AND THERE WAS THE FOOD....

Minneapolis Art Shanties 

It is snowing outside, a beautiful Minnesota winter snow-- not too cold but definitely not a day to drive anywhere. It feels like a fairly gentle return home, the long, dark nights make getting back on a local sleep cycle easier. The weather has been cold but the snow is beautiful. As always, it has taken time to adjust to a house with many rooms to inhabit, many more ‘things’ than we need, many tasks, responsibilities and meetings as well as reconnecting with friends and community.  But, before signing off for this particular visit, I want to end with some additional food thoughts and details.

Eating in Hong Kong and Beijing is a fun and at times,   We got to practice being flexible and taking our time reading menus, pointing at photos and using our phone apps that could translate spoken and written Mandarin to English. And always there were lovely surprising food adventures:

Shopping Mall Market in Beijing 

Markets in Hong Kong, are fascinating. There were large extended covered markets selling fruits, vegetables, meats, fish and lots of other foods, and also small fruit sellers next to storefront stands selling cookies, baked goods, hot tea eggs, and medicinal teas near our hostel. In Beijing, our hotel was in a newer area of the city so food shopping options were a nearby shopping mall, rather than smaller storefronts. The shopping mall had a huge vegetable and fruit market and also in a separate section a huge more modern food area that resembled US megamalls.  Both places had ‘food bars, where you could buy JianBing (a delectable crepe-like dish filled with a variety of tastes and textures), or you could select ingredients to be mixed with noodles or vegetables, then put in a plastic bag for an instant take-away meal.

Old Fashioned Market in Beijing

Meat Stand in Hong Kong 

For ready-made options- in Hong Kong,  our hostel provided a choice of four breakfast choices, a ‘typical’ HK breakfast of noodle soup with a protein and pickled veggies; steamed glutinous rice packets with bits of chicken and mushrooms; or a ‘British Breakfast’ of scrambled eggs, cold beans, cold corn and sausage. Milk or lemon tea or milk coffee (a legacy of British colonization)accompanied these choices.   HK dinners, since we were close to one of the many ubiquitous food walking streets,  included Japanese, Thai or Halal Indian- with cute kids at the front table and where the meal included a mayonnaise mint chutney. For snacking there were red bean buns made of wheat or glutinous rice flour. 

In Beijing we were more on our own and but also could use apps to help us communicate. (I have not been able to find any apps that translate Cantonese…or ‘Canto’ as I have heard it called). The hotel buffet breakfast was moderately expensive (see Bruce’s blog for  details), so we often chose to walk to a local coffee and bread shop (called 85º) in the shopping mall. At 85º the folks at the counter quickly remembered us as ‘regulars’ and as Bruce perused the baked items, I would pop next door to a convenience store to get a few breakfast sushi rolls. (Side note: apparently in Beijing Japanese sushi rolls are eaten warm from the micro)

Hong Kong Food Court

Other meal options included a row of inexpensive restaurants tucked to the side of the racks filled with coats, vests and kids shoes in the shopping mall. Each restaurant was slightly different one offering a spicy, sour fish soup with pickled mustard greens, another where people could select their choice of veggie and protein and noodles to be cook into a spicy stew.  Another was a noodle soup restaurant. I tried asking if they had ‘mie fen’ (rice noodles) and the owner ducked into the kitchen area to to return holding a thin rice noodle in one hand and a thick one in the other. His quizzical expression made it clear, he wanted me to choose the one I preferred. 

Uhygur restaurant (notice server with hat)

In another direction, there were several Uyghur restaurants. One with green hatted male servers and the other with red hatted women servers. Uyghurs are Turkic Muslims who live in China, and we often recognized their restaurants because of the Arabic writing on the sign. Uyghur restaurants tended to specialize in broiled pieces of chicken and lamb, and choices could include gizzards, tendons, liver or brains just to name a few of the options.

We also found interesting places to eat as we explored other neighborhoods. Around Minzu University, which is a university specifically for students belonging to the many ethnic minorities in China (Given that the ‘separate but equal’ educational programs in the US where not so great, I am not sure if the existence of a separate university for ethnic minorities in China is good thing or problematic.  I don’t know enough to know for sure… only enough to wonder.) (See Bruce’s blog for additional thoughts and photos.)  

Beijing Food Stand 

Medicinal JuJube Teas

After exploring the school grounds in our futile search for the school’s ethnographic museum, we decided to find a place to eat that  offered food from one of China’s diverse ethnic communities.  Not being able to find the restaurant, from the guide book that we hoping to find (the challenges to not being able to read Mandarin), we finally wandered upstairs to a student-focused restaurant.  It was small crowded and at first confusing, until several kind young women helped up point and pick the type of noodles, broth and ingredients we wanted. The food was spicy, filling, flavorful, and once others got over the surprise of seeing two old white people in the restaurant, they were extremely welcoming, although we were clearly the oldest, and whitest, folks there.

Last Day of Class Banquet- Beijing 

MingMing and Tao Dinner and Friendship

OK, time to sign off, more adventures the next time. Thanks for reading this. And I am going to end with a Minnesota winter scene: each winter a different lake is selected for an exhibit of ‘art shanties’. This  year, the event was held at our local Lake Harriet. We wandered walking on the ice frozen lake surface and explored with many other families and children. There was also a kite festival going on at the same time. So, in case there is any doubt, we do know how to enjoy the winter season here in the way north.

Art Shanties in Minnesota