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Penguins outside my office!

November 10th, 2011 by Johanna | 1 comment | Filed in China, Food, Life

The candy man staked out in front of my office today at lunch. Naturally, he and his cart captured my attention with all its colorful, sugary goodness. So many kinds of gummy candy! Gummy bears, gummy lychee, gummy Coke bottles, gummy worms, sour gummies…. Then, I noticed these!

March of the penguins.

Gummy penguins! My sister introduced me to these adorable gummy candy last year when she found them at some candy store in the middle of nowhere. As an added bonus, they were peach-flavored, my favorite! These ones are blueberry, though, and a bit pricey at 25 kuai per 500 grams (about $3.94 a pound). I snatched some up right away, spending my last 10 kuai before I realized I could’ve probably bargained a little. Maybe. It wasn’t much, and I wish I could have bought more! The candy man said he only rarely comes to my office — which is true. I’ve only seen candy being sold during lunch maybe once or twice. Now I can only hope our paths will meet again one day :(

Another pic after the jump! (more…)

The giant mango

October 14th, 2011 by Johanna | Leave comments | Filed in China, Food

I bought a giant mango. How giant? How about 1.5 kilograms of giant?

"I could swallow you whole. But you can't swallow me whole."

That’s, like, 3 pounds. It cost me, though. I paid 30 freakin kuai ($4.71) for it. But it was good. I treat myself so well.

The evolution of a street at lunch time

October 11th, 2011 by Johanna | Leave comments | Filed in China, Food, Life, Work

If I ever had any doubts about the reality of a rapidly developing China, they may be tempered by the explosion of lunch time choices available to me right in front of my office. When I first started working here food carts parked on the sidewalk carried little more than unappetizing pre-prepared he fan, a takeaway box of rice with two or three kinds of dishes, usually a meat and stir-fried veggies. And back then, there were maybe one or two people with a Styrofoam ice cooler.

Fast forward 1.5 years, and now this place is teeming with vendors. There are still hefan sellers, but they are competing with 10+ other vendors who are selling much more creative things. We’ve only gotten more and more options as time went on.

The veterans:

  • Upgraded hefan carts that allow you to choose which dishes to go with your rice; usually there are six or so dishes to choose from.
  • Roujiamo, a Chinese version of the hamburger, which can be filled with anything from chopped up pork to Chinese sausages.
  • Jianbing. Actually, this just appeared today (or recently), which I’ll explain in a minute. But for some time now, there has been a giant jianbing maker. Imagine making a crepe that’s the size of an XL New York-style pizza, then filling it with the sauce and fried dough and onions and cilantro and stuff. That’s how big these jianbings are. I tried one once. It was not very good.
  • “Sushi.” Just rolls with vegetables.
  • Fruit.

The ones who made it:

  • Liang fen/Liang pi, which is a cold dish with glass (starch) noodles, sliced cucumbers and other vegetables, tossed with a peanut sauce and oil.
  • Dumplings, now both steamed and fried, as well as fried baozi.
  • Cheap ice cream. This is gone now as the temperature has gotten colder.
  • Deep-fried squid balls, a Taiwanese street snack.

The noobs:

  • Wonton noodle soup. Seriously, what? I can’t even find wonton soup in most restaurants, and now it’s being sold on the street.
  • Chuanr. The ubiquitous skewers that are everywhere.
  • Roasted sweet potatoes. Technically, this is a seasonal snack, and they’ve been around before, but I’m putting it here because it’s just come back.
  • Roasted chestnuts. MMMMMMM.

I’m sure I’ve forgotten one or two things. Every once in a while, the police will come and I’ll get caught in a stampede of flatbed tricycles fleeing the scene, with still-hot metal plates trailing heat and oil behind them.

These carts are also in addition to a revamped bloc of restaurants next to our office, which all got facelifts or were shuttered and replaced with fancier, chicer restaurants. This facelift, of course, meant that my kiosks selling breakfast/lunch street food, such as jianbing and shaobing jia ji dan, and bubble tea were both dismantled. But today, as I mentioned earlier, I saw an extra jianbing cart out on the street in front of my office. And who was running it? The same lady who used to work at that breakfast stand. Good to know she’s back in business.

Speaking of bubble tea, when I first started working here, there was no bubble tea. That changed last year when the bubble tea kiosk on the small street next to my office. (Perhaps you’ll remember it as the one that got knocked down and came back as a tent at the start of summer.) Since then, two more ‑ or three, if you count the one going in the opposite direction ‑ have opened, which either shows the popularity of the drink in China or the lack of imagination of Chinese business owners. But I can’t get enough of the stuff, so I’m not complaining.

And the best news: my tea shop is closed temporarily again. Seems they are building a sturdier structure made of wood and metal. Might be good for my tea shop boys come winter.

Signs of life!

