Brandon ate China pt. 4: Jiangmen, day 1

"Every time I go to a new place, I eat their tofu.  It helps adjust your stomach to the water of the region."

After a short side trip to China off the mainland, it was finally time to go to Jiangmen, a city about an hour away from Guangzhou.  Today, Jiangmen isn't really a destination for tourists.  Next year, it may be.  Jiangmen exemplifies what the "new" China looks like: wide streets that never sleep, tall condos with impressive modern details, malls that stay open until midnight on weekdays, with local businesses sitting in every crevice that has room for them.

I didn't take the photo, but I did get to ride through this intersection many times!
Photo credit: Panoramio.com

Jiangmen is a "small city" with a population of 1.8 million.  That includes a large amount of land since it's a prefecture-level city.  In 2000, the population was 876,531.  In 1990, it was 379,397.  The population has more than doubled since 2000 and more than quadrupled since 1990!  In about 25 years, the population went from a little bit less than that of Stockton's to a few hundred thousand more than San Diego's.

Almost every building in this picture is a condo.

Being the modern city that it is, Jiangmen has a good variety of restaurants featuring different regional Chinese cuisines.  Cantonese is the local specialty, but on my first visit we decided to try some other stuff.  My first meal in Jiangmen was a delicious lunch in a modern Hunanese restaurant:

From left to right: Top - Tofu stirfried in chili oil, stirfried beef with bamboo strips, tudou si
Bottom - Stirfried beef in chili oil, dong po rou (braised pork), spinach stirfry

Theme of the restaurant?  Classrooms in communist China.

The concrete, bricks, and open ceiling thing is popular in casual restaurants in China too.

Hunan is a province north of Guangdong, and their cuisine is famous for being spicy, aromatic, and a heavy use of chilis with garlic.  In China, "spiciness" is considered to have a couple different variations.  Hunan's "spiciness" is more of the one familiar with Westerners; a "dry heat" caused by pure use of chilis rather than peppercorns.  As someone who can tolerate only a medium amount of heat, I found this restaurant was pretty good at balancing the amount of spiciness and flavor.  It was definitely one of my favorite meals of the trip.



One of my favorite parts of the meal in particular was the tofu.  In America, tofu to me is nothing special, just something to order to balance out the amount of meat dishes.  In China, I could eat this stuff all day.  The preparations are just so much more flavorful and the tofu itself is so smooth and tasty.

Another dish of note is Dong Po Rou, a very fatty cut of pork belly braised and served in sauce.  It was allegedly Mao Zhedong's favorite dish and it and its variations are a common menu item in all kinds of restaurants in China.  Though the chairman was from Hunan, the dish's roots actually come from Hangzhou cuisine, which I'll talk about in excruciating detail on a later post.  Btw, it's just as delicious as braised pork belly sounds.

I think -- and hope -- the spill on the bottom left is a drop from the plate next to it.

Finally we have this: Tudou Si, which I believe is actually more commonly associated with Beijing cuisine than Hunan.  It can be found in some northern Chinese restaurants in America though often terribly translated as "potato salad."  It's about as opposite from western potato salad as you can get: slightly spicy, sour, and oily.  What interests me about this dish, aside from how delicious it is, is that people very rarely associate Chinese cuisine potatoes.  It's a dish that could easily be made appealing to westerners and yet so few even know about it.

Anyway, my next post will cover a regional cuisine within another region... Hakka food!  See you later.

Brandon ate China pt 3: A brief visit to Macau

"Your dad likes to take me to Vegas.  What's the point?  Macau's right here and it's much better."

After a few nights in Hong Kong, it was time to visit Macau for half a day and then return to Carilyn's hometown, Jiangmen.  Sadly, since my time in Macau was very brief and the weather conditions were unfavorable, I didn't get to try any restaurants specific to the region.  Still, we got to enjoy ourselves in the tourist heavy parts of town.

For those who don't know, Macau was a Portuguese colony for a few hundreds years and wasn't returned to China until 1999; two years after Hong Kong was handed back to China from the British.  The Portuguese influence can be seen in some of the food, architecture, and in many of the bilingual signs displayed in Chinese and Portuguese.  However, I saw much fewer westerners here than in Hong Kong.  There just isn't that much business to do here and apparently the vast majority of people in Macau work for the resorts.

