China is a food enthusiast's fun fair. Edible concoctions are everywhere one turns, with each city offering a myriad of culinary choices on practically every corner. Regional variety ensures that the list of delectable samplings is never exhausted, but always growing with every journey a traveler takes. In general, this is exciting; most things are immediately dubbed "delicious." Within this cornucopia of flavors, however, one is bound to find items - meat, fruit, vegetable, and otherwise - never before tried, purposely avoided, or even previously unknown. Now, I was never a picky eater, but I'm also not Andrew Zimmerman or Anthony Bourdain. During my four years living in Hunan and exploring China, I tasted a vast number of dishes that surprised even me.
竹子 Zhu zi - Bamboo. Bamboo is really, really good. Don't worry - humans don't eat the leaves and thick stalks that are thought of as panda food. We eat the shoots, sliced and stir-fried in a variety of sauces, and occasionally a young plant diced into rings and sautéed in oil and spices. Bamboo is mild, absorbing the flavors of whatever it's cooked in, and slightly crunchy between the teeth. The dish blow is the one that most looks like its namesake:
苦瓜 Ku gua - Bitter melon. This odd-looking vegetable at first appears to be a cucumber with pimples. A pustule-like green skin surrounds firm light green flesh and a core of seeds. "Bitter" isn't a misnomer - Chinese medicine states this produce can provide flavors hard, if not impossible, to find elsewhere in one's culinary repertoire. Even some fans boil or blanch it before cooking to remove some of the overpowering taste. The first bite is a notoriously horrific encounter for newly arrived foreigners. Usually, bitter melon appears as a little half-moon with seeds removed, but sometimes the circle is kept intact and it's stuffed with a meatball and browned a bit on each side. It's often prepared sautéed with little minnow-esque fish or, of course, stir-fried with pork fat and served over white rice. I, however, think it's best in little julienned strips that are steamed with oil and some herbs (I think that's how it's done, anyway). It took me three years to like it, but now I crave it.
Bread masquerading as mushrooms. This was pretty cool. 包子 Bao zi are a popular Chinese breakfast street food, but usually these steamed buns appear, logically, as little round balls. One clever restaurant, however, dusted theirs with something brown and added stems, creating...mushrooms. The flavor of the 叉烧包 cha shao bao (diced grilled pork) remained unaltered.
血 Xue - Blood. That would include duck blood, lamb's blood, and pig's blood, at various times. Usually, blood comes congealed into a brownish, tofu-like clump and served as part of hot pot or a soup, but in the case of duck, it's made into a sauce that you wouldn't know was blood if you weren't told. That's the best. The rest isn't bad, just so-so.
皮蛋 Pi dan - Century eggs (or thousand-year-old eggs). The shells are sort of green. The insides are gelatinous, greyish brown with almost-blue yolks. They smell like ammonia. This comes about because they are buried underground for a considerable amount of time, traditionally rumored to be covered in horse pee. In the market, they look more like dirty rocks than eggs. In my first year, Maureen used to torture Lisa and me by always ordering these with the worst-possible white chalky tofu (she thought she was being hospitable). These still aren't my favorite, but I can choke them down. In the 皮蛋瘦肉粥 pi dan shou rou zhou (rice porridge with century eggs, meat strips, and lettuce) at Ella's favorite diet place, for example, I don't even really taste them anymore. In one of my favorite local concoctions - green peppers, eggplant, and century eggs smashed together with a mortar and pestle - they actually make a nice bonding agent.
鸡爪 Ji zhao - Chicken feet. The iconic Chinese scare-the-foreigners dish - but that all comes from us. It's actually an honor for a Chinese person to serve a guest a chicken foot. It's one of the many things that are supposed to bring good luck. For the first three years, I just thought these were more trouble than they were worth - too much bone and too much cartilage for too little hard-to-get meat - but then Kitty took me to a restaurant where they were done right. What a difference when it all melted in my mouth! No more trying to figure out where to bite! I've even ordered them for myself on vacations since. Yep, I'm a convert now. The place and preparation matter immensely, though - the ones the students like pickled in a pouch are still frown-inducing for me.
