More Food Than We Can Eat

Hey again! Today I thought I would discuss the diverse and interesting food options here in Kunming as they differ greatly from the food in the U.S.A.

To start, meal times in China are very exact. Especially during the week, everyone who works or is in school has a lunch break at 12pm-2pm. And when I say everyone, I mean everyone in ALL of China. So it gets incredibly busy around those times. Dinner is a much less exact affair but still somewhere between 5pm and 7pm usually. The Northeastern students have taken to leaving the hotel around 6:30 or 7pm to go find dinner so we are a little bit later than the standard Chinese time, but it works out because the restaurants are open late.

Portion size is a very different matter as most places serve some sort of noodle soup with other foods added in. It’s a lot of vegetables and broth and noodles and very little meat usually, but it’s healthier than our food options in the United States. As a group, we tend to buy snacks throughout the day as that is a very American thing to do and we’re too used to being full all the time, but most Chinese people do not eat in between meals. Instead, they have three well-rounded meals and gain an appetite again between them. As a result, the portion sizes here aren’t necessarily huge, but often I cannot finish my plate. However, that is somewhat expected here so it’s not offensive to leave food.

I might have mentioned this before but the food here is incredibly cheap, so much so that we are spending about $10 USD on food per day, and we’re getting more food than we can eat. We have taken to ordering a couple of dishes for the whole table and then just splitting the check evenly. Sharing food like that, or eating Hot Pot (where you order a lot of uncooked food and have a pot of boiling water in the middle of the table and cook it yourself) is very traditional in China. They are big on having two sets of chopsticks for each person on the table too. One set is to eat with and the other is to take the food from the platters with. That way you’re not using the same pair of chopsticks to get food from a common plate and eat food. I thought that was pretty clever the first time I was told about it.

Mainly, the group eats at a different Chinese restaurant every night, exploring the local foods so as not to miss anything. We also get Korean or Japanese from time to time. If we are REALLY craving more western food we have a couple options (mainly an incredible Italian restaurant, a great French Cafe, and a good Mexican place). However, in general we try to stick to the food that China is known for because we don’t get this kind of authentic Chinese food back in the states. By this point, I’m not sure how we decided that what we have in the U.S. is considered Chinese food. It’s VERY off the mark. It HAS been a little tricky because some of the food options here are not very safe for us to eat so we have to be careful where we choose to eat. A few of the students have gotten sick from unsafe food here so it’s a very real problem. However, for the most part we’ve been pretty good on food choices

I have to say, there are a lot of great local foods that I have tried here but one of my favorites might be from a cart on the street outside our hotel. We’ve decided that this is China’s attempt at their own type of pizza but truly it’s just a lot of veggies in a wrap (with or without meat). The guy who makes them does everything so quickly it’s hard to keep up but I’ve been there enough that I think the ingredients are: A grilled wrap, an egg with green onions, lettuce, spicy chicken, the Chinese version of bacon, and an incredibly spicy sauce that’s brushed onto the wrap right before all of the ingredients are added. Then, it’s rolled up sort of like a burrito and given to you in a bag to eat. I’m not really someone who likes a lot of spicy food but I’ve been pretty shocked at how much I’ve enjoyed all of the spicy foods in China. Spice is a big deal here and I’ll at least try a dish even if I know it’s spicy. If I like it enough, sometimes the spice doesn’t matter! Of course, there are always dishes that are just too much for me and I have to skip them in the end.

Well, that’s pretty much it for food. I never expected to love the food here as much as I do, but in all honesty I’m not looking forward to going back to the greasy, heavy food in the United States. I guess I’ll just have to start cooking my own food with lots of vegetables to keep it healthy.Until next time!