No Tip, No Problem: Food in China

I would like to first say that Chinese food in the United States does not even compare to the food in China.  The food here is absolutely unbelievable.  They have some of the most amazing dishes that I have ever had in my entire life.  This post will hopefully portray what it is like to eat here in China.

The Basics

First off, food here is cheap, really cheap.  Typically, when I eat at a restaurant here in China I will pay about 1-3 US dollars for a complete meal and a beer.  It's awesome.  Most of the restaurants that I go to are very small family run restaurants.  This means that the entire family owns and operates the place.  The husband and wife will usually cook the food while their child takes the orders from the customers.  The husband and wife will sometimes take the orders as well.  As soon as you walk into a restaurant you are handed a menu and the waiter or waitress (if you can really even call them that) will stand right next to you and wait for you to order your food.  It's very interesting, and easy.  We have befriended one of the family members at a family style restaurant near campus and he usually sits with us while we are eating.  He loves when we come in.  He can barely speak any English and we can barely speak any Chinese; however, that doesn't stop him from constantly talking to us in Chinese very quickly.  We usually have no idea what he is saying.  Nevertheless, I would consider us all friends.

Almost every restaurant that I have eaten at has a poster board of the restaurant's rating.  And every restaurant has this same exact rating for the most part:

I honestly have no idea what the qualifications are for this grading system, and I really don't want to.  Regardless of the 'C' rating, the food is delicious, and extremely cheap.  There is also no tipping in China, hence the title.  If you even try to leave extra money for them, a member of the family will chase you down to give the money back.  It's pretty cool.

The Menu

The menu's at these restaurants probably look like the most confusing thing anyone has every seen.  They are pretty much just a sheet of paper with a ton of Chinese characters.  Check it out:

These menu's are extremely complicated; however, I have become determined to understand them.  Obviously, being able to order food is pretty important, so I have taken the time to copy down the menu on the left and translate it.  Here are some pictures of the work I have done.  I organized the translation into 3 sections: Chinese characters, Pinyin, and English.  Here is my work:

Translating the menu probably took me about 5+ hours in total.  The Chinese characters took most of the time.  Thankfully, our Chinese teacher during orientation, YiFan, gave us the PinYin translations for the entire menu as well as the English translations.  Copying down the Chinese characters and translating them into Pinyin and English was extremely helpful for me.  It not only allowed me to order food, but I became increasingly familiar with some of the characters that were used a lot.  I now know how to write some characters by heart and also understand the meanings of them.  Though it took a lot of time to do this, it was one of the most gratifying and rewarding things I have done.  I can now go into a restaurant and order food; however, I do usually need to bring my notebook in so that I can order dishes... It is very difficult still.

The Food

The food at these restaurants typically will look like this:

Here I am at a HotPot restaurant.  HotPot is very popular here in Sichuan Province.  Basically we have a burner in the middle of a table that is constantly heating a pot of oil in which we dip our meat and vegetables into.  It is very delicious.  Here is some action shots of me using chopsticks, like a pro:

Here are some dumplings.  This is one of my favorite foods I have had so far.  I eat dumplings a lot....

And some fried rice...

Some chow mein...

Below is a very popular style of food here in Pengshan.  It is similar to HotPot; however, there is no burner underneath the bowl full of food.  I have had this a few times.  The first time I had it was absolutely shocking.  The Chinese will cook the entire animal, especially chicken.  The first time I had this style of food we had a bowl full of hot oil with vegetables and chicken.  The chunks of chicken in the bowl still had bones in them.  The bowl even included the chicken feet.... It was quite surprising when we first noticed the chicken feet in the bowl.  All of the Americans at the table looked at it in disgust.  We were even more shocked when one of the Chinese girls we were eating with said that the chicken feet were her favorite part.  She then picked up the chicken feet and started to gnaw the meat off of the bone.  There was no way I was going to even attempt to do that...  This picture is from another restaurant that did not include the chicken feet in the bowl, thankfully.  Unfortunately, by the time I realized that I should take a picture of the dish, we had basically eat the whole thing.  It used to be filled to the top...

Another thing that the Chinese do at the table is spit the bones from the meat directly onto the table or the floor.  This took me a while to get used to, but as you can see, I can do it with no problem now.

Elegant Restaurants

On occasion, the administration has treated us to meals at very upscale restaurants.  I have no idea how much the food actually costs because I have never seen the bill; however, I would imagine that it is still cheap by US standards.  I also have never seen the rating scale that I have shown above on the walls at these restaurants; although, I would guess they have an A rating.

