Growing up, I went through food phases. I\u2019d decide that my favorite thing to stuff my face with was strawberry cream cheese or peanut butter and jelly and then eat only strawberry cream cheese or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for months at a time. Taking me out to restaurants wasn\u2019t easy. I\u2019d forego looking at the menu, opting instead for the finest chicken fingers the establishment could manage. Of course, I still wanted everyone to think I was adventurous. I\u2019d order escargot then douse them in as much butter and garlic as possible so that I might as well have been eating a Cheddar Bay Biscuit from Red Lobster.<\/p>\n
While my taste buds have matured past thinking that bologna is top-cut meat, I still refuse to eat certain foods. I knew that coming to China would present culinary challenges, but hey, there\u2019s always McDonald\u2019s right?<\/p>\n
I dipped my toes\u2014or tongue, if you will\u2014into the Chinese food scene slowly, warming myself up with \u5bab\u4fdd\u9e21\u4e01 (g\u014dng b\u01ceo j\u012b d\u012bng \u2013 Kung Pao Chicken). The dish is a safe choice and available at almost any restaurant if you ask. It\u2019s made with wine-glazed diced chicken, peanuts, and some combination of stir-fried carrots, peppers, onions, Sichuan peppercorns and garlic. Originally from the southwestern Sichuan province, Kung Pao Chicken has invaded the menu of almost every regional Chinese cuisine. Why? It\u2019s delicious and hard to mess up.<\/p>\n
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Next I became infatuated with \u56db\u5b63\u8c46 (s\u00ecj\u00ec d\u00f2u \u2013 green beans). Green beans you say? What\u2019s so Chinese about green beans? When you throw in ground pork shavings, and enough \u9ebb (m\u00e1 \u2013 tingly flavor) and \u8fa3 (l\u00e0 \u2013 spicy flavor) to fuel your work bathroom breaks for a week, you get a much different dish than bland old green beans. This is the dish that finally turned me on to spicy food. I asked the \u670d\u52a1\u5458 (f\u00faw\u00f9yu\u00e1n \u2013 server) to add progressively more peppers and peppercorns until my tolerance to spice was at a level high enough to enjoy more daring epicurean offerings.<\/p>\n
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Of course, even the spiciest of spice connoisseurs needs a break every once in a while. For that, there\u2019s \u756a\u8304\u7092\u86cb (f\u0101nqi\u00e9 ch\u01ceo d\u00e0n \u2013 stir fried egg and tomato). The name of this dish says it all, but it can\u2019t possibly make you understand how good the two ingredients can be when played off each other. A good chef will add just a hint of sugar, an element I never expected to be so delicious with egg and tomato.<\/p>\n
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Slowly, and with encouragement from those who eat family-style meals with me, I learned to love Chinese food. In fact, foods that I am loath to eat back home in the United States I jump at the opportunity to eat here. What do you think of when you hear the word tofu? Tofurkey? Tofu burgers? Generally meh cubes of nothingness? That\u2019s what I thought too. Then I tried \u5bb6\u5e38\u8c46\u8150 (ji\u0101ch\u00e1ng d\u00f2ufu \u2013 home-style tofu) and \u9ebb\u5a46\u8c46\u8150 (m\u00e1 p\u00f3 d\u00f2ufu \u2013 stir-fried tofu in chili sauce) and \u8c46\u8150\u5377 (d\u00f2ufu ju\u01cen \u2013 tofu balls) and realized that it wasn\u2019t tofu I didn\u2019t like, it was the flavorless way it was prepared.<\/p>\n
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Chinese food goes far beyond chicken and rice. There are Yunnanese mushrooms and Shanghainese soup dumplings. There are Xinjiang lamb kebabs and Shaanxi pork burgers. In fact, there are eight \u201cGreat Regional Cuisines of China\u201d: Sichuan (\u5ddd\u83dc \u2013 Chu\u0101n c\u00e0i), Hunan (\u6e58\u83dc \u2013 Xi\u0101ng c\u00e0i), Guangdong (\u7ca4\u83dc \u2013 Yu\u00e8 c\u00e0i), Fujian (\u95fd\u83dc \u2013 M\u01d0n c\u00e0i), Zhejiang (\u676d\u83dc \u2013 H\u00e1ng c\u00e0i), Anhui (\u5fbd\u83dc \u2013 Hu\u012b c\u00e0i), Jiangsu (\u82cf\u83dc \u2013 S\u016b c\u00e0i), and Shandong (\u9c81\u83dc \u2013 L\u01d4 c\u00e0i). And those primarily just cover the east! With a wide range of culinary influences and offerings, China was always bound to have something I liked. It just took me opening my mind and stomach to something new to realize it.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Growing up, I went through food phases. I\u2019d decide that my favorite thing to stuff my face with was strawberry cream cheese or peanut butter and jelly and then eat only strawberry cream cheese or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for months at a time. Taking me out to restaurants wasn\u2019t easy. I\u2019d forego looking…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":7672,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,1],"tags":[122],"post_series":[],"class_list":["post-7665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-china","category-learn-mandarin-online","tag-chinese-culture","entry","has-media"],"yoast_head":"\n