, the puffed rise and a bag of chips.
Content, and unable to lay on our bellies, we then went to sleep.

So to all you worried parents out there; I hope this has set your minds at ease. Maybe you are now worried that we over eat. Well don't, when our clothes get too tight we'll lay back on the chips (for a while at least).

Actually the only time we feel bad when food is concerned, is when we've eaten too much and can't possibly eat any more, but we see food all around us that we'd love to try, but can't. Still, the next day at dinner we make the same mistake again (in a restaurant we just have to try everything they have). And as most restaurants and snack places (luckily for us) have picture menues or food out on display we see every delicious course and have to taste it.

//S

Ps. Mamma, the fact that there's so much food here doesn't mean that we don't want the Christmas candy I asked you about. We long for a bag of assamix or marianne!