The orange part of the crab we never see in western restaurants. I love using chopsticks, but eating crabs with chopsticks is one of the hardest things I've ever done, manually. The fact that I end up eating just as much shell as meat is an aside; the noteworthy thing is that, as with most animals, the Chinese eat all parts of the crab. Know how in seafood restaurants in the States we're only served the legs and the part of the body that contains clean meat, with all the gooey stuff removed? That gooey stuff is the delicacy in China. To me it tastes like salty mush.
狗 Gou - Dog. Yes, I did it. The first time, it was an accident. I had gone to lunch with a group of colleagues and the host had ordered a series of dishes for the table, so we all ate and enjoyed all of them, as you do. As we were leaving, one of my colleagues pointed to a plate and said to another coworker, in Chinese, "The dog was really good today!" I had to concur. It was quite good. Tasted like nicely marinated steak strips, actually. Later I learned that dog is a winter food, popular in hot pot, because according to Chinese medicine, it increases the eater's 阳 yang energy (in this case, heat). It's actually hard to find at other times of the year. There's something about not eating dog together with papaya, I believe, too...Only certain breeds of dog are raised for food (apparently large white ones are best), and all parts of the dog are consumed - Melody and I learned that the hard way. For the record, I saw dogs in the market more often than cats - neither of them all that much.
驴肉 Lv rou - Donkey meat. Jackpot. Expensive jackpot, relatively speaking. This was a random find with Lisa early on (the first day we went to Kitty's for tea, actually), as we Pleco-ed our way through the menu. We ordered it for the novelty, but it was amazing! Tender strips of donkey meat arrived in a bowl, stir-fried with an abundance of yellow peppers and a garnish of carrots. It was spicy. It was flavorful. It was one of my favorite first "weird" foods.
火龙果 Huo long guo - Dragonfruit. It's milder than it sounds - and looks. A dragonfruit looks like a spiky, neon magenta grenade on the outside. One the inside, the fruit is white, spelled with hundreds of tiny black seeds - edible, thankfully. (There ARE some rare dragonfruits with purple flesh, which took me by shocked me when I first sliced into one and it started bleeding in my kitchen.) The flavor is surprisingly mild, with just a hint of sweetness. Usually dragonfruit is eaten on its own, sliced or cubed, but there are places that sell the juice and make smoothies with it, too.
鸭子 Ya zi - Duck parts. The meat is only the beginning. See my ode to duck post for details.
榴莲 Liu lian - Durian. It does smell bad, although not as much as I had expected. It's an extremely large, spiky, yellow misshapen orb, heavy to carry and hard to split open, containing a mass of fleshy yellow fruit with a supremely soft texture - some say it's creamy, some say it seems rotten. Yet, it's quite popular in China, in all regions and across all age groups and social classes. It can be eaten alone, but it's commonly made into all manner of desserts, including birthday cake and cheesecake. My verdict? Palatable, but nothing to write home about.
鱼头 Yu tou - Fish heads. According to Chinese legend, eating a fish head is supposed to make you smarter. At my favorite breakfast noodle shop, 鱼头粉 yu tou fen (fish head rice noodles) cost 10 kuai, 鱼粉 yu fen (regular fish noodles), just 7. Carl ordered fish heads, various ways, for many of our dinners. Jolee could clean the bones. They even served fish heads in the school cafeteria and always wanted to give a fish head to me - as as a gesture of honor and respect, of course. Of all the things I tried in China, though, fish heads are still what I'm least in board with. "Gelatinous" doesn't even begin to cover it. "Briney" would be a compliment.
青蛙 Qing wa (alive), 蛙 wa (food) - Frog. If you've tasted frog legs before, purge your memory. Frog in China is nothing like that. It paled in the shadow of blood duck at the restaurant Stacy took Melody and me to, so I wasted some time enjoying it, but my last year in China a new restaurant opened called Wa Lai Da, serving frog in your choice of dry pot - garlic, peppers, and ginger being a house specialty, among other flavorful mixes. Vegetables, other meats, and noodles can be added to the sauce, but frog is the star - really large toads skinned and chunked, including the body as well as the legs. The meat does not taste like chicken - it's more like fish. It's meaty, delicious, and falls off the bone. The lovely taste lingers in your mouth. (Alexa went to Wa Lai Da at every available opportunity. When Marisela visited, the owner even gave her souvenir cups!) When Robert took me to a goodbye dinner near Yumu Mountain, we picked out live frogs from a bowl and sentenced them to death, with no remorse. Now I understand why Xuan said spicy frog was the dish from China she missed the most while in Carlisle.