Much like many parts of Asia, Macau is a mix of old and new: Modern Eastern condo in the background, historical European in the foreground, McDonald's in the center.

The main thing Macau is known for are the casinos, which I didn't take any good photos of.  Just imagine Las Vegas, if Las Vegas were less about the party and more about the gambling.  Chinese people love to gamble and it statistically shows: Macau, a relatively small city on an island, has about 7 times the gambling revenue than Las Vegas.  These guys are nuts!  I saw a man lose 20,000 HKD in one Baccarat hand.  That's about $3000 at stake to the flip of a card.  No thanks, I need to eat.

There's a touristy part of town with old Portuguese architecture.  At the end of the street is the Ruins of St. Paul, probably the most photographed place in Macau (also which I happen to only have bad photos of).  There's lots of shopping to do here, but more importantly to me, some touristy food on the way to the sights.  Sadly, I'll have to borrow pictures for the food.

Beginning of tourist-ville, Macau

A typical Macau jerky shop.  Several options, samples available, prices high but jerky's good.
Credit: travelsintranslation.com

Macau bakery and cookies.  Most can be sampled; most are pretty good.
Photo Credit: Tripadvisor

Macanese food involves a lot more than jerky and cookies, but I'll have to save that for another trip because we had no time.  The jerky, however, is just a whole different level than Western beef jerky.  Macanese jerky is soft to the bite, sweet, and actually retains some of the flavor of the meat.  They've got beef, pork, and veal varieties and they're flavored with a number of marinades including abalone-flavor and chili.  I've found places that have it in America, but none I've had in the states were as fresh or as balanced in flavor as what I had in Macau.

Macau almond cookies are nothing mind blowing, but the stores are fun.  There's dudes in aprons outside of each store offering fresh, still warm samples.  Once you go into the store, every item is accompanied by a box of even more free samples! It was fun to get to try twenty or so different cookies, but most of it is stuff you can find at Chinese grocery stores or bakeries in America.

One day, I'll have to return to Macau to try an actual Macanese restaurant too.  But even more important, I need to try one of their famous pork chop buns.  Seriously, look at this thing.  I only heard about it after watching the Macau episode of Anthony Bourdain's old show, and it looks to die for.  The bread is supposedly crispy on the outside and soft on the inside and the pork chop is cooked to order.  As simple as can be, but seriously, WHO COULD EVER RESIST THIS?

Be careful, the bone's still inside.
Photo credit: thatbestbite.com

Anyway, soon after we saw the ruins, it was time to head to the mainland.  Onward to Jiangmen!

Brandon ate China pt2: Hong Kong

"It's a good thing we were able to find you in the airport.  I just called all of your uncles and aunts and we're getting dim sum.  Right now." - Mr. Li

Before going to the mainland, I spent a small amount of time in Hong Kong and Macau.  Sadly, I have very few pictures of them both because I was just dying from jet lag.  There was little time for pictures anyway though; we had a lot of things to see and a lot of family members to meet in just 2 days.

Carilyn's father, Mr. Li, was an incredibly gracious host.  He covered boarding for 2/3 of my trip and did not hesitate at all to show me the some of the best rooms each of the cities had to offer.  It was thanks to him that I could experience some of the more upscale dining experiences later on in my trip. I tried to take some photos of our amazing view from the hotel but the weather was crappy and my phone struggles with night time photos:

Bad nighttime photos is going to be a trend, btw.

Despite poor planning from my side before the trip, Mr. Li was also able to arrange for me to meet my uncles and aunt from my father's side and most importantly, my grandma, who I thought I'd never get to see before it was too late.  I am far from a sentimental person but that was a moment that really touched me.  I owe Mr. Li a lot.

Our first major meal in Hong Kong was dinner on the first night; a typical mid-level Cantonese dinner in a restaurant called Dragon Court.  I already got to learn a few things about Chinese food: suckling pig (of a smaller variety) is quite common, and swan is the preferred waterfowl over duck.

Clockwise: Roast swan, mushroom plate, fried silken tofu, suckling pig, Western style beef

Abalone on top of quinoa.  Tastes like a bit like sea urchin.

