China Trip (1)

Every now and then, I’m reminded about how lucky my life has been thus far - I have a great family, got lucky with my career trajectory (so far at least), have an amazing partner to share life with - and my recent vacation to China was one of those moments.

This vacation is actually the longest one I’ve been on since I’ve started work 4 years ago - a whole 3 weeks - Wednesday to Tuesday to take advantage of cheap plane tickets, and as a result I’m sitting at home, just barely made it to the weekend after being back to work for a few days, with a severe case of the vacation blues.

I have no energy or desire to do anything much less than write, especially when journaling is something I’m so unpracticed at, but I feel like if I don’t capture the sights and smells and thoughts and reflections while they’re fresh on my mind, they’ll forever sink and meld into the rest of my being - still there and a part of who I am, but unable to be recollected with any hard lines and intense feelings.

Good food is everywhere

In one of our numerous banquets, the adults (I’m not one yet at 26 years young…) were discussing chinese us relations, and my uncle made the point that China will never catch up to US - while US researches are busy advancing the forefront of artificial superintelligence, Chinese researchers are busy researching how to make steamed lamb taste better. Despite being hilarious, I would honestly not be surprised, because Chinese food is really on another level.

In chinese, ‘food’ or ‘cuisine’ gets translated to 美食, meaning literally ‘beautiful’ food, and you really have to be in China to understand the phrase.

Banquets in China happen around a big round-table, with a huge rotating plate in the middle, often with an beautiful, intricate centerpiece in the middle of the table. Unlike michelin star meals where each dish is proudly presented and details explained, dishes get added unceremoniously one after another onto the slowly rotating centerpiece. Yet when each dish makes its way around your side of the table, you find that in fact, each one is meticulously plated rivaling michelin-level craftsman, with brilliant colors, creative presentation, and inventive ingredients. Even each dish’s relation to each other on the rotating table is carefully thought out, with cold dishes and hot dishes interspersed, meat-heavy and vegetable-heavy dishes distributed evenly, for maximum diversity and novelty as the table spins.

[my brother toasting my grandma - a chinese custom]

I don’t even need to mention the fact that each dish tasted so uniquely delicious and harmonious between the flavors of each dish. My favourites definitely include a steamed lamb dish (Ningxia, where my mom is from, has the largest muslim population in China although my grandparents are not local to Ningxia) that I’d been raving to Grace about for years, dipped in a savory vinegar sauce. Another Ningxia specialty of what is essentially a wheat roti that you serve with a particular pepper, stir fried. An egg tofu dish that Grace really liked smothered in a tomato sauce. Classic peking duck. The list goes on indefinitely.

Unfortunately almost every day was another banquet hosted by a different member of the family, and I lost the fascination and wonder I felt towards the end of my trip. But honestly the whole experience has left me wondering why Chinese cuisine does not take a more central role on the world cooking stage, compared to, for example, French cuisine.

[whole roasted lamb - my mom’s side’s traditional dish]

Towards the end of the trip in Shanghai, we were so confident in the local food scene that we didn’t even do any prior online research (plus online research via xhs is often filled with ads masquerading as legitimate influencer recommendations, and our chinese ability is not good enough to discern the legit posts from astroturf ones), and just walked upstairs in the one out of dozens of malls that we were shopping in to pick a dinner destination. And we ended up dining at a one-of-a-kind mushroom hotpot place that had the most delectable and rich tasting chicken soup boiled with a dozen or so varieties of mushrooms, including some poisonous ones? (the waiter put a 15m timer next to us and informed us not to eat it beforehand, and also took a sample of the soup for safety precautions after the 15m was up) The hotpot came with exciting drinks, an all you can eat sidebar filled with incredible, exotic looking vegetables, and intricately plated desserts. All in a random mall, with absolutely no line, and multiple competing restaurants that looked equally as good! In the US this would definitely be booked out every day! And it came out to 20$ usd pp! (a bit pricey for china, but so cheap compared to Bellevue!)

Even fast food is taken seriously. I already mentioned the 6rmb bowl of noodles, made fresh to order with your choice of thickness of noodle, covered in a soup that has been stewing for hours. One of our favourite meals is at a 生煎包 fast food chain, that serves steaming hot pan fried baos oozing with juice inside. The best carb that I had was at a random breakfast stall in Suzhou which made an incredibly toasty and delicious scallion flatbread. The steamed buns that my aunt picked up at the side of the street was soft and pillowy and so much better than any T&T product for a fraction of the price.

[the most amazing sheng jian bao]

Mcdonalds and pizza hut and other fast food places do exist in china, but they market themselves as slightly upscale western food chains, similar to Cactus Club, or Earls than their north american fast food counterparts. I suspect it’s because if they tried to compete at a lower price point and food quality, they just wouldn’t survive.

All in all, Chinese people definitely take their food seriously. The only mediocre bite of food was at the Shanghai airport when we’re about to leave. Even if we’re forgoing some AI research to up our food quality and freshness, presentation and taste, maybe it’s worth it for the ever-lasting memories created over dinner tables and the unifying cultural pride that Chinese people including me feel about our 美食.

[a random restaurant we walked in to]

Side Note: Service is also incredible - all the waiters are super nice and eager to help. Quite the opposite experience from waiters in the states. Once a waiter acted like he could not believe we had the audacity how long for a table in Tendon Kohaku in Bellevue, and snobbily told us the wait was over 2 hours.