Since many celebrations this time of year revolve around food, I thought I'd share a little more about how Brian and I feed ourselves in China. As we've mentioned before, foraging for vittles here can be quite a task. Food sanitation is a real issue, not to mention the gargantuan grocery staples gap between East and West. Only within the past year has our local store started to carry sliced bread, butter, and imported boxed milk. And as much as we love fried rice, soy sauce, oil, and packaged noodles, we'd feel sick if we ate these items every day! In order to strike a balance of cost, convenience, and nutrition, we try to blend the best of both worlds. Our cupboard contains an eclectic mix of imported and local products!
The wet market across the street has proven to be a surprising source of culinary and budgetary comfort. Here, I can not only find familiar foods such as bananas and broccoli, but I can also discover new delights such as bok choy, tofu skin, and dragon eye. I can practice simple conversations with the friendly veggie, fruit, tofu, egg, and rice ladies who ask how I'm doing and offer helpful advice about their wares. And I savor amusing cultural moments: dodging a bag of live frogs that jumped towards me as I walked by, stumbling upon the female food vendors gracefully line dancing during a slow afternoon. Authentic local living happens every day in that wet market, and I feel more alive and healthy after each experience I have of it.
*As the blog post below explains, the carols played in Chinese coffee shops year round don't count! :).