So, what does swan taste like compared to duck?  I can definitely see why one would prefer it.  It's somewhat less game-y, much less greasy, and a bit meatier than duck is.  The skin is still amazing and the meat is very soft, when cooked right.  The roast pork here was amazing too, with the typically delicious skin of the pork and some plum sauce for the meat.  I'm convinced that nobody cooks pork or especially waterfowl as well as the Cantonese do.  

Funny thing is, as the foreigner at the table, I was blown away by how good the food was.  Nobody else seemed impressed.  Maybe it was because my uncle ordered too much meat, knowing that I don't like seafood.  Oh well,  I got a lot of hype knowing that my standards were too low, because that meant there would be even more amazing food to come!

Brandon ate China pt 1: Another intro

"You're going to DIE in China!  They don't have steak!  If you ask them for steak, they won't know what you're talking about.  There is no food for you!" -Brandon's family, 2016

So, against some of my family members' wishes, I went to China earlier this year.  I have a reputation within my own family for only liking western food, which, to anybody who's met me in the last ten years, would know is preposterous.  It's true that I don't eat shellfish or dim sum though, which eliminates a lot of Cantonese food for me, but there's way more to Chinese cuisine than shrimp dumplings and clams.  Way more.

Most of my family hasn't been to the mainland for decades.  Like many people here, they're a little ignorant of how quickly China has changed over the years.  Those who haven't really paid attention to it or just played a lot of Street Fighter may expect that China, at least outside of HK or Shanghai, looks like this:

And in some cases, that's true!  But you're also missing this:

Top row: Guangzhou (left), Beijing (right)
Bottom row: Beijing (left), Jiangmen (right)

The movies don't give justice to how big China is and how many things there are to see.  I just came back and I'm already thinking about the places I'll have to see on my next trip.  Not only is there diversity in regional sites but there is also incredible diversity in food.  America might have food from many different countries, but China has intensely regional cuisine, such to the point that every city, town and village seems to have their own specialty.

Ask an American-born Asian from California or New York what Chinese food is, and they'll almost always list Cantonese dishes or food from home.  Oftentimes we neglect the regional Chinese cuisine we find even in America, like Szechuan and Shanghainese food.  Ask someone even less familiar and they'll list items from takeout joints which are far from anything I've ever seen in China.

Panda's Orange Chicken. Mostly unknown to Chinese people.
True story: Carilyn's family thought this was Mexican food.
Credit: dinneranddessert.com

Does any of this Hunanese food look like orange chicken?

Now, I know that people are more informed these days and the general person (in California) might know better.  But I don't think people in America know just how much variety there is in Chinese cuisine.  It's impossible to have it all without going to every village in the country.  It's easy to dismiss people that say "oh this ethnic food is way better in its home country," but man it's so freaking true.

I'm going to begin with food and culture highlights from the beginning to the end of my trip.  Prepare for more walls of text.

Introduction

Hello world. I'm Brandon, a guy that loves food and loves writing about food even more. Yelp used to be my primary outlet for such things (http://blwong.yelp.com), but anybody who's read my reviews on Yelp knows that I have way too many things to say for that sort of medium.  Most people using Yelp are on their phones anyway and nobody is going to sit and read a review like this:

So yeah, no more Yelp. Being Yelp Elite was a little annoying anyway; acquaintances would acknowledge me as "that Yelp elite guy." Some people would watch me closely when I eat at restaurants, as if I had a special way of eating that isn't just throwing food into my mouth. C'mon guys, it was just a badge!

Anyway, Yelp was useful to me for two reasons: 1) it was an outlet for my need to write, because it's not like I'm going to make money from writing and 2) it was like a journal for me, to remember the good meals I had and the funny things I had to say about the bad ones. Since I traveled to Japan and China, people have expressed interest in reading a food blog if I ever decided to start one. So I did.

Sadly, one of the most important parts about writing a successful blog is having a lot of pictures. I'm a terrible photographer (Carilyn would be happy to explain how) and during my previous travels I didn't think I'd need photos for a blog.

Bowl's not clean damnit!  Angle's all wrong!

This was supposed to be an appetizing angle for porkchop.

In the future I might work on thinking more about cool pictures for a blog rather than cool pictures for Facebook.  Until then, I can only work with what I've got: a shaky hand and a completely wrong sense of what things should look like.  Anyway, prepare for lots of fun, lots of food, and until my photo taking abilities improve, lots of righteous walls of text!