Like others in my family, I grew up believing that American Chinese food is far more palatable than actual Chinese food. I’m not sure where this belief started, but it is a dirty, DIRTY LIE. Chinese food is some of the most delicious food I have ever eaten in my life, and the American version is about as tasty as saltines in comparison. Getting food in China was both our biggest obstacle and our greatest reward. Ordering it was often frustrating and embarrassing (its never cute to be the stupid white people), but it was always good. Always. Even at the hideous McDonald’s of doom in Shanghai, and that wasn’t even Chinese food. 

One of the things we noticed first about Chinese food is their love of food on sticks. You can get dozens of foods on a stick in China, which endeared the country to me immediately. You can get meat on a stick, sugary fruit on a stick—even a candied rat on a stick. Yes, you heard me correctly. One of the most popular foods we saw in Beijing was a candied rat on a stick. Ew, not a real candied rat, but toffee fashioned into the shape of a rat on a stick. Sadly, we never tried it, because it took us a while to realize it was toffee, and then we stopped seeing them! 

Other noteworthy eating experiences in China:

• Before Mara arrived in Beijing and showed us all the delicious local food we didn’t know how to order, we had an adventurous night and went out to a nearby restaurant. The restaurant was full of old men in a halo of smoke, talking as though their voiceboxes had been removed. We tried ordering some food, and found one of the most hilarious menus I have ever seen, including:

Old adopted mother’s fried kidney

Pimple soup

Explode a chicken

United States hook speculation

Lotus leaf in a small fry

Family food that goes well with wine

The peasant family cooks vegetables ingeniously

The fragrant flowered garlic fries pig liver

The open country growth mushroom fries the potato to silver filament

Hot bull’s penis

• When Mara arrived, she introduced us to the egg pancake—on Christmas Day! It was perhaps the best Christmas present ever. As the egg pancake is street food and we have no clue how to read Chinese, we would never have found them on our own. This is how the egg pancake is made: on a circular hotplate, the cook spreads a very thin layer of batter, then cracks an egg on it, while smearing the egg around the batter so it doesn’t clump. Then, she flips the whole thing over, smears some sauce on the other side and adds scallions and coriander before putting what looked like a waffle on top. She cuts the waffle into three pieces, folds the pancake around it, and puts it in a plastic bag. Mara told us that when she first discovered these, she ate them every day for weeks. We dream of one day being so lucky.

•  In Chengdu, we were wandering the city looking for a place with an English menu when we went into a restaurant to ask. Instead of answering us, they ushered us to a table with a big hole in the middle and sat us down. We assumed it was a hotpot restaurant, but there was still no menu. Two girls came over and tried to speak English to us while handing us an order form to fill out. Since we are, as we mentioned, ignunt foreigners who don’t even know how to speak Chinese, one of them finally yelled out “Turkey!” And we nodded. Then a man came over, looked at the food section of T’s book and pointed to chicken. Okay. Then he filled out the form for us, changed one of the entries to a lower price, and disappeared.

A few minutes later, one of the girls returned with a giant pot full of broth and a half a raw chicken. She turned on the heat on the table, put the chicken pot onto it, and left. I almost cried. What the hell do we do with a half a raw chicken in some broth? And how do you eat it with chopsticks??! Fortunately, she soon returned, took the chicken away, and came back with it all chopped into pieces.  After that, hotpot ended up being fairly easy. At first, the women would come over and dump the assorted condiments into the pot for us, but after a while, we were able to do it ourselves (that’s what 3 masters degrees between us has gotten us—thank you, higher education!). It turns out hotpot is pretty good, though I wasn’t keen to repeat the experience again too quickly.

•  Another night in Chengdu (the night we asked for a Sichuan restaurant with an English menu), we decided to eat local again, in the hopes of some spicy food. The woman at the front desk who laughed at us wrote down some good local dishes on a piece of paper, and directed us to a local hotel. At the hotel, they clearly thought we were brain dead, showing up with a piece of paper with Sichuan foods written on it, and then staring blankly at them when they spoke to us. It’s my personal opinion that the woman wrote “Please feed these idiots some food so that they don’t come back and bother me again with their ridiculous requests.”

Whatever she wrote, it worked, more or less. They had a photo menu at the restaurant (the saving grace of every stupid non-Chinese-speaking tourist) and we were able to indicate more or less what we wanted. And it was good.

• On our penultimate day in Chengdu, we walked around the city for ages, searching for a restaurant recommended by our book, described as being a tiny doorway with a long flight of stairs. Uh, thanks. Needless to say, we couldn’t find it. And so, we headed for McDonald’s again when we noticed a number of Chinese fast food options in the food court. We headed toward the one with the best photo menu, and then a miracle happened.

A young guy with a round baby face popped out of the restaurant and said “Hello! Welcome! Please come in!” I practically French kissed him, I was so happy to see someone in a restaurant who spoke English. He took us to the side of the queue and helped us order. We ordered the egg-tofu things we had in Beijing, and some spicy chicken and the milk, made at the restaurant. Our new friend stood with us in the line, speaking his beautiful English and Chinese, and I think I spied a halo above his sunny little face. 

We found a table, and waited for the food to be delivered. When it was, we each got the main course, the milk, rice and some interesting salad, and some soup—and, of course, chopsticks. The food itself was okay, but the service was fantastic. Our friend was circling the restaurant, checking in on all the tables and he came past ours a number of times to make sure we didn’t need anything else, and that the food was good.

When we told him he spoke beautiful English, he beamed and did what all Chinese people do when they get compliments—he shook his head and looked profoundly embarrassed. We were thanking him compulsively, and every time, he would say the same thing: “It is my pleasure to help you!” Oh, little Sichuan man with the baby face, it was our pleasure to be helped by you.