This weekend I made a detour south to Guangzhou (广州）, a city in southern China close to Hong Kong. Although the city has over 10 million people I had never heard of it until a few years ago when my company won a contract there. From what I can tell many Westerners are the same.Still, it is a famous city in China and is well-known for its food. A Chinese proverb has it that for a perfect life one should "be born in Suzhou, live in Hangzhou, eat in Guangzhou, die in Liuzhou". Supposedly people from Suzhou are the best-looking, Hangzhou is the most beautiful city, and Guangzhou has the best food. I am not sure about Liuzhou but I think they are famous for making coffins.
Although I was supposedly coming to Guangzhou for work, in the end I have had more free time than I anticipated, so I've tried to see a few things around the city. I managed to fit in two museums, two Buddhist temples and one park in two days which is more than I've accomplished in Shanghai in a month. The museums were quite fascinating, especially the Chen Clan Academy (陈家祠), a family ancestral hall that now holds a folk art museum. The building itself is exquisite and is basically a museum on its own even without the artifacts.
The park was not far from the museums and I ended up there by accident when one of the other places happened to be closed for the afternoon. The admission is 元10 - it seems normal to charge admission to parks in China. One of the famous landmarks in this parks is the statue of the Five Celestial Rams. The legend is that these rams descended from heaven during a famine and brought spikes to plant in the ground that ensured a good harvest in Guangdong Province ever after.
Of course I was curious about the food so I convinced my colleague Jimmy to organize dinner
and see what kind of food Guangzhou had to offer. I arrived a bit late so they had started in on the appetizers and beer. Pearl River Lager seems to be the common local beer - it tastes pretty much the same as all Chinese beer, light and maybe a little sweet.The appetizers were nothing too different for the most part, some barbecued pork, fried cucumber slices in soy sauce. However they did have one thing that I had heard of and never tried - the 100-year old egg. This is a preserved duck egg that has been aged in lime, salt and a few other ingredients. I had always thought they were buried in the ground, but it seems this is probably not done anymore, if it ever was.
These eggs certainly don't look very appetizing. The white turns into a dark brown gelatinous mass and the yolk becomes a sulphuric green creamy substance. I didn't find the taste too strong myself - the trick is not really thinking about the fact that what you're eating looks exactly like a rotten egg and even smells a bit like one too. Mind over matter. Easier said than done perhaps though.
One of the next things to come around looked like little meat rolls. The kind you might find beside sliced cucumber sandwiches and a tea trolley. Jimmy was a bit loath to tell me what these were but as I was eating one already I figured the horse was gone and no point in closing the barn door now. From the consistency (chewy) I was guessing some kind of shellfish but it turned out to be pork intestine, explaining the convoluted shape. It came with a bit of tofu and some sauce. These tasted fine but they are a little bit of work to eat due to the rubbery texture - I have a feeling the method of cooking probably has some effect here. Or maybe intestine is just naturally rubbery - have to say I lack wide experience in the organ meats department.
Now we moved on to something that, although not so common in the West, is at least eaten by some people. Well, French people anyway. Jimmy found it humourous to make me guess what this one was after trying it. I was highly impressed with myself to get it right - bullfrog. I was led astray initially thinking it was poultry, since it really does taste like chicken (the universal taste for things that are not beef, pork or fish apparently). One of the Chinese guys at dinner said that in Cantonese bullfrogs are called "field chickens". So there you go. Actually this was really quite good and a lot less bony than the previous time I had had frog. Maybe these ones were bigger frogs.
A course of quail soup came next. They bring the pot to the table and then ladle out all the quail meat and arrange it artistically on the plate. Of course the entire quail is included, head and all. Otherwise maybe you might not know for sure if it was really a quail. Good to have the proof right there staring you in the face. The quail in fact though seemed a bit overdone and might have been better left in the soup to keep it hydrated. I'll have to give this a try another time and see if it turns out better.
Finally, the last course was fish. Once again no one had an idea about what to call this fish in English and they weren't too sure about Chinese either. We settled on "tài guì yú"（太贵鱼) - "overly expensive fish". Nameless and overpriced, it was still excellent and probably the best part of the meal.
After all that I was pretty much done for the night. There was some discussion about Chinese cigarette brands before we broke up - apparently a couple of brands are very popular due to having been smoked by Mao Zedong (Zhonghua) and Deng Xiaoping (Panda). So the celebrity endorsement of the Chairman smoking your brand is worth a lot. The current chairman, Hu Jintao, doesn't smoke so nobody is getting a free ride there.
Chinese Word of The Post
袋 dài - bag
Context Now in China you have to pay for any shopping bags you use. It's only about 2 cents each but it's a good move to cut down on waste. I had learned the phrase "yi ge bāo" to ask for a bag but Jimmy informed me that this sounded like I was asking for a purse, or maybe a dumpling. Although I have sucessfully gotten shopping bags using this phrase, I think I will switch to "yi ge dài" on Jimmy's advice.
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