So it looks like my current update schedule is once every 14 months. I call it pacing myself, others would call it lazy. Whichever it is, it sure builds suspense huh?
Ok so I'm going to try to keep things small at first in the hopes that I actually write more than one post this fiscal quarter. I'm going to start off with something a little insightful but not so heavy that you have to go searching for your rolling papers to get to the end.
China - I just got back from another week in Beijing which puts my total time spent with our eastern friends at about 4 weeks. I'm a huge foodie so every time I visit Beijing (or my living room for that matter) it's all about the food. Instead of planning out what locations I need to visit, I plan on what restaurants and food I need to experience. I love trying new things and there are very few dishes put in front of me that don't find their way into my mouth eventually (remember this is a country that uses two sticks to eat, sometimes it's difficult to get the food in my belly).
So as I'm sitting in Beijing freaking out the Chinese with how much I pack away (I know at least one restaurant owner was worrying that he wasn't going to have enough food for this out of control American), I started thinking about how different our cuisine is different from theirs. The stereotype that all Chinese people are skinny is shockingly close to accurate when you walk around China and it certainly isn't from the fact that Chinese don't like to eat. On the contrary - it's basically an entire nation of foodies.
Chinese take eating pretty seriously. And by seriously I mean that they love to eat and a big part of their social fabric is centered around food. And just because the majority of the population is considered poor doesn't mean that they don't eat. There are all kinds of places where you can have amazing food for less then $1. So why are they all so skinny?
There are certainly many small reasons - they walk a lot, they like to be outside, as a people they are very concerned with outward appearances. But I think the main reason is their cuisine, and pretty much everything about it. First off I can't recall seeing butter (or any lard for that matter), or milk at any meal either on the table or in the dish. They cook almost exclusively with oil and always at high temperatures. I'm not a chef or a scientist but I do know that the reason you pretty much always cook at high temperatures when using oil is because you want the oil to cook the outside of the food - not soak into it. Therefore I'm guessing that very little of the oil is actually transferred to the food. I'm also pretty certain that on the whole, oil is way better for you then lard or butter, which is a staple in American cuisine. As a matter of fact, they pretty much don't eat any dairy at all. They never cook with cheese and I've only had one meal that I could recall where there was cheese slices on the table.
And while we are on the subject of what you don't find in Chinese cuisine, I should mention sugar. The Chinese don't use the stuff. You can pretty much make a blanket statement. They almost never do desert and the few times that I've had desert it consisted of rice or donuts that were more dinner roll then donut that you dipped in a sugar glaze that didn't hardly taste sweet at all. They don't have donut shops on every corner and 9 times of 10 if you get something that you think is going to be sweet or sugary, it turns out to be bean paste or tofu.
The next thing you realize about Chinese food is that it's almost always prepared in bite sized pieces. Remember, they eat with two sticks - I've never tried to pick up a slice of pizza or a hamburger with chopsticks but I'm guessing I wouldn't have much success. This means that every bite is actually pretty small, yet out of habit you would chew it just as long as you would as when you embarrass the hell out of your wife by taking a hockey puck sized bite out of your triple heart attack slab-o-cow. Smaller pieces of food into the stomach means easier digestion, which I think I read somewhere also means better use of the food by your body.
Another thing about eating praying-mantis style is that it takes a lot longer to make your way around the table and get the yummy to the tummy. I'm thinking that this gives your stomach more time to cry uncle to your brain. Whether or not you listen is another thing altogether. But clearly shoving a whole KFC chicken down your throat in 10 minutes doesn't really give your stomach much of a chance to tell you how much of a dumb ass you are and that you would have been just fine with half a chicken.
The last thing is that the Chinese pretty much only eat 'family style'. You never order a meal for yourself, you order dishes that are brought to the table to eat from. So that whole 'clean those sticks-of-fat off your plate - there are hungry people in China' thing never really comes into play. It's not 'your' meal therefore you don't really feel obligated to finish anything. This is evident at the end of every meal when the great 'To Go Go' dance (as I like to call it) is played out. I'm pretty sure I've never been to a meal where there has been more than one Chinese person and someone hasn't taken everything but the fine china (no pun intended) home with them in to-go containers. They spend almost as much time boxing up everything as they do on the meal. But they waste nothing - bones, carcasses, sauces, eyeballs - they take it all. And very few Chinese people have pets so you know it's not to bring home a meal to Chido (the Chinese Fido).
Ok well so much for short. I pretty much don't do short when it comes to talking about food but I thought I gave it the old college try. If anyone actually reads this, let me know what you think...
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