The Tea Lady - and the Tea Trolley

[Harleyman]

I gasped in surprise, my knees buckled and I had a very hot flush when I read Harleyman 's comments on Chinese food ! Admittedly, you can get poor food anywhere, but Harleyman and his fellow-travellers must have been singularly unlucky with their holiday food-----two years ago ! [ At first I thought they were observations from about 1949 ].

I know for a fact that 2 years ago, China was [ and is ] packed with every kind of food shop,, market, cafe and restaurant you can think of. I 've never known a country where food plays such a central role in everyday life.

One of my favourite restaurants in China was a place called ' Golden Hans ' [ there 's a chain of them throughout the country. ]. You paid a fixed amount and then you could eat [ more or less ] as much as you wanted. There were huge tables, buffet style, where you could choose from dozens of dishes-----fruit, vegetables, cakes, soups----loads of stuff. The only exception to all this was the meat which they kept bringing round to the table [ as meat is expensive for locals in China ]. You would get about 15 kinds of meat-----beef, chicken, pork, lamb-----plus other things like pieces of pizza, corn.....

The initial cost of all this ? About 3 pounds 80 pence. Nice lager-type beer about 60 pence for half a litre. Live music, good atmosphere, clean toilets------generally speaking----good nights with friends that I 'll always remember. And ! there were hundreds and hundreds of similar places and places of ALL descriptions and this wasn 't in Beijing.

That 's why I found Harleyman 's experience so unusual------unique in fact ?

 

 

That's how Chinese buffets are in the United States but I wasn't lying when I pointed out my food experiences in China.

There were about 20 of us in the tour group. The restaurants the tour guides tooke us to weren't second class by any means. The regular customers seemed to be successful, affluent business people but the food was invariably the same dreary and unimaginative offering. We all sat at big round tables with a rotating tray in the center called a Lazy Susan. The first course was a soup which was all liquid and tasted of nothing then the main dishes were served which were always loads of green veggies (I like veggies but not in those quantities) stacks of white rice and a dish or two of little bits of meat which was stringy and greasy. The thin green 'no body" Chinese tea I wont mention any further. Once we went to a Mongolian Barebcue. I sometimes go to one near my home but the one in China was disappointing.

I'm not being unreasonably critical because everyone in the tour group felt much the same way about the food.

When we arrived in Shanghai we got a few hours to ourselves to wander around the city. Funnily enough there is an area of Shanghai called Chinatown. It was a very colorful, enjoyable and intersesting place and there was a KFC, McDonalds and a Starbucks coffee in one part of it. The whole group without exception ended up scoffing their heads off in either of those two places. Who would have thought that those kind of junk fast food outlets would become some kind of gastronomical Mecca for all of us

Maybe if we had had some choice in where we ate instead of the tour guides taking us to those so called upscale restaurants I might have had a better of opinion of the food which was the only bad experience in an otherwise thoroughly enjoyable visit to a fascinating and interesting country.

 

I might add that before we left on the tour we were warned not to eat the food in the street markets and we were advised to get hepatitis shots and pills to counteract dysentry

Victims of scare tactics? Who knows.

 

Something else comes to mind too. In Suzhou we went on a ricksahaw ride and ate with a local Chinese family. They lived in a little 3 roomed house. The mama was a little old lady and we all crowded into the small rooms. That little old lady cooked us up the best Chinese food of the whole trip. It was really good, bless her heart