Why the Chinese Don't Count Calories (2 page)

My relationship with Tim, which had started in the heady days of university life, floundered in our twenties as different aspirations put thousands of miles between us. Friends and family warned me sternly of the dangers of rekindling an old flame, but I wanted to see what had captured Tim’s heart. For two glorious weeks I allowed myself to revel in the incessant activity of Asia’s fastest-growing capital, keeping irregular hours, letting each day unfold as it might and opening my senses to a culture that both beckoned and intimidated all at once.

With Tim’s help I acquired a Flying Pigeon bicycle, the brand favoured by all the locals, inappropriately named, I thought, since it neither went very fast nor knew its way home. It did, however, allow me easy access to the narrow streets, known as
hutongs
, where I could savour the sights, sounds and smells of local life. Occasionally I would visit a park or a temple but, perhaps because I am by nature a homemaker, I increasingly found myself drawn to the street markets and the food stalls. There, the throngs of local Beijingers were all united in a common purpose, which appeared to be a routine but not a chore, and the city really came alive for me.

Early morning was grocery time. I was amazed by the sheer volume of foodstuff, most of it green, much of it unrecognizable, that could all be loaded on a three-wheel cart. People shopped with energy and enthusiasm, often entering into lengthy exchanges that I guessed must be about price or quality. Stallholders would willingly offer to break open a tomato to show the succulent flesh or peel back the silk of a sweetcorn to display the fresh cob inside. I watched with interest to see a surly man attack a radish-type vegetable with a chopper and reveal a bright purple centre; I held my breath as a cheeky-faced young girl smashed a green egg, exhaling only when I found out that the contents were solid and bright orange in colour.

Some people say that dog owners come to look like their animals. I couldn’t help making the same comparison between the vendors and their produce. A woman selling tomatoes had round smooth rosy cheeks, a clear-skinned girl with perfect features offered me a succulent grape to try; a small shy man with close-cropped hair sat shelling peas; a tall thin youth peered over piles of what I first thought were leeks, but later discovered to be spring onions. A weatherbeaten type sold unwashed carrots and potatoes and an octogenarian sat scooping up walnuts and dates into paper bags. ‘Even the rugged and wrinkled look fit,’ I thought to myself as the old man’s face broke into a smile, which crinkled his skin like a piece of thin paper.

When my stomach announced that lunch-time was nearing, I was irresistibly drawn to the multitude of street snacks in hole-in-the-wall outlets or on portable trolleys. The sweltering August weather provided a steamy backdrop for slurping huge bowls of noodles, but this was no deterrent for the locals. Most tables had a bamboo tray or two with some kind of steamed bun or dumpling that the diners grasped deftly with their chopsticks,dipped into a dark liquid,and expertly devoured in two bites. I would walk past them slowly, attempting to get a closer look at what they were eating, without attracting their notice or staring too hard. Sometimes I couldn’t help but stop in amazement at the vibrance of the scene, and when I did I noticed that young and old and very old, well-dressed, casual and downright shabby were all represented among the street-side clientele. Yet despite obvious disparities of age and income the diners had many things in common: healthy countenances, shapely physiques and sheer enjoyment of the moment.

Not a natural communicator and totally lacking in language skills, I was often frustrated in my attempts to sample the local flavours. While I had read about intrepid travellers dining in fine style just by pointing, I did little more than cope, and wasn’t comfortable interacting. I was far too worried about attracting attention to myself, being cheated, robbed, or simply laughed at. I was also concerned about what I might end up with: would it be greasy and inedible? Would I be obliged to eat it anyway?

Alone on my first day in Beijing, I made my way past every stand in the street, convincing myself that the food at the next one would be better, or the ordering process clearer, but ended up in the Beijing Hotel, safe in the company of the city’s affluent tourist population. There I ordered a tuna sandwich, which bore little relation to its name.

