So What DO I Eat In Beijing?

Many people were apparently fascinated with my eating habits in Korea, and are now wondering just what I eat here in China. Well, first off, I have eaten nothing alive, and except for the raw tuna I had yesterday while at Centro, I really haven't even had anything NEARLY alive.

But that doesn't mean I haven't been eating. I get two meals a day as part of my homestay deal, then (if I am even hungry) can eat out for lunch.

Breakfast as been different every day, ranging from leftover duck fried with garlic and pepper and served on a sort of fried garlic bun to sweetened rice and jujubes steamed in banana-leaf wrappers. Today it was stirfried fish-cakes and cabbage and a plate of apple slices, the other day it was eggdrop soup.

Dinners are a bigger variety, usually a starch and four or five sides, one of which is often a meat (usually duck at my homestay). There are stirfried garlic stems (as well as raw ones dipped in black sauce), snow peas, mixed vegetables, some strange clear noodle-like things is a spicy brown cold soup, stirfried cabbage leaves, some other types of leaves... Basically all manner of vegetables stirfried in a myriad of sauces of every imaginable shade of brown and grey, some spicy, most salty. Oh, and there are cucumbers in vinegar.

As for starches, sometimes it is rice, by my homestay family seems to prefer various breads, especially a flat steamed bread.

Well, anyway, not as interesting as live octopus, but good nonetheless.