Food in China

The food in China is definitely worth a contribution as the Chinese cuisine is one of the best in the world.

If you want to achieve a harmonious atmosphere with the Chinese, the best way to do this is to eat. Food connects, food reconciles, food influences life energy. If you had an argument, the invitation to dinner is a direct call for reconciliation, for forgiveness; all further words would be superfluous in this case - even rather counterproductive. Eating is philosophy and influences the life energy, the Qi. Over dinner you meet friends, family, colleagues, you do business, you do everything. You don't necessarily have to cook at home to show your appreciation to friends, you can also go out to eat. And it's cheap, so you can do it anytime. Food stalls, hot-pot restaurants, but also upscale restaurants that are frequented for celebratory meals offer something for all occasions and all budgets.

Clean is different, but that's how it goes in the street food shops.

Hot Pot-Restaurant

On my first day at school, I went to one of these good restaurants during the lunch break with the school management and some colleagues who have a higher position or who work with me every day. We were given a separate room and then the stuff brought everything they had. In China, people eat at a round table with a rotating plate in the middle on which the food is placed. All dishes can be reached by turning this plate. You take small portions with the chopsticks and use the same chopsticks for eating as for adding more food, sensitivity because everyone had it in their mouth and then putting them into the bowls to add more food is not allowed. During the meal, the food is also a topic of conversation and you are asked which of the dishes you particularly like, you talk about regional cuisines and their peculiarities, about the beneficial healing effects of a hot duck soup in autumn, etc. This duck soup was also available at my Welcome meal. In a large terrine that was boiling and steaming on an open fire at the table, a complete duck swam with its head, beak and everything, only it was plucked and gutted. The first bite of a dish is nodded benevolently and appreciatively if it tastes good. If you get involved and the Chinese really enjoy eating, you have gained a lot. My Spanish colleague doesn't like Chinese cuisine and instead opts for Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken. That doesn't go down so well here.

While I'm typing these lines, I'm sitting in the quiet staff room. There was lunch half an hour ago and I am surrounded by colleagues who - believe it or not - have reclined their seats and collectively take an afternoon nap. This nap is a Chinese ritual after every meal. Besides me, a student is awake who has been given an extra task as part of individual support and solves it here in the teachers' room during the lunch break.

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Back to the food:

Whenever you step on the street, which is always bustling with activity in China, you mainly see people who either transport or sell or prepare or eat food. You get the impression that two thirds of all shops are all about food.

You enter a family mart, a kind of late night shop, a pump room or kiosk in the Chinese style and the scent of tea eggs comes towards you, those boiled eggs whose shells are cracked all around so that the aroma of a brew made from tea leaves and soy sauce, ginger, Sake, sugar, salt, Szechuan pepper, bay leaf can penetrate into them. They lie in this hot brew all day, look adventurous and you wonder how long they have been simmering, but when you try them, they are a wonderful taste.

Everything is always freshly prepared in the cookshops. In the morning you can see how the yeast dough is kneaded and portioned, the meat is put on the skewers. None of this comes from the factory, nothing is delivered. Here, setting up a bakery on the outskirts and the delivery process would probably be considered too time-consuming. You'd rather do everything yourself. It's also more sociable because the other shops next door are open, you know each other and every morning you discover anew that your neighbor is there and is fine. The food stalls only close when everything has been sold. You won't get old food in China. Often you don't know what is being sold there, but you get curious, try it, like it, buy it again the next day, so that the owner of the cookshop will find the right one for you when you approach his shop and you notice that you buy exactly what the Chinese like to eat for breakfast. At some point in the morning at school at breakfast you take an oil stick - a long piece of yeast dough that has been fried - and dip it in your soy milk and notice that you enjoy it and that it somehow amazes your Chinese colleagues because it is so typical chinese is to dip an oil stick in soy milk .. One more thing about manners :) One evening I was sitting in a fairly simple, but really good fish restaurant, tormented my way through the menu as always and made it clear to the waiter with a lot of effort that I wanted something similar to the people at the next table. Two men and a woman sat there and feasted on things that would rather belong in the gourmet category with us. Shellfish, squid - everything the sea has to offer in terms of exoticism. They were probably really simple Chinese who drank beer from bottles, smoked and threw the butts and ashes on the floor, while the woman, whose shoes were criss-crossed under the table, kept talking continuously and loudly to the two men. Southern Italy is nothing compared to this. When they left there was quite a bit left on the plates, because the Chinese never empty the plate. The host would assume that he was stingy and did not serve enough. The place where the three sat looked adventurous after they left.

Last but not least, the cineast comes through again with his love for Chinese cinema. In the film "Eat Drink Man Women", food plays a central role. This subtle comedy is about something completely different, namely a father whose three daughters have taken completely different paths in life, but at the end of the film end up in completely unexpected life concepts, but the food is always there, not least because the father of the three is a famous chef in China. Here is a link to the famous cooking scenes from "Eat Drink Man Woman":