Realizing that I had to do this in stages, I turned my attention away from the hundred and one varieties of noodles and the mysterious bamboo baskets towards more recognizable items. By the end of my first week I had managed to buy a couple of small fried flat-breads. The filling was still a lottery: flat chives with flecks of egg, an aniseed-flavoured vegetable with minced pork, or, sometimes just minced spring onion. I did feel vaguely guilty about the amount of oil that oozed from my prize, and the vegetable was vaguely reminiscent of grass cuttings, but the whole eating experience was much better than the tuna sandwich, so I put my misgivings aside.

In the early evening (even in 1993 restaurants in Beijing seldom stayed open after eight), we would go slightly upmarket on the eating establishment front. During the ten years that Tim and I had spent apart he had acquired an enviable level of spoken and written Mandarin, which opened a wealth of possibilities. Laughing at my inability to decipher even the simplest of Chinese characters, he taught me to identify restaurants by the string of fairy lights outside or the tank of fish within and to favour places where we had to squeeze in among the cheerful locals and avoid those where a lone waitress sat watching TV or slept with her head on the plastic tablecloth. Then, waving aside the extensive handwritten menu, Tim would order confidently from his repertoire of favourites.

The dishes we ate in Beijing, seated at rickety wooden tables on folding chairs, bore no resemblance to the Golden Panda’s set menu. On my first night we ate in what can only be described as a shack, which we approached across a building site. After showing me how to rinse my slightly grimy glass with water from the kettle before pouring my beer,Tim ordered three dishes. I remember each one clearly: a plate of chicken and peanuts, with whole dried chillies in view, an aubergine dish featuring some kind of mushroom and, finally, glistening bright green mange-tout peas with a liberal scattering of garlic. It looked like a lot of food for two people, and I had a rather lightweight pair of disposable chopsticks to deal with, not to mention misgivings about the whole chillies and the fungus; but the smell was so tantalizing that I dug in manfully.

The chicken dish, Tim’s favourite,
gong bao ji ding
(which masquerades in the UK as ‘Kung Pao chicken’, see p. 109) was more than spicy: it totally filled my mouth with heat. I thought I had experienced the ultimate taste sensation until I tried the aubergine. This was slightly hot, with a hint of sweet and sour too, and an unusual flavour that I later learned was fermented bean paste. The sauce lingered on the pieces of fungus, which were surprisingly firm to chew, contrasting well with the soft chunks of aubergine. My chopstick skills proved a match for everything, even the flat, thin, crisp mange-tout, which were so much more appetizing than the rather grey-green string vegetable I was familiar with. Before I knew it the plates were empty and we were fighting for the roughly chopped pieces of garlic left on the oval plate.

As we emerged into the street, I looked around me. There were at least six similar establishments within sight, all packed and certainly not with the rich and famous. In China, I realized at that moment, good food is accessible to all. I asked Tim to stop for a moment and we peered into a neighbouring restaurant. Against the soothing background of a brightly lit fish tank the atmosphere was animated and the diners looked totally at ease, digging eagerly with their chopsticks into an amazing variety of dishes. ‘These people just love their food,’ I thought to myself, and then another thought followed quickly in its wake: ‘but not one of them is over weight. ’ That is not to say that everyone had supermodel proportions: the shapely took their place alongside the skinny and the rounded contrasted with the thin, without anyone looking uncomfortable or out of proportion. The night was warm, and on a couple of tables the beer was flowing, but where cheeks were flushed it was with rude health, not overindulgence.

As we strolled through the balmy night Tim gave me a quick insight into the Chinese food culture. ‘Accept the fact,’ he explained in the affectionate tone he always uses when describing anything China-related, positive or negative, ‘that they’re obsessed with food. . . There is a whole set of rules for formal eating. Sometimes it can take ten minutes just to get everyone seated at the table so that no one takes offence. ’

I made a mental note to avoid formal dinners. ‘But what about everyday eating?’ I asked, thinking fondly of the lively atmosphere we had just witnessed. Tim explained that when he listened carefully, he found that the conversation usually revolved around food. ‘Mealtimes are major events in China; people think and care about food all the time. Food is ingrained in their culture,’ he said. ‘The meals are the high points of the day. ’

