China was one country my husband and I always wanted to visit. Although it was my first trip and my husbands second, he hadnt prepared me enough for the food-wise cultural shock I was to receive. When our china trip was being planned, I happened to catch one of my favorite shows on travel network of Bizarre foods in Guangzhou, China which happened to be the place we were visiting. I recorded it and hoped we would go to all those places and eat the bizarre food. What I hadnt prepared myself for was the extensity of the bizarreness in reality that was existing there.And what an adventure it was. We walked the streets and the little aisles, visited food courts, sat in restaurants and street stalls and witnessed the stangest of foods and ate what was edible...though most of it was not for the faint of heart. Many a times , our chickentarian friends travelling with us , would almost throw up seeing us eat or just looking at the food itself. The menus in restaurants were filled with dishes like pigs liver, trotter, intestine, guts, frogs, snakes, oxtail etc.
Dried Snakes, Centipedes, Slugs and Snails
Not a spare part was left uneaten. There's no wasting any parts for the chinese and thats the way we liked it. Although I would never eat intestine and guts for goodness sakes.Hongkong was a typical cosmopolitan place. Given its touristy nature, finding any kind of food here was easy. A one hour ferry ride from Hongkong took us to Macau which was definitely a hot spot for food. Since the early 16th century, it has been ruled by Portugese traders and was handed over to the People's Republic of China in the late 90's. The cuisine in Macua has a portugese influence to it. We visited one Portugese restaurant and all the dishes had a distinct portugese flair along with their chinese counterpart.
Oxtail Curry
Pork Chops With Portugese Sauce
Portugese Egg Tarts
Macau is very famous for its portugese egg tarts made of flour, eggs, margarine and milk, best eaten when it is hot. It is a very popular snack and is served in most bakeries.
After our visit in Hongkong and Macau we landed in Shenzhen, the chinese territory and believe it or not, we went tex-mex. Mainly because our wary friends were so smitten by the chinese food in hongkong for three days that tex-mex was a welcome sight for them. Not so for us, although it didnt turn out to be bad afterall.
Guangzhou was the turning point in our trip. We got to see so much of real stuff. Its amazing how countries differ with their culture, style, language and food. Its what separates us and makes us who we are. Coming back to reality, Guangzhou is a food lovers paradise. I love Dim sum. Back in the US, they only serve Dim sums for lunch. Apparently not in china. There it is mainly served on the streets and mostly for breakfast. Most restaurants we visited had a menu for dimsum and we had to order it off the menu, unlike in the US where they bring dimsum to you in different carts pushed by waiters.
Breakfast consisted of steaming soups, Barbeque pork buns, steamed rice dumplings, pastries filled with egg yolk (yuck!!!) and a lot of other fancy stuff. It was left to us to pick what we wanted and hoping it would be good. We spent most of our time scanning for street stalls or shacks to eat our breakfast and lunch. These eateries truly produce some amazing and authentic fare fit for hungry travellers like us who craved for food beyond imagination.
Evenings also consisted of street side food. We walked through streets where vendors were selling their dried snakes, centipedes, snails , snakes and fish. We walked through small aisles where groups of people played games on the road, blissfully unaware of the time or day. We visited a place called jade market where there were hundreds of stalls each consisting different kind of food, dedicated to different palates. Some had eye-catching chicken, shrimp, lobsters,octopus on skewers roasting while others had scorpions, snails, snakes and centipedes for snacks. Some had steaming soups and noodles so applealing while others had things that would literally make you throw up. Yet it was all a part of the game, a part of discovering the country, its cuisine, its variety and its way of life.
We soaked in the culture, the streets, filled with people constantly nibbling on these nick nacks every couple of hours , their ability to be active and healthy, and enjoy their life, blissfully ignorant of the tourists in awe of their cuisine and lifestyle. Despite language being a big barrier for most foreigners the people in China are friendly, helpful, efficient and amazing. We might want to learn a thing or two from them !!!