丝瓜 Si gua - Gourd. Si gua may not actually be a gourd, but that's the best translation Stacy, Melody, and I could come up with together, and we spent a while on that in the car on the way to Hongjiang Old Town. Nevertheless, si gua is a refreshing vegetable - light, healthy-tasting, and just a little crisp near the rind when done right. It makes a nice addition to soups, too. From the outside, the appearance of si gua is similar to a light-colored zucchini crossed with a pumpkin, but on the inside it looks like (but doesn't feel or taste like) a cucumber. In general, it's rather nice.
Impostor shrimp. I still don't really know what these are. Melody and I first encountered them at a fancy seafood restaurant with Stacy. In the tank, they looked like shrimp flattened from their backs to stomachs. After cooking, though, the meat seemed to have disintegrated, and the shell was sharp enough to stab me through the little plastic gloves the locals wear for messy foods. The Chinese word for both these and shrimp is 虾 xia, but trust me, the creatures are not the same.
场子 Chang zi - Intestines. Intestines aren't wasted. They are cleaned out and included as one of the plethora of options for hot pot. They come sliced and sautéed with peppers. They appear in soups and stir-fries. The flavor can be pretty good, actually, as they tend to absorb the essence of a sauce. The texture is sometimes chewy, but not bad at all. I don't even know what animal's innards I've ingested. Assume a pig's until proven otherwise.
腰花 Yao hua - Kidneys. Duck kidneys come in a pouch, and are obviously dehydrated kidneys. Pig kidney at 小小舌馆 Xiao Xiao She Guan is one of the spiciest dishes I've ever tasted - anywhere. It comes scalloped into beautiful little artistic shapes, submerged in a bath of tiny red peppers, ginger, and garlic. It's quite delicious, I must say. I had to ask what it was. I ordered it every time we returned. Bring plenty of extra tissues in your purse for the tears and sniffles bound to ensue.
辣条 La tiao. La tiao is a favorite snack of many of my students, and they really get a kick out of it if you drop the words in class. It doesn't have an English name, per se, but translates roughly to "spicy stick." It's essentially a strip of gluten covered in hot oil and pepper flakes. Sometimes it comes in straws, sometimes small or large squares, sometimes in strips, or sometimes even random flakes resembling potato chips. It comes in a variety of flavors, from Sichuan-style to chicken soup, and individual and shareable serving sizes abound. It can even be procured in the secret school store. I have to say, although it's definitely junk food, I like it. It really grows on you.
莲藕 Lian'ou - Lotus. Lotus root, pods, and flower petals are all edible. Lotus root is simply called 藕 ou, usually sliced into a disc with telltale holes in it and stir-fried with an inventive concoction, or marinated in the five spices and served cold in to-go packages at the train station - although Yucca once stuffed hers with rice and spices and boiled it before slicing and browning, which was a unique touch. Lotus seeds are 莲子 lian zi, little white pods one picks out of the head of the plant, which I first encountered in an underpass in Changsha and rarely saw again. Lotus petals, 花瓣 hua ban, sometimes appear floating in light broth with mushrooms and pork bone. Unsurprisingly, the flavor of all parts of the lotus is rather delicate.
Meat in a pouch. I said I wouldn't eat them them, at first. They seemed like a bad idea, when I saw the students snacking on them, and the smell, when I wasn't used to it, was pungent and off-putting. Then one day in the office, Nicky gave me a pouch filled with little spicy fish, and I was pleasantly surprised by the taste. I actually liked it! Other foreign teachers told me I had gone native. Fish were the gateway, but I soon I graduated to duck. Later, I tried pork, beef, and tofu, too, which weren't bad, but fish and duck in a pouch remained staple train foods for the rest of my China life. (Do note that everything is fully cooked and deliciously spiced, but one must at least try to read what animal part is inside, lest there be bones.)
