During the break, my family and I were in China, visiting relatives in Beijing, going to museums and whatnot in Chengdu, and being fed absurdly good food everywhere. Above is a photo of me and one of my daughters, recovering after our nth feast.
I’ve spent a lot of time reading about China and thinking about China. I get it a bit now, but China is, well, a foreign country and they definitely do things differently there. Perhaps at some point I’ll post my very amateur thoughts. This trip was mostly about family and food, however, and that’s where my thoughts were. Just quickly, for a “brief” introduction to China and how it got there, John Keay’s history is great.
I learned more about China on the trip, of course, although by absorption rather than study. Most fascinating was Sanxingdui Museum outside of Chengdo, with its crazy bronze and jade masks from 3000 years ago.
And, there was a very old stone cat at the Shrine of Liu Bei and Zhuge Liang. (The Shrine was also fascinating.)
Now to the food. Melburnian readers may recall the hilariously named Dainty Sichuan from its hole-in-the-wall Smith Street days. If you loved Chinese food and you loved hot food then this was a great place, as long as you were not expecting anything remotely dainty and as long as you didn’t mind the Chinese customers whispering Gweilo as you entered. For those with such fond memories of Dainty Sichuan, a trip to Chengdu was to be treasured. For us, it began with the plate of rabbit heads.
OK, so that was a bit more Sichuan than I had intended. But, my daughter Eva braved one and so I had to as well. It was disturbing but delicious.
After that, and although there were still weird animal parts on occasion, the food was more palatable to a vanilla Westerner, and it was delicious. There was great kung pao chicken (and kung pao foie gras), with tons of Sichuan pepper, aka ma. (My brother Jeff and I once had a hilarious lesson from Ying, where she tried to teach us how to pronounce “ma” with the correct tone. It was reminiscent of the Get Smart “craw” bit.)
The highlight for me was the twice cooked pork, of which there were about four different versions. The best version was carved off a spit and was a heavenly combination of richness and wallop.
All the food was great. Even the noodles at breakfast were great, and a great wake-up call after evenings of drinking Chinese rocket fuel.
That’s it. There was no point to this post other than to make everyone jealous.
What a nice trip Marty! I trust the girls also enjoyed their happiest time ever, especially when they saw the adorable pandas.
Having stayed in Australia for almost 20 years I never found a zoo hosting pandas…maybe one day, when China and Australia get more lovey-dovey, they could lease a few pandas to Australia zoos…
In fact, the proper translation to “Ma2 [麻]” is “numb”.
The Chinese pepper used in Szechuan dishes, rather than being spicy (hot, “La4辣”), makes people feel numb in their mouth…some people love it but others don’t… Just like a tiny bit significant nuance between “differential” and “derivative”, I suppose.
Of course this is definitely one classic example – in future you will be surprised by the great variety of foods from China (similar to 246 kinds of cheese acknowledged by General de Gaulle…)
Now other than the “water of life”, congratulations on opening a door to the new choice – “Chinese Rocket Fuel”!!
Thanks, Legionnaire. Yeah, it was a great trip, and the kids had a blast, although they had had enough of museums by the end.
I realised when reading for this post that “ma” was properly “mala”, and that “ma” is the tingling rather than the spice. But we’ve always called it “ma”. I don’t know if that abbreviation is common. As for the Chinese rocket fuel, I’ve been drinking it for a long, long time.
Adelaide has pandas. I saw them there about fifteen years ago, and my younger daughter saw them there last year.
Chinese culinary experiences are fascinating, and most importantly, in different parts of China, you might find entirely different cuisines. As I person who was born and spent many years on the northern border with China, and then visited different parts of China, I am familiar with this phenomenon very well.
Thanks, Dr. M. Yes, I’ve had many different Chinese cuisines, and I know there are many more to discover.
Hi Marty
We were in Chengdu around July last year and it really was an amazing place. Brilliant food, Pandas and really great locals. Previously not often visited by non-Chinese that often, it is part of a huge area with so much stuff going on.
Second time in China and it really is clear that the attitude of people is overwhelmingly positive about how the country is progressing. I don’t think it was just put on for the visitors either because the pride in the place and can-do attitude was normalized
Cheers
SimonT
Yes, it is confusing. Obviously the government is nasty, but there’s more than that to be said.