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 Soups – A Tiny Sampling Of A Vast Menu

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Beijing, Breakfast, China, Chinese, Eggs, Meat, Sichuan, Soup, Vegetables

Soups, or tang, play a huge role in the Chinese menu – they are served at breakfast and every other meal. Typically, there is a whole soup section on even a small street eatery’s menu, and contrary to the concept of a soup as a starter, it is treated as a main dish and comes in a huge bowl that will serve 2 to 3 people, if not more.

Ingredients and the level of spiciness vary widely between each soup, although there appear to be some favorites. I’ll present a brief sampling that contains most of the soups I had while in China:

1) A dish you will find almost anywhere (including Chinese textbooks!) and that is a traditional, homey meal all across China, is xi hong shi ji dan, or tomato & egg soup. Some are essentially egg drop soup with cubes of tomatoes, others have whole omelets in broth, and yet others are almost more of a tomato bisque with some egg swirled in.

Here’s a version I had in Beijing, which started my love affair with this dish:

In Chengdu, I got the slightly bizarre omelett-in-soup variety:

In Leshan in Sichuan province, I got a much more tomato-soup like version:

2) In Chengdu, I had a lovely soup consisting of broth with baby bok choy leaves – sounds plain, but really wasn’t! Plus, I did the Chinese thing and added some dark rice vinegar 🙂

3) Also in Chengdu, we had a lovely pork and mushroom soup that was earthy and flavorful:

4) In Beijing, in a tiny restaurant near Beihai Park, we got what I think is pretty much hot and sour soup with pork, as one knows it from Chinese restaurants around here:

5) In Emeishan, we had another batch of kelp soup, or hai dai tang, similar to a breakfast dish we had in Wenchuan. This was slippery to eat with chopsticks, and only for those that like chewy seaweed, but I loved it:

6) And finally, from Tangshan, a dish called yun nan guo qiao mi xian, or “noodles that cross the bridge”. This is a specialty containing extremely long rice flour noodles with meat of seafood balls (my version had shrimp balls) as well as some vegetables in a mild, clear broth that can be spiced up with pepper-oil. This is super filling, super cheap, and delicious dish!

So, as a bottom line, tang, or soup, is always a great, warming, filling option you’ll find anywhere, it’s low in calories, healthy, and flavorful, and you can hardly go wrong (Well, except maybe that omelet-soup…). Since you most likely will face many a menu that has no English whatsoever (or random English, with dishes translated as “not food”!), finding the character for tang can be an easy way to point and always get something good, with a surprise element.

What are some of your favorite soups? Are soups strictly a winter food for you? I didn’t expect I’d love hot soups in the heat of China, but it was actually really refreshing and helped me adjust.

Eat Like A Panda – Bamboo Shoots

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Bamboo Shoots, Chengdu, China, Chinese, Giant Panda Breeding Center, Sichuan, Vegetables

Chengdu in Sichuan Province is filled with panda memorabilia. Why? Because the Giant Panda Breeding Center, an effort to prevent the dying out of this species, is located there and draws millions of Chinese and foreign tourists. Of course we had to go and squeal over panda babies, lazy pandas, pandas in heat (which sound remarkably like goats…) and more.

What we didn’t quite expect was the Center’s restaurants offerings to “eat like a giant panda”. But of course I had to try!

So, while bamboo shoots, though boiled, not raw. I had no idea they turned black! We had to peel the outermost, harder layers (just like pandas do) to get to the soft, really tasty inner tube of flesh.

Buttery soft!
Now, pandas literally spend 95% of their waking hours eating. That’s because they can only digest 20% of the bamboo, and have to pass the rest. Panda droppings are *very* fibrous and green. As a gentle warning, humans don’t appear to be too much better at digesting bamboo shoots…

And to finish up, I ordered something by pointing at the picture on the menu (no English was spoken by the staff). I’d expected mushrooms, but got algae. This didn’t bother me one bit, I love pretty much anything that grows/lives in the sea, however, this was one true-to-Sichuan-hot-as-all-hell dish.

Lots, and lots, and more Sichuan peppers reduced me to a glazed-eyed, flaming red, perspiring, somewhat insanely grinning mess uttering high pitched giggles and “whoa”s, but I couldn’t stop eating, it was so tasty. I simply can’t explain the appeal of it; it’s this strange, tingly sensation that makes you want to cry and never stop eating at the same time. Sichuan isn’t for softies!

What vegetables have you encountered you didn’t think were edible or tasty and that blew you away? Anything you’re dying to try?

Chinese Street Food & Snacks – A (Small) Sampling

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China, Chinese, Food, Ice cream, Meat, red beans, Sichuan, Snacks, street food

When in China, most likely you’ll be on foot or on a bicycle (at your own risk!) when not in a taxi. There’ll be lots and lots of walking, and you’ll see snacks everywhere. Who could resist? Here’s a list that merely scratches the surface of the matter, but with options that are healthy and delicious and a little more exciting than simply stocking up on fresh fruit and sugar-free chewing gum (though the gum variety is worth checking out!).

One of my favorite snacks I had while walking in the streets of Chengdu, where small fry kitchens and food carts abound:

This was a sweet cake made by preparing a paste from glutinous rice meal and water and steaming it wrapped in a corn husk, similar to a tamale. The cake was moist and while it was sweet, it didn’t just coat your mouth in sugar stickiness. Wonderful! 🙂

When we were in Leshan, a city in Sichuan that hosts a 70 meter high buddha carved into a mountain covered in temples, we made the mistake of thinking of the trip as a road stop along the way and lugged our luggage up and down the mountain for 2 hours in the boiling sun. To cool down, we went for ice cream. Ice cream comes in odd varieties in China (for example corn ice cream in the shape of corn on the cob), but a traditional, locally made variety looks kind of like a white popsicle:

Unfortunately, nowhere on the wrapper does it list the flavor, and I have been racking my brain ever since what that flavor was. Mildly sweet, not at all overpowering, it was great and refreshing. The best I can come up with is a subtle resemblance to coconut, but I don’t think that was it. If anyone knows, *please* let me know! This is a wonderful snack on one of the many hot Chinese summer days for relatively few calories compared to milk- or cream-based ice cream.

Staying in Sichuan, we decided to hike up Mount Emei, one of the four sacred Buddhist mountains in China. Let me tell you, an 11 hour hike covering 14 miles, steeply uphill on stairs, not paths, to reach the summit at 10,100 feet, left me in dire need of protein to refuel. I opted for beef jerky.

Little did I suspect that even beef jerky comes in the Sichuan variety. They must have just rubbed this stuff in Sichuan pepper paste! Well, I was very alert after, and it was actually very tasty, even though my water consumption went way up afterwards. Jerky is a staple in convenience stores and snack shacks or carts in rural areas, so be on the look out for it if you need a protein kick and are tired of eggs. Not low in fat or salt, but not too bad.

And the final snack I found at a little street kitchen in the hutongs of Beijing. I *adored* this:

What you see here a paper thin meringue-like containers shaped as a triangle. The filling is your choice:

I went with red bean paste, because I love all things red bean. Not too sweet, perfectly balanced and light, this is a fairly low calorie snack with protein and sweetness! Of course, if you opt for a cream-base filling, that doesn’t hold true. And as an added bonus, they come in the most adorable little paper bag:

What are some of your favorite snacks? Do you eat snacks on a regular basis, or try to avoid them? Anything you found while traveling that you wish you could get back home?

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!