Niu Rou Mian (aka Beef noodles)
I'm pretty much a creature of habit, and so because a good bacon, eggs & toast breakfast still seems rather hard to find around here sometimes, I'm often reduced to the local noodle breakfast. And then I tend to stick to just either zha jiang mian (mixed sauce noodles) or this. I've noticed the preparation varies slightly with each province though. Here in Hubei we see the chickpeas. I, Chongqing they used peanuts, in Xi-an neither. But the common thread is the spicy chilli, which I (only sometimes) remember to ask for without.
For centuries China stood as a leading civilization, outpacing the rest of the world in the arts and sciences, but in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the country was beset by civil unrest, major famines, military defeats, and foreign occupation. A... ... read more 
