How to Do Chinese Food

The Basics

Generally speaking --- eating is most often done communally. When you sit down at the table, your place setting will include a tiny teacup, a rice bowl and chopsticks.

A variety of dishes are placed in the center of the table. Everybody gets a bed of rice in their rice bowl. Then, use your chopsticks to take a couple bites (not a helping!) of food from the shared dishes. Put these into your rice bowl, eat them, eat a little rice, and repeat.

You won't get much to drink during the meal, which is why soup is often included. You might drink 2-3 tiny teacups of green, barley, or jasmine tea.


Table Manners

Do:

• Use your chopsticks to put food in others' bowls.
• Say "eat more" and "eat slowly" to your companions.
  
• Serve more rice to others before serving yourself.
• Serve more tea to others before serving yourself.
• Spit your bones/gristle/etc. on the table top.
• Chew with your mouth open and make some noise to show that you're enjoying the meal. Little burps and belches are great.
• Express gratitude without repetitively saying "thank you". Instead, think of some indirect ways -- "This food is delicious!" "You ordered too much!" "This restaurant is so nice!" "Ooo I am so full." etc.
  

Don't:

• Begin eating before the most important person.
• Eat too voraciously, or you will be perceived as greedy.
• Eat too little, or others will think you don't like the food.
• Stick your chopsticks into your rice, standing straight up. Rude!
• Hog all the food from your favorite dish. Watch others and share nicely.
  

Scary Stuff?

On the whole, we find the common food to be appetizing and not very adventurous. However, you can easily find all kinds of innards, gelatinous blood, and unusual animal sources like frog, dog, snake, turtle, and some other slithery animals. We ate stuffed pig stomach for Chinese New Year, it was fine.


Eating at Restaurants

People often eat at restaurants because eating out is cheap, convenient and nutritious. You can pick up street-vendor food, stop in for a quick meal at a hole-in-the-wall joint, eat at a decent sit-down restaurant or blow your entire month's salary at a really nice place.

Western Restaurants: Changsha has McDonald's and KFC, which are reasonably priced. Drew and Titus eat McDonald's every Tuesday for lunch while I'm on 'Mom's Day Out'. Changsha also has Dairy Queen, Subway, Papa John's and Pizza Hut. In the last year+ we've eaten at each of those places just once, because they are rather expensive.

Treating your colleagues to a nice dinner is also a culturally-appropriate way to show appreciation or butter them up before you ask a favor. Other than close, comfortable friends, Chinese don't often invite others to their homes for a big meal. I think it's safe to say that Chinese people never go dutch. One person picks up the bill -- this time -- and the others get him/her back later by doing a favor or paying for the next meal. This picture was taken at a big wedding banquet we attended in January.




These northeast-China dishes are some of our absolute favorites. I craved them in my first trimester. They're not the local Hunan food (we live in the southerly Hunan province).
Photo credits to Karin Soderholm.

Beijing-duck sauce on meat, with cilantro and green onion. You wrap this up in a miniature tortilla-like shell.


Chicken, garlic, pumpkin and hot peppers.


Jiao-zi, or Chinese dumplings. There's a meat or vegetable filling inside. Drew's favorite.


A cold dish -- noodles, egg, carrots, wood-ear mushrooms, cilantro, beef and a strong garlic & vinegar flavor.


Another of Drew's favorites -- "french-fried" green beans and hot peppers.



Eating at Home

The following two pictures are home-cooked lunch with friends.
Dishes: peas & pork, green melon, green leafy vegetable, garlic shoots & cured pork, green beans.



This picture shows how, after a meal, there should be a fair amount of leftovers. Then the host knows that all the guests got their fill. Do note the spat-out bones and waste on the table top.
Dishes: fish & potato soup, cured fish, cured meat and hot peppers, green-leafy vegetable, red peppers, cucumber & peppers & ham.



Now you know what we eat! If we had a choice between eating Chinese or American food for the rest of our lives...we would choose Chinese. Yes, we love it. Although we get diarrhea at an annoying frequency. Part of life in China.

Did you notice? Chinese meals, compared to American meals, tend to include a lot more vegetables. Oh, there's plenty of meat, but no ginormous hunks of pot roast, or pork chops, steak, and whopper burgers. There's also very little saturated fat, but lots of oil and msg. Overall, I think Chinese food might be a little more nutritious. I don't know, really.

What do you think? Does it look good to you?

- drew & rach

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