Time to Eat

Hello Everybody! It's Sunday March 15th and it is offically day 18 of my trip. I have recieved a fairly consistent question via email so in this post will just discuss a bit about the food situation here China.

First, let's talk about the dinner styles here in China. In America, the dishes are past around and you take your food and put it on your plate. Not in China, here all the dishes are kept in the middle and you just grab and eat as you chose. For example, every evening our family has about 2 dishes of food and we all sit down and just grab and eat from the dish. We do have plates, but they are much smaller and aren't used as often as in America. For larger parties, like at a resturant, spin wehel is used where you just spin and stop on what you want to eat. This proves to be a test of patience when 8-10 people are at a table. But a tactic I often use is let others do the spinning and I just eat what stops in front of me.

Also, I just wanted to inform everybody that I am getting better with chopsticks. It is really a matter of survival for me. Either I use the chopstiks in a some what effective manner or I starve. And I am proud to say that I am becoming fairly fluent in using them. But, occasionaly when nobody is looking I take out my spork that I smuggled into the country and secretly use that. An Eagle Scout is Always Prepared.

The food here has been great. Yes it is extreamly different but it is still good. I have two motos when it comes to food here in China, One: Try everything at least once, and Two: don't tell me what it is until after I have eaten it.
Here are some of the more interesting dishes I have tried:
1)Squid- This is actually very common here and easy to find. Most commonly The body and tenticles are put on a stick and cooked over a fire. Then a sesoning or rub is sometimes added depending on the vender. The Squid was not bad. It was alot tougher than I expected and did have a fishy taste but it was good.
2)Mini Shrimp- In America, I have enjoyed typical shrimp that is peeled except for maybe the tail. Here the dish is different. In Beijing, we were served a dish that consisted of mini shrimp a little bigger than your thumb nail. And these babies are served as they were found in the ocean. The are dead, because they were boiled, but other than that they are as they found them. I was surprised at first for obviouse reasons, but did try it and actually enjoy it. They were extreamly crunchy but were sesoned very well. This is one of the dishes that I will try to learn to make and bring it back to the USA for all to try.
3)Unknown- I don't know the name but My american friend named Sanjay bought a little round fruit that was extreamly interesting. It was about and inch and a half diameter, and on the outside it had a red peel and looked almost like it had thorns sticking out from every direction, (It resembeled a red sea erchin). After peeling off the outside, a juicy white fruit was waiting inside. Unkown to the human eye though was a large seed inside the fruit, this fruit turned out to be very sweet but the apperence was deffenitly the highlight of the product.
4)Donkey- Donkey meat is almost as common here as chiken or pork. Not much need to be said about this other than it's donkey. It tastes like any other meat would taste except for one style of preperation. One thing you must understand about China is that they like to eat the fat with the meat, and who can blame them it is the most flavorfull part. But somtimes they get carried away. Some dishes and about 75-90 percent fat with a small sliver of the meat attatched to it. This happens with the donkey, as well as pork. They texture is intresting. It's almost like eating fat jello, but tasty none the less.
5)Fish- Back at home I frequently enjoyed fish whether it was salmon from Giant Eagle or fresh Walleye or Perch that my family had caught from Lake Erie. Either way, I have always loved fish and still do love the taste, however, the serving style here in China is MUCH different here. They cook the fish and prepare it with some very tasty sauces, put it on a plate and place it on your table; Bones, Fins, Tail, Head and all. You eat it but picking off the meat with your chop sticks. But the worst part is that the bones and meat are a package deal. You can't get one without the other. This becomes very problematic for very obviouse reason. Don't get me, wrong the fish tastes great but the bones not so much. I haven't mastered this dish yet, and I don't forsee a solution in the near future.

There have been many other fasinating dishes but I think this is enough to 'digest' for one post. I miss you guys a ton and hope all is well back in the good ol' US of A.
Love and Peace, Ben.