Chinese Breakfast

                                Before I start let me just apologise for not blogging for so long. I’ve been quite busy looking to the future and what I’ll do in China and abroad after finishing my contract here and rather forgotten about my love of blathering on about food and music. I’ve still been listening to a lot of music and eating a lot of food, however, a fact which should surprise no one. I wished to write this post some time ago, but I’ll do so now instead by way of slowly easing myself in again. Hopefully I’ll be somewhat more regular with my narrative ramblings from here on in, next on the medium term agenda is a multi-post retelling of my attempts to munch my way through Chengdu (rest assured Panda steaks will not be making an appearance, for anyone with entirely reasonable concerns about my adventurous eating habits). In any case, as so often is the case I digress from the business at hand.

                                Britain has a somewhat historically shaky reputation when it comes to cuisine, displaying such crimes against cooking as luncheon meat (bizarrely easy to get in any Chinese corner shop), fried bread and devilled kidneys. However, Britain can be said to have held its own in one key area, that of breakfast. The everyday is unremarkable, the ubiquitous bowl of cereal or piece of toast ever present, but Britain really shines when it comes to the big breakfast, a plate of which will typically have enough calories to feed an entire rowing team after a starvation diet (say, in the region of 100,000 calories). I exaggerate to make a point, but I feel the point is well made, for more on this see my earlier post about the delights of English breakfasts. Having grown up in England and being a self-confessed glutton I have rather high expectations, or at least highly calorific, when it comes to a proper breakfast. I feel the only nation that comes really close to Britain when producing spectacular breakfasts is the USA[1], but I like to keep an open mind and I certainly found it necessary to find out about the morning consumption habits of the great Middle Kingdom, in fact on some days as a matter of gastric exigency (or because I’m bloody starving, if you prefer).

                                I wasn’t particularly confident about Chinese morning food, which is the exact name of breakfast in Chinese (zao fan – 早饭). I’d heard all kinds of horrific tales about far eastern morning habits, involving mostly cold noodles and fried rice. It is with great pleasure that your gluttonous correspondent in China can report that, while English breakfast it isn’t, there are plenty of tasty morsels to be had when you get up in this country. The first rather curious thing is the lack of a standard caffeinated beverage in the morning, this is particularly surprising given the national tendency to get up at stupid o’clock and do things like blow up artillery outside my bedroom window, though perhaps this stands in to give them that much needed kick in the morning. Many people have of course picked up western norms and drink coffee or red tea 红茶 (what they call black tea here, more on this in the future) in the morning, but the local hot beverage seems largely to be hot soy milk, or dou jiang 豆浆 . I can’t quite bring myself to be so culturally genuine as to give up my non-explosive cup of kick in the morning, but I do sometimes buy a cup of this as well on my way to work, as it is quite delicious and fairly filling. When I do buy this it’s generally from the baozi 包子 (roughly pronounced bow-zer) shop outside my apartment block. I buy it here because they make it fresh, a delightful and cheap beverage (usually the equivalent of about 20p) that’s available in many places here. All it involved is a spoonful of sugar, some soy beans and a cup full of hot water made into a thick and nourishing liquid in a blender, much nicer than all the unpleasantly thin milk alternatives available in the west.

                               

                         “What is a baozi shop?”, you may well ask. Baozi are steamed buns filled with a large variety of possible fillings, from the most common minced pork (zhu rou – 猪肉[2]) filling, to red bean paste, to vegetable and even rice noodle fillings, among many others. I even heard someone suggest the one could fill one with an English breakfast, perhaps this would be a super-sized baozi, if anyone with the culinary nous out their wants to have a go please do, then invite me round to give it a taste test and my infinite admiration. Since I’m often on the run in the early hours when buying things from hear I usually opt for a sweet mantou 馒头 , a somewhat simpler and more digestively forgiving roll of sweet steamed bread. This, coupled with a cup of hot soy milk is a lot more filling than you’d realise. This offering is my breakfast-on-the-run option here.

One of my local breakfast stalls. The reason for the haze is the intense heat and humidity during the summer in Suzhou.

