Before relocating to China, I looked forward to being hungry. I thought my vegetarian diet would restrict my calorie consumption and imagined how my family and friends would insist on taking me to all my favorite restaurants when I visit San Diego. The food nightmares I had cherished in the months leading to the move were dashed at the first meal. Most Chinese food is vegetarian! And oily! And delicious! To make matters worse, Tiger is a phenomenal cook. He transforms a bag of familiar vegetables into a savory feast in under 30 minutes. He’ll make a dish of eggplant and bell peppers with a dark sauce (I now know the sauce is simply oil, salt, vegetable bullion, soy sauce, starch, and vinegar), a dish of tomatoes and eggs (sounded gross to me too, but it’s delicious!), a dish of celery and onions, and and and you get the idea. The point is that there are multiple veggie dishes on the table every night, and they all taste different.
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| Before we had a real table, we sat on pillows at the coffee table =) |
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| We have a "real table" these days =) |
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| This is breakfast! We visited Tiger's parents in the seaside city of Dalian, where fresh seafood is a large part of every meal. There was plenty of veggie food too! |
To make my foody matters worse, restaurants in Beijing are wicked cheap. Even the “expensive” ones are deliciously reasonable when I convert the prices into dollars (which I no longer do because my salary is not in dollars). But when I did translate Chinese Yuan into American dollars, my fancy plate of aubergine toast at a fancy French restaurant only cost $15. And dinner at a Chinese dumpling restaurant for five well-fed people only came to $30 (all together). Talk about spoiling my sad, skinny fantasy!
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| not so expensive French restaurant: Cote ala Poste |
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| Typical dumpling table for five (the steam baskets come and go several times) |
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| Restaurant in Dalian: the "seafood" at the beginning is assumed (but there was plenty for me to chow on) |
So all you vegetarians out there who fear you won’t find anything to eat in China, get your booties over here. You might want to invest in a scale right away. I’m glad I did. Every few weeks, I starve myself for a few days so I don’t blow up.
