Food Chat
Today I leave the comfortable bosom of Shenzhen and hop across to Hong Kong, doing my first ever proper visa run. Barring any unforeseen circumstances, I'll be flying back to Kunming tomorrow night after nine days in the overcast, muggy Pearl River Delta.
A week is far too long for Shenzhen, readers. The city itself isn't too bad, but once you get over the modernity and prosperity its appeal begins to run dry. The closest analogy I can find for the city is "Los Angeles with rain". All of my Bay Area readers just shuddered.
However, when one lives in the Chinese hinterland as I do, Shenzhen's bland internationalism actually feels refreshing. For instance, there are Starbucks' everywhere. I drank a pint of Carlsberg at a real Irish pub. I've eaten a different type of food each night, only once eating Chinese. My guiding principle, so to speak, is to take advantage of opportunities that don't exist in Kunming.
On a related note, I realized just the other day that I've eaten Chinese food on this trip no more frequently than I would have back in the US. I'm sure Shenzhen, with its Chinese melting pot demography, has its fair share of excellent restaurants; I'm positive they exist somewhere.
There are competing schools of thought for laowais in China on the subject of food. Some take the "go native" approach, devoting themselves to eating Chinese food almost exclusively. The logic for this scheme, admittedly, is solid. Chinese food is cheaper and better and fresher than foreign food. Following a Ricardian principle of comparative advantage, why eat anything else?
Well...sometimes Chinese food just doesn't cut it. Four and a half years here cannot erase the 24 I lived before them, when my taste buds enjoyed their formative experiences. And while I know that a bowl of noodles will be nutritious and tasty and cheap, I still often opt for a mediocre burger or sandwich. In the mornings, bad coffee trumps good tea. For a quick lunch, cheese and crackers cannot be beat. Even if the cheese cost me an internal organ at an imported supermarket.
One of my favorite travel experiences in China was my two-week jaunt through Tibetan Sichuan. The food, my friends, was the same- every meal, every town- local Chinese. I enjoyed it enough, but the first thing I did upon arriving in Chengdu was splurge on a gigantic meal at Peter's Tex-Mex bar and grill. My stomach still hasn't forgiven me for the sudden gastronomic bounty after two weeks of deprivation.
I walked back to my guesthouse nearly doubled over, but quite happy. For overcooked "Tex-Mex" restored my proper sense of culinary balance, regardless of where I was in the world.
March 13th, 2009 - 14:25
Ha ha, I kind of love how you refer to us as: “readers”. It’s a mix of cute and really patronizing.