                                Coming to China I was quite excited by the availability of street food, this is largely represented by shaokao 烧烤, the common late night Chinese barbecue. However, what’s been a pleasant surprise is the perpetual morning presence of the bingzi 饼子 stand. Bingzi are basically pancakes, the Taiwanese variety are very popular, being quite thick and usually served with at least an egg wrapped inside. Other popular accompaniments include lettuce (don’t worry, they fry it slightly first to make sure no pesky health benefits abide), Taiwanese sausage, bacon and, on certain fortuitous occasions, cheese. There are also thinner crepe like alternatives available, usually served with a fried dough stick, some lettuce (again, making sure all vitamins are killed in the medieval fashion of boiling in oil) and various other choices such as meat and chilli or even a sweet bean paste. I most often eat pancakes either on days when I have more digestion time or when I’m setting off on a long journey, since they are pretty effective at keeping hunger at bay.

All the blondies enjoying bingzi.

                                

                           Now I wish to tell you about a couple of breakfasts I've had in this wonderfully gastronomic country. One of my happiest memories of breakfast in China was when my mother, father and nephew visited at the beginning of summer. We were staying on an island known as PutuoShan, just off the coast of Zhejiang province in the East China Sea. It’s famous for its shrines to Guanyin, a person of historical note within east Asian Buddhism; it’s an island imbued with much religious significance, a particularly touching cultural experience in the context of a regime that actively crushed organised religion not so long ago. Touching as it was, nothing could distract us from the urgent need for the first meal. We found a restaurant that served breakfast a short walk from our accommodation, and I was rather excited by the provision of apparently almost every normal Chinese breakfast choice with some extras. There were the usual baozis and mantous, but there was also the purple sloppy red bean porridge, a rather unpleasantly bland concoction. There was also something called dou hua, which seemed to be a curd made of soy and came topped with dried shrimps. This probably sounds horrible, and no doubt to some people it is, but I rather liked the cold curd and salty tickle of the dried shrimp, a pleasant sensation in the blazingly hot Chinese summer. They also had fried dumplings, which are a favourite breakfast of the Chinese, something perhaps surprising to westerners. One thing remained certain, we would not be hungry for some time after this feast.

Breakfast with my family on Putuoshan.

                                Another experience consigned to the romanticised history section of my psyche is that of breakfast in Shanghai. When Celia (my partner) and I go to Shanghai we always stay in a hostel called Shanghai City Central Youth Hostel, partly because it’s very cheap but basically as good as a value hotel in England, partly because of their delicious and cheap cocktails, and partly because they used to have wonderful breakfasts. The fact that they are now defunct probably adds to the romanticising, but they were definitely delicious. Piles of steaming baozis, hot soy milk and even some horrible red bean porridge if you were feeling masochistic. My favourite thing to do was take a fried dough stick and soak it in hot soy milk. These dough sticks are call youtiao 油条 and are a little oily and salty, in my opinion they taste best when used as a sort of giant crouton in soy milk or soups. They can be eaten at any time of day and are also one of my favourite additions to a hot bowl of malatang. As I mentioned earlier the breakfast is now defunct, something I discovered to my sadness last time I stayed there, probably because it wasn’t profitable given that it was included in the price of a stay. Luckily, it’s in the middle of Shanghai, so there’s enough food to feed a small army on every corner.

                                So, in conclusion Chinese breakfast certainly holds its own. It will never compare to British breakfast, but I’m not sure that anything ever will for me. There are certainly a plethora of wonderful breakfast options for the hungry early riser in the Middle Kingdom.

 More pictures of Mr. Bingzi.

 The competition.

A slice of China: bicycles and bingzi.

                                 I meant this to be a short post, but I seem to have gotten somewhat carried away again, yet another testament to one of China’s greatest cultural assets: its cuisine. Thanks for reading.    

---

[1] For a wider discussion of breakfasts around the world see The Breakfast Bible by Seb Emina and Malcolm Eggs.

[2] I like the second character, meaning meat, it looks rather like a rack of ribs, don’t you think?