Hungry? Let's Eat Real Chinese Food!

This is a long post.... get some popcorn!

I get into the shower and as I get out the phone rings. They want to come and get me now. Give me 20 minutes I tell them…..I throw on some clothes, put on a new face and get my laptop and presentation ready. No rest for the weary. Since we had never met, I had to take a guess that the business clad woman and her male companion were my Shanghai colleagues. How hard could it be to guess that I was the one they were looking for? Large blond woman with a rolling computer bag coming toward you had to be me. I was right and they were too. Although the office was within walking distance, (I didn’t know this at the time) we took a cab. It would have been faster to walk, (I am telling you, you cannot believe the traffic) but I was glad for the ride. By the time I completed the training it was 3:30, (2:30 a.m. at home). Now it is time to go from the meeting room to the offices. (I am going on 43 hours without quality sleep. What is wrong with this picture?) I am now doing paperwork, catching up on emails that I can’t do anything about at the moment (did I mention that I have about 3 other projects going on simultaneously?) and trying to stay awake while refraining from biting someone’s head off and spitting it into the garbage can. I pop off a few emails to home, copy a post here, and it is approaching 6 p.m. (5.a.m. at home; 45.5 hours; I want a bed). The new director of clinical operations stops by……….now they want to take me to dinner. “How nice, that would be lovely!” I say. I am crying on the inside. Thankfully the restaurant is in the office complex. Very nice restaurant and the food is good.

Let’s just take a few minutes here and discuss Chinese eating and Chinese food, shall we? I have learned that there is a difference in Chinese cuisine. It differs from region to region, just like our American food differs from north to south, east to west. Since Shanghai is a port city, seafood is quite popular. The northern regions like Beijing have more pork, chicken and beef, and there is Shanghai styles of food as well as Cantonese and Szechwan. The Chinese are very parsimonious, very frugal, and take pride in the fact that they don’t waste any part of an animal (sea type or land type). Keep that in mind for the future………… Being the adventurous type, I am more than happy to try anything. I don’t get squeamish about much, and feel that just because I don’t happen to eat what you eat doesn’t mean it’s not worth eating. I came here game to try it all. I have not been disappointed, but we’ll get to that later.

I have to tell kind of a funny story here before I go on. I ate breakfast on the plane, but it was after lunch by the time I got to the offices. The physician that I was traveling with came in a week before me. She is Chinese and I just adore her. She told me that they wanted to get me KFC or McDonalds for lunch. She told them “No, get her Chinese food!” She knew me well enough to know that that would be OK. KFC is the most recognized brand in China………….can you believe that? I probably would have laughed out loud had I come in to a lunch of KFC. They got Chinese fast food which was duck and something else, but never got a chance to even take a bite because we hit the ground running. I right this post at odd hours in the very early morning or very late at night, because I don’t have any other time.

I love the way the Chinese eat. For larger groups, the table is big and round with a lazy susan in the middle on which to place the various dishes. The first time I experienced this was in Los Angeles at a local Chinese restaurant that really had very few employees that spoke English. I just pointed to pictures and let them bring the food to my table. I wasn’t sure what I was eating, but the experience was fun. Anyway, eating is such an experience. There were 6 of us out to dinner. The meals start with appetizers. It is customary to have cold dishes and hot dishes. They seem to bring out at least 3 of each. Each person has a little plate. Not a dinner plate, more like a dessert plate. You just take a taste or two of everything that is on the table. There is always much more food than one can eat, but the Chinese custom is to leave something. If you eat all of the food you have indicated to them that they have not provided enough for you to eat. Everyone eats out of the community bowl or plate on the lazy susan. That works with chopsticks, but not so well with forks and knives. I didn’t attempt the chopsticks this time around. I just didn’t have a clue on how to use them and I was so tired I could barely hold the things I knew how to use. The utensils they brought me were huge, it’s like you have to rest the handle of the fork on your shoulder. We had octopus, smoked duck, frog’s legs, seaweed, jellyfish, some vegetable dishes; I can’t even remember everything they brought out. I like octopus, I have had that before, so far so good. Jellyfish looks like what you would expect it to look like…..I did taste it but it has little a grissly crunch to it like you are eating, well,……gristle. I had that look on my face like you get when you try to smile after eating something really gross…….you know one side of your lip goes up trying to smile and the other side is trying to pull it down…. the “Oh yes, this is good!” look while a shiver goes down your spine and your belly is trying to toss it out while yelling “What the H….did you just put in here?!” Smoked duck is good, and the fish was really good. The presentation was awesome. The whole fish in red sauce (not tomato, some kind of sweet sauce) with, I think scallops and shrimp mixed in. Just a note on seafood here; when you go into the restaurant and see the lovely fish tanks, they are not for decoration;………… it’s dinner……..they bring the flopping fish to the table in a bucket for the host to approve, shortly thereafter, flipper is on the table. Now that is fresh seafood! It is all done discretely, I never even noticed it this time, but I did watch for it at later meals and sure enough they did it. I guess it is not much different that picking a lobster out of a tank….. There were separate dishes with different kinds of mushrooms and shallots, sliced pork and all kinds of things. The dessert was a layered jello-type thing cut in chunks with red and pink layers, but it isn’t sweet. The pink layer is like a coconut or tofu layer. They really do not have sweets here. Of course, the guest of honor is offered the fish head……………. It is the best part, and that is the reason it is offered to the guest. While they gave me this information, they did not force it on me. Good thing…………while I am open to trying most anything, after almost 48 hours without sleep, I probably would have barfed it up on the table and then passed out.

Day 1 foods to remember: Octopus, Seaweed, Frogs Legs, and Jellyfish….tried them all and with the exception of the jellyfish, it wasn’t so bad. The only thing is that I am always surprised by bones in the food. The pieces served are small, but they don’t debone anything, so I have to constantly spit the bones out on the plate. Believe it or not, this is much easier to do with chopsticks than with American style utensils. Chopsticks give you the option of holding and eating the food without putting it all in your mouth at once. The bones can then be “sucked” clean of meat instead of sticking the whole piece in your mouth chewing it up and trying to spit out the offending structure.