Ni3 chi1 le ma?--Have you eaten?

---

Not only is this sentence conveniently short and straight to the point but it is dual purpose: you can use it as a common greeting (like asking "how are you?" in the U.S. when you don't really expect a real or detailed answer). The numbers indicate the tones used since unfortunately my computer lacks capability to write them. Anyways, this particular entry is meant to detail some of the food I have encountered here so far. Though many of the pictures are not good quality (taken inside under low light without a flash), I still want to show them. So....here we go!

---

Photos

01--baozi
Baozi---note the colored dot on top....it indicates what kind of filling the baozi has. This one is chicken. Can be a snack or a meal depending on how many you buy.

02--baozi
the filling....

03--baozi
One of my favorites is the "sweet bean paste" baozi.

04
A rice dish wth slices of melon or squash of some kind with hot green and red peppers.

05--bike
Bicycle...one of the interesting things you can see sold in the parks are these artistic sugar/molasses designs on a stick. They are cool to look at but trick to eat I imagine.

06--flower something?
They even manage more than one color...not sure how though. Elaborate though.

07
Probably a bird of some sort....a phoenix perhaps?

08--sweet bean
There is an incredibly wide variety of ice cream to buy...though most of it is nothing to get excited about. Still, there are some STRANGE things the make in ice cream form. This one is sweet bean with milk ice cream on the oustide.

09
Blueberry.....

10
Turned out to be an ice coating with an interesting blueberry-ish flavor on the inside

11
The famous Sichuan meal called "Hot Pot". This soupy sauce comes in different varieties depending on where you eat. The inside layer is a fish based broth that is not spicey. The oustide ring is spicy. The point is to boil the side dishes (meat slices, cabbage, rice noodles, lotus root, spinach balls...etc) in the pot and fish them out later. It is easy to loose a lot of food in the bottom of these pots.

12--yogurt in a bag
I could almost spend an entire entry talking about the yogurt in China. Long story short: it's freakin' good!!!! Even though they have some strange packaging and even stranger flavors they all really good. Mung bean is one of my favorites.

13--yogurt in a bag
Another favorite turned out to be the Red Date yogurt. I even went as far as to buy a large carton (half a quart I think) to drink.

14--sushi
A smart student decided to start making sushi to sell at this little "everything" shop near our classrooms. Whoever it is profits well off us hungry language students.

15--sweets
Food from a sweets shop nearbye. The top left was some gross kind of sweet compact floury stick. The three were similar but not as sweet and tasted much better. The white and green one were some bean flavor and the dark one is sesame seed flavor. At the bottom is a kind a peanut brittle. Also good.

16--peach milk in a bag
Even stranger than the yogurt is the milk here. I tend to avoid it. This one was WAY too sweet.

17--peanut milk
Peanut milk.....actually tasted kind of good. Still...I have not bought it since.

18
Most bread in China appears in pastry form. Even the "normal" bread that you might try using for sandwichs are rather sweet and fluffy insubstantial. A pastry with some orange flavoring.

19--corn flavored ice cream
The outside is a light wafer shaped like corn, the ice cream really does tast like buttery corn too. Did I make my point about strange flavors?

20
A variety of food at one of the resaurants. Rice is not their thing so ordering rice to go with your dishes comes as this rice with tomato bits in it (instead ofthe more common plain white rice). The center dish with the red peppers is called "ma la dofu". By the time I took t he picture we had already consumed all the tofu though.

21
A sour soup. Many Chengdu Chinese like to have soup with every meal (usually served at the end) because it is good for filling you up if you are still hungry and it is warm.

22
Not all resaturants are equipped with the little paper take home countainers that can be so useful when you cannot finish all the food in one sitting. Those that don't have them just pour the food into a plastic bag like this. Yum.....

23
caramel/molasses covered red dates (i think). Sold on the street for cheap.

24--selling food on the street
You know...I am used to seeing fruit carts but this was a new one for me. Selling homemade potato chips, sweet potato chips, french fries, and dried sweet potato pieces. Bag them, weigh and buy.

25--yak meat pie
Whenever I tire of noodles or Sichuan style food I can head over to the "Tibetan Stuff Street" for some good tibetan food (no joke, that's really what it is called...at least in translation).

26
Our lunch: Yak butter tea, barley beer (a bit tangy and sour tasting), some kind of vegetarian soup, pickled vegetables jiaozi (the dumplings), and the yak pie. We had tsampa too but ate it all before I took the photo.

Comments

[Loeliger]

Wonderful
Dave and I really enjoyed your travel through the tastes of China. Interesting to see how many of the things you find interesting also exist in Japan under slightly different names -like Mabo dofu. It has been really fun to keep up with your semester in China through this blog.

[Jim]

Loved this!
Mal - I LOVED this pictoral commentary on food ... great job! dad