Funny Things in China Part III

In my continuing series of funny things seen in China, I offer you Exhibit C:

This is a public restroom in Fuzhou. I want to draw your attention to the scrolling LED displays above the door, which tell you if the stall is occupied or not (you can see the word "Occupied" starting to scroll across on the right stall). What caught my attention was that if a bathroom was, in fact, occupied, the display also listed a running count of how long it had been occupied. See the display over the left stall for an example of this (six minutes and counting!). I'm not sure if this is a ploy to shame folks into not taking too long or if it's meant to be a helpful tool for those trying to decide which door to line up in front of. If they had the former goal in mind, it seems to me that the process could be improved by having a video display in the stall that shows this video after, say, five minutes.

The Yinchuan Train Station

In the past two months, I have passed through many, many Chinese train stations. In most cases, there is very little variation from station to station. They are functional, straightforward affairs, and I have nothing particularly negative to say against any of them. Once in a while, though, a train station separates itself from its brethren and stands out as exceptional in one way or another. Last week I had the pleasure to pass through one of these exceptional train stations, and it didn't take long to decide that it was my favorite of all the train stations I have seen thus far. The station is in Yinchuan, the capital of Ningxia Province--an area infrequently visited by Western tourists. According to a friend in Yinchuan, they have only recently finished redesigning the station. In order to avoid disrupting train traffic, they simply built a new terminal onto the opposite side of the tracks, so now they have the old station and the new station back to back with all of the platforms in the middle. The old station was fairly unattractive. I only saw it for a moment, but in that glimpse I saw an outdated structure that looked like it was designed in a Soviet space-age motif. Here's a picture I stole from the Internet so you can see for yourself:

Source: http://blog.66law.cn/users/zsm0824/3,5893.aspx

The new station, in contrast, was designed with a gorgeous Islamic motif, which is appropriate as Ningxia is designated as the Hui Autonomous Region in China. (The Hui people--one of China's 56 ethnic minorities--are Muslim Chinese descended from Arabic traders many centuries ago.) Here's the new station:

Pretty nice, eh? In addition to to those great cathedral arches, the windows there contain some beautiful green and white stained glass.  Here's a magnification of the same picture:

This stained glass is also on the sides of the building, which you can see from the inside of the station.

So we've established that the new station is much more attractive than the old station, and it incorporates some traditional Muslim architecture and decoration. Is that alone enough to make it my favorite of all of the Chinese train stations? No--there's more. Remember when I said that Yinchuan is infrequently visited by Western tourists? If I had to take a totally out-of-thin-air guess, I would say that this station handles fewer than 500 Westerners per year. In comparison to the hundreds of thousands of Chinese folks that pass through (again, just a ballpark estimate), Westerners are a rare breed 'round these parts. And yet every single sign in the station had an English translation underneath the Chinese. This is not too common in some of the smaller cities in China, even provincial capitals. But Yinchuan didn't stop there. They took it one step further and added good English translations to all of the spoken announcements that came over the station's loudspeakers. This is really rare in China. Even some of the big coastal cities don't offer this courtesy to English speakers.

Now, of course I realize that I'm in China, a country where they speak (believe it or not) Chinese, so I make it a rule to never expect English anywhere. That would be mighty arrogant. That being said, if a restaurant, hotel, or train station does offer English translation (especially when it's not a ploy to drum up some extra tourist money), it really makes you feel welcome. It shows that they've gone out of their way to cater to a very small portion of their clients. They don't have to--they just do.

So there you have it. Congratulations, Yinchuan Train Station. You're my new favorite station in China.

Fried Persimmon Cakes

If your taste buds share the same characteristics as mine--and I can only assume that they do--then you have a natural proclivity for sweet tastes and mushy textures. Yes? Good. Because friends, do I have some good news to share: behold the Shi Zi Bing (柿子饼) (fried persimmon cake).

The fried persimmon cake is a specialty in Xi'an and is, by far, one of the most addictive street foods I've eaten in China. The cake is made of a persimmon dough stuffed with a variety of different pastes, including osmanthus, peanut, black sesame, and more. The dough is flattened into a disc (perhaps the diamter of an American silver dollar, except about an inch high) and then fried. They are best eaten shortly after cooking when they are still hot. These things are amazing. They have a very thin crispy layer on the outside from the frying, but the inside is all mush and goo. The dough is soft and glutinous, while the paste on the inside oozes out as soon as you penetrate that inner wall. It's sweet (fruity sweet, not sugary sweet), gooey, and warm. One will cost you about 2 yuan. Something that delicious for such a good price means that I went back for seconds, thirds, and fourths. If I stayed in Xi'an any longer, I am sure I would have had many, many more. The Shi Zi Bing are available in many places in the city, but the best place to look is in the Muslim quarter behind the Drum Tower.

Rabbit Heads

In my post last night about Dou Hua Mian, I noted that it was a good entry point for people reluctant to try the more exotic street foods (to a Western palate). This post is not for those people. Today I go to the other extreme, to a food that only the more adventurous travelers will seek out: rabbit heads.

