Chinese Food

Chinese food is pretty strange in taste to Americans. The Chinese really do have their own pallet for taste. The food is all lightly fried at high temperatures and can vary from very spicy, sickeningly sweet, or incredibly bland. There are a few dishes I like which are basically lightly fried vegetables and lots of salt.

My favorite restaurants are of course the local ones. They're usually the first floor of somebodies home. Plastic table and chairs are crammed into a typically 20 x 20 ft. room and a kitchen out back which is often just outside. 

A particular favorite meal I had with Josh and Zack was in a small city. We walked for maybe an hour but only found chain restaurants. Eventually we walked far enough to cross the red-light district. Technically prostitution is illegal in China but it's all over of course. There's loads of ways they signal customers. One of the more common methods is pink striped barber polls/pink lite shop. Turns out red or I guess pink-light district was the area crammed with these family restaurants having nothing to do with the prostitution business. There was also somewhat of a night market with kids running around, it was all mixed together -very strange, but very China.

We found a good looking restaurant and sat down. Josh and I explained to Zack what we wanted and he ordered it. The room was white tiled floors with white concrete walls and blinding fluorescent lights. The food was served within five minutes of ordering as it pretty much always does in China. While eating I had to brush a cockroach off my leg -and this was one of the cleaner restaurants. I've had some pretty good luck not getting sick despite the risky food choices I've been making. It's worth it though, the food taste much better and it tends to be far less oily.

Speaking of oil, 10% of the cooking oil in China is recycled. By this I mean there is a market for people to wander around at night after the restaurants closed and collect oil out of sink drains and other waste liquid places. It's collected in barrels, sold, "purified," and then used again. Yum!

I'm tired of Chinese food but it still beats the American fast-food sold here. I miss coffee, bread, fresh fruit and vegetables.