August 17th, 2011 by Johanna | Leave comments | Filed in China, Food, Life

At some point last week, I peered into my basil pot and saw that the soil was all dry and had receded. I mean, the soil line was, like, a good inch lower than it was when I first filled the pot. I’m not really sure why.

I panicked. I was so busy keeping the temperature constant that I’d forgotten to water my plant! So I swooped up the pot and ran to the kitchen sink and blasted the tiny, helpless seeds with water. Ugh. Now there were water holes in the soil, and I’d flooded the seeds. There really is something wrong with me. Dismayed, I tried to smooth out the soil with my fingers and un-bury my future basil plants.

Then, on Sunday, seven days after I’d sowed the seeds, I tentatively peered into the cup. I thought I was seeing things! So I put on my glasses and looked again. Something’s totally growing in there! Look:

One week old.

I did it! I got something to grow! My killer green thumb is now doing the opposite. Onto the next step. Something about selecting the stronger-looking ones and getting rid of the pussies. Right. When am I supposed to do that?

Exercising my green thumb

August 8th, 2011 by Johanna | Leave comments | Filed in China, Food, Life

I’m growing basil. Well, I’m TRYING to grow basil. I have a notorious killer green thumb. I bought this basil pot in, like, February, so I hope it’s still growable. Anyway, now you can follow its progress with me!

Please, please something grow.

Here it is, at planting time. Maybe I should name it? But I’m going to eat it, so maybe not.

The instructions say that basil will begin sprouting after about seven to 10 consecutive days of temperatures between 21 degrees to 25 degrees Celsius. And that’s it! Not very instructive. Unfortunately, it’s about 10 degrees Celsius warmer in Beijing. Does this mean I should turn on the air conditioner to make it a constant 25 degrees? Or will it be OK with the temperature fluctuations? Help! I need advice!

Things I have eaten recently

July 16th, 2011 by Johanna | Leave comments | Filed in China, Food, Life, USA! USA!

A few weeks ago, I wished for decent goi cuon, the delicious, wonderfully fresh Vietnamese spring rolls. This is a summer staple in my family, and my mother made me all jealous and homesick when she told me they were making some on their beach holiday with a bunch of family friends. But HA. Enter Susu, a new upscale Vietnamese restaurant hidden in a hutong near the heart of the city. For less than 100 kuai, I can roll about eight of these babies myself. So last week, I did!

Clockwise from bottom left: Rice vermicelli, leafy veggies and rice paper wrapper, pork and shrimp, and the finished product.

Unfortunately the noodles were too crunchy, the pork and shrimp were tasteless, and the fish sauce was too sweet. (Plus I had to ask for more fish sauce after every single roll because they only gave me a tiny bit every time. WTF?) But still good enough to eat.

I also got around to having my Fourth of July hot dog about five days later. This is the same chili cheese hot dog that I got two years ago, on my first July 4th in China.

Yay America!

And finally. I returned from England with just a box of wine gums, to my dismay, and none of the other goodies England has to offer. But one morning, on a convenience store breakfast run before work, something caught my eye:

"Jia fa dan gao."

It’s a box of Jaffa cakes with Chinese characteristics. This cannot be good, I thought. Especially since it’s got blueberry jam, and not the usual orange. So I bought a box because I love Chinese bastardizations of Western crap, and sure enough, it was awful. Very crumbly. It was so bad that I can’t even remember what it tastes like, just the general feeling of regret for putting it in my mouth and chewing it. Oh well.

The quest for bun, or how my food cravings can be satisfied in Beijing

June 15th, 2011 by Johanna | 1 comment | Filed in China, Food, Life

I love Vietnamese cuisine, especially in the summer when its refreshing dishes are often served cold. And its use of uncooked dipping sauces for flavoring is a great alternative to the greasiness and saltiness of Beijing fare. (I really love fish sauce!) As of late, anything Vietnamese has been my favorite food.

You’d think that, with Vietnam so close to China and its food sharing many similar ingredients with some regional Chinese cuisines, that good, cheap Vietnamese wouldn’t be so hard to find. You would be wrong, like I was, though. I mean, why would you pay more than 6 bucks for a bowl of pho? You don’t even have to do that in the U.S., and if you do, it’s a total rip-off. But alas, any foreign cuisine, even if it’s Asian, automatically means developed country prices, so my limit for a bowl of pho is 40 kuai. They can be 60 RMB or more here.

There are actually quite a few Vietnamese restaurants in Beijing, including two popular ones in my second home of Sanlitun. One is pretty expensive and not worth the price; the other has French influences and a hefty menu that makes it too easy for me to run up a pricey tab. There’s also a couple of sketchy-looking banh mi shops that have gotten decent reviews. At any rate, I’ve never really cared for banh mi, but now that I think about it, I’m kind of craving one.

