culinary adventures in china

Every Monday night I get dinner with my Chinese friends Rose, Sarah and Catherine*. It is an opportunity for them to practice their English and for me to sample the strange and the wonderful world that is Chinese food. [To my Chinese friends: this is the key to practicing your English with me. I can't tell you how many tutoring gigs I have turned down. Money won't draw me in, but offer me food and I'm more than happy to oblige.]

And so, every week my friends take me to a new restaurant and I am given the chance to sample a new Chinese region's cuisine.

I am the least picky eater I know; I'll try anything and most of the time I'll like it. There are a few things I have yet to acquire a taste for - chicken feet, for example. I know, I know. It's a delicacy here and you love it, but I can't quite get used to feeling like there is a small hand in my mouth and I am supposed to chew the skin off the knuckles.

But then again I'm game for some of the other odd things I've tried with Rose and co. I have enjoyed bowls of pig's back-bone soup; I have sucked the marrow out of a pig's bone with a straw and just yesterday I ate a bowl of porridge made with a small wild bird that was brought in from the street to the table, fully feathered and probably caught on some nearby mountain a half hour ago. Poor little sparrow...

No, really this stuff is strange, bizzarre, disgusting-sounding and you know what? Pretty good.

So, thank you Rose, Sarah and Catherine. Without you my experience with Chinese food would be limited to noodles, vegetables, dumplings and tofu. There's really so much more than that and I want to try it all.



* These are the English names that they have chosen for themselves.