‘Obsessed with food!’ I turned the phrase over in my mind. I could relate to that. I had spent most of my college years planning what I would cook my friends for supper, the result being a great following from the opposite sex but a second-rate degree. Then I had found myself a job in food PR writing catchy copy lines like ‘Our sausages contain no eyeballs nor snout’ and producing recipe booklets for low-calorie salad dressings. My enthusiasm for the subject was such that I had been prepared to spend hours in photo shoots making coffee look frothy with a splash of washing up liquid or painting tomatoes with glue to make them glisten. I even once toured the country with a dinosaur costume arranging tea parties for the winners of a competition on cans of dinosaur-shaped pasta pieces. Once the actor missed the train and I found myself walking the streets of Hull with a gaggle of children hanging onto my tail, which stretched my enthusiasm for the job to the limit – but didn’t quench my enjoyment in working with food.

The problem was that my food obsession was tinged with a trace of guilt. Part of the first generation to be plagued with modern, lifestyle-related obesity, I grew up in an era of fad diets and obsessive calorie counting and have seen several of my contemporaries suffer from anorexia. So, convinced that restraint was the only option, I was fascinated to come upon a nation that positively stuffed at every meal and looked great on it. I could see that the Chinese obsession with food was different.

One sweltering afternoon I emerged from the dining room of the China World Hotel. Some of Tim’s colleagues’ wives had invited me to lunch, and I had my first experience of an American-style buffet table. The meal had been unexciting: greasy red noodles, dried up pieces of barbecued meat and shaving foam–topped gateaux. According to habit I had helped myself from the selection of rather tired looking salads and was leaving the dining room feeling distinctly dissatisfied.

As I hit the street, a tantalizing smell wafted from a doorway. The door was ajar and I couldn’t resist a look; perhaps it was the kitchen? Even better – it was the staff dining area. The noise and activity were a sharp contrast to the sophistication of the hotel restaurant. I couldn’t help but notice the quantity that people were eating; their rice bowls were not the dainty cup-sized ones that I was familiar with but big enough to toss a salad in or serve pasta for two or more. And they were full of a multi-coloured, multi-textured teetering pile of food. I recognized a waitress from the hotel dining room; she had introduced us to the sumptuous display of food with an air of efficiency and politeness that lightly masked her disdain. Now, sitting with her head down, bowl in one hand, chopsticks in the other she was totally at ease. As she came up for air, I caught her eye and held it. She smiled. At that moment I knew that she, and thousands of others, had secrets to share, and I determined to find them out. It took me ten years, and I am still learning.

By the summer of 1995, I was fully in pursuit of real Chinese food. Married to Tim, I had completed a Mandarin course and was living in Beijing with my two sons, Max and Christian, then aged six and four, and our new baby, Sam. I took every opportunity to frequent local restaurants and order as many different dishes as possible. That was the easy bit, and fortunately the boys enjoyed the multitude of new tastes and flavours and the relaxed atmosphere where children are not just welcomed but positively doted on. Adjusting to a culture where it is usual to have an
ayi
, or home help, was more difficult, but, over time, I came to appreciate the arrangement for the great privilege that it is. Two years my senior, fresh-faced and slim with waist-length hair, our
ayi
, Xiao Ding, did not take long to become an integral part of our household and we are firm friends to this day. Xiao Ding gave me invaluable practical assistance when I arrived knowing no one in an alien capital city and, although neither teaching me the secrets of the Chinese kitchen nor helping me set up a cooking school formed part of her original job description, she rose to the challenge and provided guidance and inspiration throughout.

I knew that a good working knowledge of the Chinese language was the only way to unlock restaurant and kitchen doors, so I set about furthering my Mandarin studies with a vengeance, baby seat in tow. Chinese, while relatively simple in terms of grammatical constructions, seems completely impenetrable at first sight since every new character has to be learned by rote. But necessity is a great motivator, and I was soon able to get myself around town and feel comfortable in restaurants and in the markets. Chinese cuisine appeared equally daunting at times, as there were dozens of ingredients that I had never seen before. I would wander round food stores in a daze, trying to make sense of row upon row of bottles, piles of packets filled with pastes of some kind and bags of dried produce that might have been animal, vegetable or mineral.