None of these places beats my small neighborhood Vietnamese dive. This is exciting! We’ve been frequenting this place near once a week since we moved. The first time we went, it was just us. The second time, one person came in for takeaway. Now, every time we go, there seems to be more and more diners. It’s affordable: a large bowl of pho is 20 kuai ($3.08) and if you get a combo meal, you get a tiny side and drink for about a buck more. The dish itself isn’t as amazing as what you’d find in the U.S. because the quality of ingredients in China just isn’t there, and the ratio of noodles to beef always errs on the side of the noodles, but I am more than satisfied with the broth (never too oily or sweet) and the fact that $3 still gets me all the trimmings (basil, bean sprouts and a lime wedge).

My only complaint about this restaurant is that its menu is rather limited. It has three kinds of pho (with beef, beef tripe and chicken) and a rice dish that came with grilled pork. It has sides of include chicken wings, spring rolls and fish cakes. Basically, I only eat the pho.

But then, to my delight, when boyfriend and I went last night, the place was nearly full and they had expanded their menu. (They also raised their prices slightly, but not by too much.) In addition to pho and rice dishes, they had bun, which is pronounced like boon and you have to inflect your tone up. I’ve been craving this dish ever since I had it in Yunnan at my mommy’s second cousin’s house. I’ve actually had it, or similar, a couple of times already (in London and last Friday at Muse), but my craving just won’t go away! MMMM crispy lettuce and vegetables, cold rice noodles and grilled pieces of pork. I could eat this all day. Bun is also really fun to say, like a balloon inflating.

Now if only I can find a place that serves banh cuon, banh beo and decent goi cuon…

Anhui teaser

March 2nd, 2011 by Johanna | Leave comments | Filed in China, Food, Travels

More to come about my trip to Anhui later, but here was one of the highlights of my trip:

Mmm...can you smell that yet?

It’s chou doufu (stinky tofu), Anhui-style! Delicious. It’s a distinctive charred black, not the usual deep fried tofu brown color, and it’s actually made with dou gan (dried tofu) instead of regular tofu.

For those people who can’t stomach the smell of normal stinky tofu, Anhui-style stinky tofu is here to help you see what it’s all about. It’s still stinky — but only when you get up close to it. Maybe I’m used to the smell, but I could ignore the stinkiness a lot more easily in Anhui than in Beijing, where I can smell the stinky tofu carts before I even see them.

Riddle me this

January 16th, 2011 by Johanna | Leave comments | Filed in China, Food, Life, Reflections

One of the truer stereotypes of the Chinese is that they take their cuisine seriously. While rapid development and modern demands of society are deteriorating their allegiance to good food, it is still generally expected that people know how to — and do — cook. Even though more and more Chinese are eating out, they still mostly cook at home.

At least, I think this is true. Now I’m having doubts.

Why, oh why, is it so hard to find an apartment with a decent kitchen in Beijing? Even the one I have now, in my rather nice apartment, comes with barely two square feet of counter space. At least it has three gas burners and a divided sink with a vegetable washer. Of the six apartments we saw yesterday, one had two electric burners, two had two REALLY old gas burners, two had two new ones, and one had one gas burner. And none had an oven.

Apartment search did not get off to a very promising start.

China is not cheap

December 22nd, 2010 by Johanna | Leave comments | Filed in China, Current Events, Food, Life

Really.

The whole “China is cheap” myth is one I believed until after about three months of living in China. Now, a small, non-scientific study comparing cost of living in Boston and Hangzhou, a small city just outside of Shanghai, illustrates my point perfectly:

While not exactly a scientific study, Wang admits, the exercise reveals that a surprising 10 [out of 19] of the food items, including green beans and bananas, were more expensive in China. In Hangzhou, a scenic coastal city near Shanghai, the price of beef brisket per 1.1 pound, or 500 grams, and the cost of a dozen eggs were both double the prices found in Boston. A liter of milk, meanwhile, was nearly triple.

Hangzhou’s premium gasoline was also 23% more expensive, and the overall price of the entire basket of goods purchased there was 8% higher.

The average per capita income in Hangzhou in 2009 was 26,864 yuan, or $4,024, according to the Hangzhou local government. Boston’s was $32,255.

In short, things are more expensive here, and we make less money. And prices aren’t going down. The consumer price index reached 5.1 percent in November, a 28-month high, and food prices surged 11.7 percent. The government is again raising gas prices, too. News reports have been heavily focused on inflation related to the soaring housing and food prices, which alternately has caused a lot of worry and little worry among consumers.

For me, I have seen my liter of milk — that’s about a quarter of a gallon — go from 11.90 RMB ($1.79) when I first came last year to 15.90 ($2.39) today. Eggs are 24.90 RMB for a 25-egg carton, or $1.88 for a dozen. Ground beef is about 20 RMB for 500 kilograms, or $3 per pound. Chicken and pork are slightly more expensive.

But there are cheaper things as well, such as carrots, onions and potatoes.

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