Some street foods you need to ask around to find. They might be advertised on a sign, but if you don't read Chinese you're out of luck. This is not one of those foods. To identify a vendor selling rabbit heads, look for this:

Yes, this terrifying army of zombie-esque rabbit heads could be your lunch. For 6 yuan, you receive one rabbit head and some plastic gloves. 

The outside of a rabbit's head does not have a lot of meat. To access anything worth eating, you are required to take this head apart, piece by piece. Now, for as long as I can remember, I've been a mammal. In my time as a mammal, I've eaten many other fellow mammals with little or no compunction. But there's something about grabbing a rabbit's lower jaw in one hand and its upper jaw in your other hand and pulling them apart like a wish-jaw that doesn't sit quite right deep within my mammalian soul. Perhaps if I were a farmer or hunter I wouldn't have that same hesitation. I don't know. For me, it was a tad discomfiting. Anyway, if you are able to push on through your soul's protestations, there are some really nice flavors to be had. I had the sense ahead of time that this would fall into the category of foods (along with chicken wings) that are too much work and too much mess for too little reward. In this case, I am glad to say that my supposition was proven false. Don't get me wrong--this is a food that requires a lot of work on behalf of the diner, and in return you get messy fingers and not very much meat. What sets the rabbit's head apart from other high-energy, low-yield dishes is the variety of flavors to be had. You are expected to eat anything here that isn't bone: the jaw muscles, the tongue, the upper palate, the eyes, the brains, and any other miscellaneous flesh that you can find. Each of them has a different taste and texture, which makes the reward much greater than a mere chicken wing. I was particularly fond of the jaw meat (brown, gamy, succulent) and the tongue (chewy, mild flavored, a bit tough). 

I want to emphasize one more time that this is not an easy food to eat. After the first bit where you break open the jaws, as if opening up a stapler for reloading, you have to pull all sorts of sections of bone away. The hardest part to access is the brain--I was instructed to bite the top of the skull to crack it open like an egg. Through the whole ordeal, the rabbit tries to defend itself by having very, very sharp bones. I actually ended up with a small gash on my thumb towards the end. If you sample this delicacy, I would recommend being very careful with the bones. 

My verdict? Definitely worth a try. If you can get past the nagging awareness that you're tearing apart an innocent bunny's skull with your bare hands, an interesting mix of flavors and textures awaits.

Dou Hua Mian

As much as I hate to admit it, not everybody is interested in eating delicacies like pigs' brains or stinky tofu. Perhaps you're one of them...I don't know. For people like this, travelling through China can be a daunting prospect. China is full of foods that are unusual to folks accustomed to Western food, and some of the less intrepid among us, in their hesitance to dive whole hog (in a manner of speaking) into the Chinese experience, survive in China on McDonald's and KFC. This post is for those people.

Chinese food--even Chinese street food--has some great gateway options for people who are reluctant to eat the more adventurous foods. A classic foreigner dish in restaurants, for example, is the Xihongshi Chao Dan (西红柿炒蛋), or tomatoes and eggs. It tastes great, and all of the ingredients are completely recognizable to a foreign palate. In the realm of street food, one great gateway option I recently tried is called Dou Hua Mian (豆花面), and I had the great pleasure to eat it in Zunyi. Dou hua is basically very soft tofu. Sometimes it's translated as tofu pudding. Mian just means noodles. Here's a picture of the dish as it was prepared for me in Zunyi:

The ingredients are as follows: flat, fettuccine-shaped noodles; dou hua; mint leaves; chives; pork; peanuts; a bit of spicy sauce (optional). Reader, it tasted just like an Italian noodle dish. The dou hua tasted almost identically to ricotta cheese (which, I suppose, is why vegans use tofu in their lasagnas). The taste was so familiar to my Western palate, it almost didn't seem like Chinese food. But Chinese food it was. And street food, at that.

To you, oh timid-stomached foreign tourists, I say that you needn't be afraid of Chinese street food. Judicious, yes, but afraid? Certainly not. The Dou Hua Mian in Zunyi is a perfect example of a nice gateway between Western food and Chinese street food. It can be yours for the low price of 8 yuan.

Funny Things in China Part II

Many--not all--people in China subscribe to different beliefs about safety than many--not all--people in the United States. One of the ways this manifests itself is in seat belt usage: most people forego them. Not all Chinese cars are Chinese-made, of course, and for some years now most Western car manufacturers have installed sensors in the front seats that use irritating binging noises to goad passengers into wearing their seat belts. So what is a Chinese person to do? Wear a seat belt or deal with a constant binging noise? Perhaps there is another way. As it has been said, necessity is the mother of invention. Behold the invention born of necessity:

These were in the front seat of my friend's car. Problem solved!

Funny Things in China Part I

You see a lot of funny things in China. When possible, I try to take pictures for future sharing. This is the inaugural post in a series of funny things I've seen in China. Exhibit A:

If that looks like a claw machine in an arcade that is filled with packs of cigarettes instead of stuffed animals, that's because it is. I'm not 100% sure what demographic they were trying to allure here. Children don't smoke (or, more accurately, shouldn't, smoke), and adults would probably find it easier just to go to the store and buy a pack. Unless you're really a pro with these claw machines, it's probably also cheaper to acquire cigarettes in the traditional way.

Unfortunately, I did not see anybody attempt this game.