A Buddhist Monk’s Meal – Jieyin Hall On Mount Emei

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Bhuddist, China, Chinese, Emeishan, Food, low-calorie, Sichuan, Soup, Temple Food, Vegetables

Perhaps because of the Holiday season and all its indulgences and elaborate meals, I really find myself wanting to post about a wonderful meal I enjoyed on Mount Emei, one of the sacred Buddhist mountains in China.

While in Sichuan, we decided to hike up Mt. Emei, sleep at the top, and witness the sunrise on the Golden Summit, a spectacle that the Chinese flock to and that is really amazing to behold. Within about 2 minutes, you see the sun appear and fully rise above the horizon, bathing a Golden Pagoda on the summit in sparkling light. Lots of ooohs and aaahs and pictures!

But first things first – we hiked up Mt. Emei. This entailed waking up before the sun had risen, taking a bus to the base of the mountain, and climbing 23.5 kilometers (14.6 miles) of stairs, crossing a 3 kilometer (1.9 mile) height difference and a 23 degree Celsius (35 degree Fahrenheit) temperature difference. It took us 11 hours, sweat, bamboo poles as walking sticks (best 1 yuan we ever, ever spent!), desperate jokes and jello legs, but we made it. While some areas are accessible by cable car and teem with visitors, the vast majority of those 11 hours we spent alone, with the exception of 3 or so hours in the company of a total of maybe 15 Chinese people of all ages that were just as desperate as us. We arrived just as the sun was setting at Jieyin Hall, the last temple before the summit.

At the temple, we were shown to a room with beds with piles and piles of blankets and heating pads, as well as a wash bowl to take in the morning to wash. Then, we had a temple food – simple, vegetarian, wholesome, and beyond delicious.

There was rice, steamed winter melon (the cucumber-esque looking dish), a simple leafy green soup, stir-fried string beans (I ate 3 plates. What? They were the best string beans I have ever tasted, and I had just climbed 11 hours worth of stairs!) and boiled bamboo sprouts with mushrooms. It was a feast, we could have as much as we wanted, and I can’t begin to explain how wonderful this simple, Bhuddist meal was. No bells and whistles, no fancy ingredients – just beautiful produce prepared in the simplest ways to make it shine. Sometimes I wish more meals were like this.

Will you miss Holiday foods, or are you ready for a break from fancy meals? Have you had similar experiences with spiritually shaped dishes?

Chinese Breakfasts – An Overview

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bao zi, Beijing, Breakfast, Chengdu, China, Chinese, Congee, Eggs, Emeishan, Sichuan, Soup, Vegetables, Wenchuan

Breakfast, the most important meal of the day, right? Well, Chinese breakfast is nothing like American breakfast (or European breakfast, for that matter), and comes in many forms. I’ll attempt to give a basic overview over what you may encounter, focusing on the less figure-threatening options.

One of the most common things you’ll see, though not necessarily in hotels, is congee or konji, a very thin, watery rice porridge. Don’t think oatmeal consistency, think soup:

Congee itself is pretty flavorless, but what makes it delicious is the toppings that you add. Those range from fruit to fish, but the most common options will include all kinds of salty pickled vegetables (somewhat like pickled sushi ginger). This is not typically a breakfast that appeals to most Westerners, but you can get quite used to it. Due to the high water to rice ratio, the caloric count really isn’t too bad.

From here on, I’ll show pictures of various breakfasts I had on our trip. Let’s start with a breakfast I had in a little breakfast street kitchen in Wenchuan, Sichuan province:

This is a pretty typical assembly consisting of a tea egg or cha dan (a hard-boiled egg soaked in tea, soy sauce and spices), pickles, kelp soup or hai dai tang, and bao zi (stuffed steamed buns filled with either minced vegetables or meat). The bao zi clock in higher on the caloric scale with about 100kcal for a small steamed bun (fried bao zi are much, MUCH worse!), but one or two nicely beef up your breakfast. The kelp soup, consisting of long, noodle-shaped strips of seaweed in a clear broth, has about 85 calories per cup, and is especially nice on a cool morning. To enjoy this dish, you should definitely like the chewy texture of kelp.

Next, breakfasts in Chengdu, Sichuan province, at our hotel, which also served Chinese-style breakfast:

As you can see, there is broth and a tea egg again, and also some boiled baby bok choy (delicious!). There are also two cold dishes consisting of lettuce and Sichuan peppers (certainly wakes you up in the morning…), and the omnipresent wintermelon, a bitter melon shaped like a long, pockmarked cucumber that is incredibly popular in China. Very vegetable-heavy dishes, though larger buffets will have meat options and bao zi as well.

Same hotel, other morning. The same vegetable dishes, plus a small cake made of bean paste and seeds. I think this would have been better warm, but the one I got was pretty much cold and very gelatinous. I didn’t finish it.

Our hotel in Emeishan taught us that Chinese businessmen at breakfast are basically hyenas. I kid you not, there were war cries and head-first dives supported by copious use of elbows. To be fair, when I faught back with the same methods, I earned graciously given respect and managed to still get food on my plate before everything was gnawed down to the bone. This restaurant had very few meat options, so I loaded up on cauliflower (pretty much just steamed without flavour), pickled cucumber, pickled tomatoes and pickled napa cabbage (yes, pickles are essential for breakfast in China).

And the final breakfast also was from Emeishan: a hard-boiled egg (no tea involved), pickled cucumbers and napa cabbage, kelp strips in a Sichuan pepper marinade (cold, but it got me sweating profusely!) and a delicious, warm eggplant stir-fry with peppers that was less rabidly spicy.

And there you have it – I also just ate fruit from stalls or street carts on mornings where we didn’t get breakfast or there were no options that appealed to me, and there are also copious little carts that pop up around breakfast times that will serve bao zi and similar items in steamer baskets.

What is your preferred breakfast? Being German, I’ve always preferred a savory, cold breakfast, but how do you respond to that? And as always, if there is anything specific you’d like to ask, shoot!