Here is a picture from a very nice restaurant that we dined at in Chengdu:

There are a lot of different dishes on the table as you can see.  First of all, every meal that we are served comes with tea, not water.  On the far left is duck and the head is still attached and fully cooked.  Like I said earlier, the Chinese cook the entire animal, head included.  Just below the duck is an eggplant dish.   I have never touched eggplant in my life, you can even ask my parents to confirm.  However, I now love eggplant.  This eggplant dish is absolutely amazing.  I have no idea how they cook it, but I love it. I can't really remember what the other dishes were, but I can definitely remember that they were absolutely delicious.

This next section consists of pictures from the nicest restaurant that we have been to.  I cannot remember the name of the restaurant, but I know exactly where it is.  I will surely have to bring my family there at least once when they come to visit.  The food is absolutely amazing.  Not only is the food amazing, but also the atmosphere of the restaurant.  It is extremely nice.

Here are some pictures of the banquet rooms that we have eaten in:

The table before we sat down.  The table has an automatic lazy susan.  It's awesome.

Panorama view of the table.  Clearly I need some work on taking those kinds of pictures...

The tea and smoking room in the banquet room that we dined in:

The table set up:

And the chandelier above the table:

And finally the food that we were served:

Here is a vegetable dish.  I'm not completely sure what was in it other than asparagus.  It was extremely spicy though, so I only ate very little.

And of course, Duck:

And some type of fish.  Before and after.  Clearly it was delicious.

 Some sort of meat with peppers and an egg.  Also delicious.

Some shrimp.  Like I said, the Chinese cook and present the full animal.  We had to peel off the shell, legs, and head.

Another type of meat.  This dish was also extremely delicious.

I have absolutely no idea what these are; however, as one can imagine, they are delicious

My all time favorite dish to get anywhere I go: twice cooked pork.

And the famous eggplant dish that I absolutely love.

Some sort of vegetable with chicken.

And the final dish that was brought out was a beautiful platter of different types of fruit.  Consisted of grapes, watermelon, and dragon fruit.

Throughout the dinner with the administration, we constantly made many toasts.  So I drank a lot of Baijiu, which means clear liquor.  The baijiu that we had at the dinner is a very famous brand and the name of it means "800 year old liquor."  It is said that if you drink this baijiu, you will live 800 years.  I find that hard to believe, especially after what I put my body through for four years of college... Nevertheless, baijiu is pretty rough to drink.  Thankfully the shot glasses are relatively small.

Here is a picture of me toasting with baijiu:

And finally, post-meal:

We ate just about everything at the table and certainly drank all of the alcohol.  The food was absolutely delicious as I have stated many times already.  All of the dishes that we had at this very fancy restaurant are also available at the family style restaurants.  

Cooking For Ourselves

Thankfully, in our apartments we have small kitchens and we are able to cook for ourselves.  We had some of our Chinese friends come over one night to eat with us.  We were under the impression that we would cook for them; however, they cooked for us.  It was probably best that they did, because we didn't realized how the Chinese cook their food.  

Here are some pictures: 

Dragon and Lucy preparing the meal:

And this is what we made.  All very classic Chinese dishes.  The bottom dish is eggs and tomatoes.  On the right is twice cooked pork. On the left is cucumber and garlic in a type of soy sauce.  The dish in the back was brought by Dragon and Lucy.  I have no idea what it was, but it was delicious. 

And finally the picture I posted on Instagram (@jonoblae)

MSG, or weijing, is in every dish in China.  They use it on everything.  While Dragon and Lucy were cooking our food, Lucy asked where our weijing was.  We replied that we did not have any and she had the funniest response.  She looked at us with a shocked face and was in disbelief.  At supermarkets here in China you can find entire sections of the supermarket that are dedicated to only MSG. It is pretty ridiculous.  If you ask the cooks at a restaurant to not put any weijing on your food they will give you the same response that Lucy gave us.  I have heard that some people have been denied service from restaurants if they ask for no weijing.  It's crazy.  They absolutely love their weijing.  

And Finally...

There are some occasions when I really do miss American food.  I miss most of all the home cooking and the classic American dishes that my parents would cook.  I also really miss mexican food and deli sandwiches.  The bread here is always relatively sweet and is completely different than the bread in the United States.  However, whenever we go to Chengdu we are able to get a little bit of Western food...

McDonalds! Whenever we need our fix of Western food we have gone to McDonalds in Chengdu.  A burger has never tasted so good.  I wish they had an In-N-Out or at least some other burger restaurants in the area; however, McDonalds works.  The burger tasted pretty damn good, especially since it had been so long since I had eaten a burger.  However, you still get the same feeling after eating a McDonalds burger in China that you would in America.  You feel like shit.  Although, that is the price to pay in order to eat some western food in China.  

I think I'll stick to the Chinese food...

Hope everyone enjoyed this post.  I will be sure to post more about food as the year goes on.  I imagine that I will be introduced to a lot of different types of food while I am here and I will be sure to blog about it.  

-Jono