August 8, 2003
(Hey, Tom: This is everything I know about Chinese food.)"Cai" is Chinese for food, but it's pronounced more like "chur." Pinyin sucks. Dongbei cai is fantastic. ![][1] The food in northeast China doesn't enjoy the same sort of reputation that some of the other provincial cuisines do, like Hunan, Canton or Sichuan. Or Sizhuan, Sechuan. Freakin' hate pinyin. And Wade-Giles. Food from the South (like Cantonese) is lighter and boasts a more delicate presentation. It's also a bit sweeter. I'm sure you're familiar with the saying that the 'Cantonese eat anything on the ground that isn't a car, and anything in the sky that isn't a plane.' Things like scorpions and cats and pig's rectums.Thus, when you hear someone (Chad) say, "Man, that deer penis really tore me up last night," you can expect it to be said truthfully and with a straight face.Dongbei cai makes up for its supposed lack of sophistication through variety. Yet another benefit to having your country sacked and conquered numerous times by foreign devils, the culinary culture they leave persists long after they've been vanquished.Jinzhou sits equidistant between Beijing and Pyongyang, and it's about that same distance again northwards to Outer Mongolia and Russia. Out a ways in the sea is Japan. The dongbei has been Manchu, Mongol, Russian, Japanese and Han over the years. Koreans are scattered everywhere. There's also unknown numbers of minority Uyghurs, Turkic holdouts from the Silk Road days.Mediating all of that is Beijing's proximity and influence. Imperial Court cuisine, the ancient food style developed for emperors, is the dominant dongbei regional approach to flavors and cooking methods. If I keep making absurd, unsubstantiated assertions like that, someone will catch me.What I ate: look at it like this -- I earned what felt like $3,000/month (actually $411/month); I could comfortably survive eating Jinzhou street food for $1/day. If I spent $10 per day eating out, I was living pretty high. $10 on a single meal meant production value, costumes, presentations. ![][2] Tsing Tao costs $0.36 for the big bottle (655 ml). Local Jinzhou brew goes for $0.12 per big mug or bottle. Savvy drinkers know which restaurants offer free beer and baijiu. Smart drinkers know to avoid too much free Chinese anything.Randomly...Hot pot -- this dish can be either Mongolian or Sichuan style; I prefer Sichuan, which simply means a spicier broth. Food is cooked at the table in a large, simmering bowl of broth. The bowl sits in the center of the table and is usually divided ying-yang style, one side of the bowl for spicy broth, the other for mild. It can be made as insanely hot as you could ever hope. It's an oily hot. The day-after effects are wrenching. Ring of fire? Ring of napalm.Food without friends is meaningless, and I associate eating hot pot with both Song Jia and Leevon. Song loved the stuff as hot as possible. He would eat until the heat made him sneeze.Cooking or eating Chinese food can be a little dangerous, owing to the amount of fire involved. A bubbling cauldron of hot pot attacked Leevon once -- sent flaming hot chili oil onto his arms, into an eye. In retrospect, I felt bad for laughing, but at the time, I really didn't know what all he was screaming about.Korean food made for a nice change, and the restaurants always seemed cleaner. Pricier too. Korean barbecue was especially good. Servers would grill thinly sliced pieces of meat at the table. The tender, cooked pieces were then dunked into a soy and vinegar mixture, wrapped in either a tree or lettuce leaf with a little kimchi added, then eaten. Perfect. ![][3]Duck. I love ducks. They're cool animals, what's not to like? They're also just tasty enough that I have no problem eating them by the dozen. Beijing Duck is probably the most famous imperial dish, a recipe that goes back a couple of U.S. histories in time.Beijing Duck dinners were a once a month must for me. A full dinner would set me back about $10, pretty extravagant by local standards. The roast duck is always presented and sliced tableside, with the chef ideally getting 120 slices of the perfect balance of skin, fat and flesh. The duck is eaten wrapped in thin pancakes, dressed with raw scallions and dank, salty bean sauce. It goes perfectly with cold Tsing Tao. The old recipe may not survive much longer in its namesake city, though. Beijing air quality is dismal and wood fired ovens don't help. Restaurants are looking into alternative cooking methods, but I'm guessing that a black market trade in authentic style duck will develop regardless -- Beijinger's won't be without their original recipe.On the other end of the price and formality spectrum is yangrochuar, basically lamb on a stick. The best stuff is usually made by Uyghurs, Muslims from far, far away who've lived in China a long, long time. Thin skewers of lamb are charcoal grilled on the street, seasoned with cumin and pepper. Three sticks for $0.12, perfect drunk food.Produce in Jinzhou is cheap and plentiful, lots of seasonal flux. If you can get past the fact the most of it is grown with night soil and (probably) cold-war era pesticides, you'll be in paradise. Big and small fruit, vegetable and meat markets sprawl everywhere. Shitake mushrooms cost about $0.06/lb.I could regale you for days, but what you're really curious about is the sheep penis, isn't it? Sure, friends could argue that I've had worse in my mouth before, but for my money, the sheep penis takes all.It's actually not as bad as you might imagine, it's sort of tender yet turgid, like a custard or creamy tofu. Changes could be made to the presentation, though. Nothing is done to disguise the fact that there's now proof on your plate that sheep are far better endowed than you had probably thought.Sheep penis, donkey dumplings, silk worms...don't mistake me for an adventurous eater, either. I simply get trapped in situations. Like important dinners -- dinners where some dining companion or his business associate will lose face if I don't eat the flaming monkey semen provided. That's how I got boned on the sheep penis. ![][4] [1]: http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/wrongsideofthewall/foodblog1.jpg [2]: http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/wrongsideofthewall/foodbloghotpot.jpg [3]: http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/wrongsideofthewall/foodblogduck.jpg [4]: http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/wrongsideofthewall/foodblogkorean.jpg
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joakim (anonymous) says...
hey jamie,
i very much like reading your blogs on jinzhou, china : and in particular i absolutely devour your pics (especially the ones of chinese food : ). i'd say i even often find myself admiring you for your daring style of writing and for the personal side notes, of which a few reveal much more than would perhaps be expected in the first place. (aren't you ever afraid of losing your integrity?)
i hope you read this, that you're well (wherever you are) and that you will SOON take up contributing with more interesting stuff to this site:.
November 12, 2003 at 6:08 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
jgalante (anonymous) says...
Makes me want to go to China. Maybe now would be a good time. After all, Sallie Mae don't speak Chinese. I like your writing. Your personality really comes through in it. Now, if I can only find myself a sheep's penis and some stiff baijiu, I'd be a happy man. Wait, that doesn't sound right.
October 17, 2005 at 10:59 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )