Bacon!

I haven't written a whole lot about food so far. For the most part, I do pretty well, and am quite satisfied with the food here. Initially, I will say that almost all of the food which you find in China isn't much like the food you find at your local Chinese restaurant (be it take out or fancy). There are very few sweet and sour dishes, and one really big difference is the use of a lot of leafy vegetables. Most dishes are mixed vegetables and meat over rice, or mixed with noodles. I eat almost every meal at the cafeterias and the small restaurants on campus. I enjoy all the food, think it's pretty healthy on the whole, and there is plenty of good and relatively cheap fruit around. The main cafeterias leave a bit to be desired. On each cafeteria's second floor, though, they have opened it up to private businesses, so those restaurants offer good food at only a bit higher price. There are two main restaurants I eat at, one offering all sorts of combinations on top of rice, the other a sort of instant 'hot pot', essentially a pick your own ingredients, add noodles, and they boil it for you sort of place.

Occasionally, I will head to the street vendors outside the front gate of the university. They offer anything that can be made from a cart, which is a surprisingly wide array of food. My favorites are the fried dumplings. On campus, there are a few vendors that operate in the doorways/on the sidewalk of some of the stores on 'market street' (where all the stores and restaurants are located). They offer some pretty good options, many of which feature some combination of fried eggs, meat, and vegetables (they all use small griddles). All in all, there is plenty of variety, and with the occasional trip to PapaJohn's or McDonald's, I have very little complaints. On the other hand, we are quite spoiled in America, in that even in Des Moines, Iowa, there is an incredible variety of people and ethnicities, and thus an astounding assortment of restaurants. Not so in China. The food from the Hui and Uyghur migrants (those from northwestern China) provides the only a little to variety to otherwise pretty homogenous food. Now, the food is said to really differ among the many regions, some sweeter, some spicier, and so on, but (in my opinion) it all is still pretty similar.

Now to the bacon. One of the things which Chinese food lacks is large pieces of meat. There isn't a lot of meat in general (which is probably a good thing) due to cost. Even when there is meat, it is always chopped up or sliced very thinly. There is some relationship with this and how chopsticks work, but I am not sure about the cause and effect. So, no steaks, no real hamburgers, no pork chops, no chicken breasts, none of that (which for the health and the environment, isn't necessarily a bad thing). Well, last week, I strolled by a new vendor on 'market street'. As I peered into his offerings, I couldn't believe my eyes. Bacon. Real, long, strips of bacon. I was ecstatic and got right in line. He uses a griddle (standard operating procedure for the street vendors) and first grills a sort of pancake. One can then choose the fillings for the pancake, which are also grilled, and then put on top of the pancake, which is folded taco style. My normal order (I have been there almost daily for the past week) is a strip of bacon, a fried egg, lettuce, and a tomato-ish sauce. It's almost like bacon and eggs with some biscuits. Not quite, but pretty close, and getting close to some of the flavors I have grown up with is plenty for me. I have included a picture of the delicacy being cooked, and will post another as soon as I figure out what is wrong with my camera's compatibility.