Other. Yes, there is an "other" category. I ate some things that were never identified. Too many, in fact, to even attempt to describe.
猪脑 Zhu nao - Pig's brains. Luckily, I only tasted a spoonful of this. We crossed paths in a soup in my old favorite cozy little dumpling shop, the best 沙县小吃 Sha Xian Xiao Chi, now a gym with one treadmill. It was the result of one of Melody's linguistic mishaps her first year in China. The stuff was grey and looked like what it was. It tasted mushy. We couldn't get over the idea, and abandoned all effort.
猪耳朵 Zhu er duo - Pig's ears. The first time I had these, Wang Yun, a math teacher at the middle school, told me we would be eating "young bones." That's exactly what they seemed like at the time, and I wrote them off. On our trip to Hainan, Melody and I were overconfident in ourselves for recognizing a character for "ear," 耳 er, and thinking it represented our beloved wood ear mushrooms, 木耳 mu'er. It did not. We forced ourselves to choke down some pig's ears, but didn't make much headway. Sometime during my third year in China, though, my opinion of pig's ears improved drastically. Now I consider them a delectable, spicy, and vinegary appetizer, and have requested them at more than a few dinners.
猪脚 Zhu jiao - Pig's feet. I used to think of them as pickled pig's feet and they weren't my thing. A Hengyang specialty is a kind of stewed pig's feet, flavorful, but mostly fat and slippery on the chopsticks. (Mao's favorite dish was basically cubed pork fat.) Pig's feet are a common dish at banquets, though, and with enough exposure, I learned to hang on to, and even like, them. Howee, just before I left China, Kim took Adam, Alexa, and me to a new place by the 老东北饺子 Lao Dong Bei Jiao Zi, Olivia's mom's old restaurant, that served fried pig's feet. What a discovery! Expertly spiced, non-greasy, and eaten with the little gloves. Now that I love these, I'll probably never find them again.
南瓜藤 Nan gua teng - Pumpkin vines. My last dinner in Hengyang was with Kitty, Nicky, and two new people. Just when I thought I'd tasted everything, they ordered this. It was amazing. Crunchy, fresh, and perfect. I like pumpkin, too, and I learned to make stuffed pumpkin flowers in a cooking class in Yangshuo, but the vines are even better. Now I know not to waste it - sautée it in some garlic and olive oil, and we're in business.
鹑蛋 Chun dan - Quail eggs. This is, hands down, the cutest food I've ever seen. They usually appear on sticks as street food - fried in Xi'an, boiled in Hengyang. They can be pan-fried, or added into 麻辣烫 ma la tang, a spicy broth with the customer's choice of cheap meats, local veggies, and ramen noodles. There was a man with a street food cart near school I used to patronize, and when he disappeared (administrative regulation?), a family with a nearby stall took over (essentially, with a cart in their living room). In the end, quail eggs taste just like chicken eggs, but are a fraction of the size.
肠粉 Chang fen - Rice sheets. People in southern China got petty creative with ways to eat rice. Not only are there rice, prepared a thousand ways, and rice noodles, prepared a hundred ways, but there are also rice...sheets. Rice powder is made into a watery dough, spread thinly onto a pan, topped with meat, corn, and lettuce, and rapidly steamed. The result is then scrunched by a hand-held blade into a wrinkly long lump, doused in soy sauce, and covered in the customer's choice of the typical breakfast toppings for noodles - preserved green beans, peppers, seaweed (me!), ginger, daikon radish, carrots, preserved cabbage, and more. It's a lovely breakfast for less than a dollar.
咸蛋 Yan dan - Salty eggs. Salty eggs are prepared much the same way as century eggs, save they sit in salt for at least a month instead of in less-desirable things. The difference is astounding. The flesh cures itself white, with a firm texture and a salty kick. The yolk turns bright orange, like a spectacular sunset, and crumbles a bit under the chopsticks or in the mouth. Usually, a salty egg is made from a duck egg, adding to the appeal. A nicely sliced half, still in the shell, is often served with a bowl of rice and toppings or atop a clay pot. So much better than century eggs.
