Food
No travelogue can be complete without a description of culinary habits, and therefore I devote these lines to the food part of China.
China has its own traditional cuisine chow mein et al., but unlike the ones dished out by the Odiya chefs in many medium and small restaurants, or by Kolkata’s jobless hundreds on the roadside stalls. We also have Maggi and Wai-Wai, the warm and devour varieties, which occupy a big space. The Chinese types are mostly boiled, and the noodles can be thread thin or thick as the cord in my apple recharger.
Every local has a flask in hand, and there are many free hot water dispensing machines everywhere abound. While black tea is ordinary, coffee has made significant inroads in the big cities, thanks to Starbucks! I could see a lot of fruit shops with Durian occupying a unique space, banana, kiwi, watermelon, muskmelon, dragon fruit, apple, plum, grape and a few I have never seen before.
Of the various meats, pork is most popular, while a chicken is addictive to many. Not the wings or the legs but the feet, fried. I gathered that the chicken breast loving Americans ship nearly 300000 tons of the chicken feet to the Chinese! Duck meat too is trendy as are brine boiled eggs. The rice they eat is thick and a bit pasty. Vegetables are spinach, beans, cooked sweet potatoes, (which one can find for breakfast too!) potatoes, tomatoes and lentils like cowpeas. It’s strange that thinner Chinese can eat much more than average built.
My wife forewarned me of possible difficulties and suggested that I carry some thepla, bhujia etc., which I erroneously declined. My daughter promptly sent me by WhatsApp the Chinese description of rice and curd, which I displayed at the dinner table, smiling sheepishly to a stunned waitress. In a store, I could locate yoghurt and learnt that Chinese like only a bit sweetened yoghurt, but the packing boldly proclaimed that it contains ‘no preservatives, no thickeners and no pigments.’
Coming from a country, where we identify places to address nature’s call by signboards ‘commit no nuisance,’ I realised that the declaration on the yoghurt is an admission that not all products may be free of the above-stated additives. That put an end to my eating curd in China, and you can understand the plight of a Tambrahm denied curd!
Walking in a rail station, I found a packet Chinese bhujia, angry at yet another Indian savoury hijacked by them, which should be duly noted by Haldiram.
I survived, returning home without losing much weight and has been devouring curd-rice for the past three days to my heart’s delight and content.
Sampath Kumar
Intrépide voix