蝎子 Xie zi - Scorpion. I thought it was a gimmick at Beijing's Wangfujie (read: foreigner bizarre street food haunt) but then a student's father ordered them for the group at a fancy Hengyang restaurant. They're hollow when cooked, crunchy like potato chips, with no flavor at all. The name is not to be confused with common 鞋子 xie zi, shoes.
海参 Hai Shen - Sea cucumbers. These are a very expensive delicacy. I don't know why. They don't taste like the sea, as oysters do, and they don't remind me at all of a cucumber. They're more like brown slugs with warts, and they have a slimy texture that's worse than their actual flavor. I think people order these more to be impressive than to actually enjoy them. I, for one, did not develop a taste, and I'm usually a huge fan of seafood.
蛇 She - Snake. I tried snake at a Wild Beast Feast once, and it was a bit like fish. In China, snake comes severed into chunks, skin and bones still attached. The unskilled can insert toothpicks into either end of the spine to het a handle on things before sliding the flesh off the ribs with one's teeth. My favorite snake dish came immersed in a bed of red peppers, spicy to the max, though after that restaurant closed, I only found snake served with green peppers - milder, but still delicious. Snake is fantastic, albeit expensive and hard to eat (but at least there's an alternative to chopsticks in this case!). I ordered snake for the big group dinner on my last birthday.
海星 Hai xing - Starfish. It was pretty exciting when Todd and I saw starfish on a stick on Beijing's Wangfujie. We ordered one, of course. It was huge, beautiful, fried in grease, and...sandy. That's my lasting impression of starfish - it was sandy. It really didn't taste like much else at all. Luckily, unlike scorpion, starfish is NOT a common item on Chinese menus.
臭豆腐 Chou dou fu - Stinky tofu. Yes, it really smells bad enough to warrant the name. It's a bit sulfuric. The taste isn't bad, but I attribute that more to the excellent pepper sauce (which could easily coat something else) than to the squares of black-and-crunchy-on-the-outside, white-and-mushy-on-the-inside tofu beneath it. Luckily, this is more of a Changsha specialty than a Hengyang one, so I generally only encountered it around the corner from the wet market.
豆腐 Dou fu - Tofu. Didn't think you could be surprised by tofu? China has more varieties than you could ever imagine. It has all the types we have, and then some. Hard, soft, white, brown, served hot, served cold, with meat, with herbs, boiled in water, fried in oil, on a stick, in a bowl...literally every way you can think of, and even some you can't. When you think you've tried them all, more appear.
肚子 Du zi - Tripe. When my Italian grandparents were alive, I never partook in the cow's stomach. As a Cantonese dim sum dish, however, it's not half bad. Just before I left Hengyang, Guangdong restaurants became popular, and one small dish contained the telltale honeycomb slices of tripe soaking in a fragrant tomato-chipotle sauce. It was unexpectedly excellent. It tickled the tongue going down. Like chicken feet, I don't think just any one would be good...but this one was.
冬瓜 Dong gua - Winter melon. Winter melon is quite possibly the largest piece of produce I've ever seen. It's bigger than most pumpkins (especially Chinese pumpkins). As a result, it's usually sold in sliced rounds, like wheels. The outside is a deep green, while the inside is nearly transparent white. It is mild, absorbing the sauce it sits in, and usually comes sautéed in a brown sauce or floating in a brothy soup with small clams in their shell. At LuFu Restaurant, however, it comes in a sweet coating like a cross between tempura and coconut shrimp batter. It's better than dessert. No one knows it's winter melon until they're told.
As you can see, eating in China is an experience like no other. Food is, by far, one of the top things I'll miss. Such simple ingredients, cooked in simple methods (even a wok on a sidewalk), make use of all available ingredients, combined in a myriad of ways, to produce some of the most amazing dishes I've ever tasted. Sometimes, the most unexpected places and things provide the best flavor of all. Try some for yourself.
P.S. Let's not forget, too, that in Vietnam Melody, Todd, and I tried silkworms. That was a no.
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