It has just been brought to our attention that the Chinese sign you can see in the foreground of our blog picture says "Do Not Lean on the Rail". Lucky for us the guard was taking the picture or we could have got in trouble.
In this weeks blog, we will try and answer one of the questions that we are sure you have a burning desire to know.
WHAT DO YOU EAT?
There are at least four dining halls on campus. Each with two or three floors. We calculate that over four thousand people can be fed at each sitting. Each dining hall specializes in a different ethnic cooking style along well as standard dishes that are served in every hall. The smell provides the first clue as to what to expect. The smell of spicy cooking is quite distinctive.
The food is served from behind glass enclosed counters, cafeteria style and dished out of big pans into bowls and plates. If you arrive early, the food can be reasonably hot, come late and it will most likely be cold. If you want to stand in line for while and pay a bit more, there are lots of opportunities for hot dishes prepared while you wait. But beware. When they run out of prepared supplies for the dish, they shut the station down and you are left in line with an empty bowl. Upon arrival at our selected dining hall and floor, we spend our first five minutes wandering up and down the various stations looking for something that catches our eye. At first we leaned towards food the looked like home. We soon discovered that looks can be deceiving.
We have tried to be as adventurous as possible when selecting our meals. We quickly learned to recognize the more spicier dishes. They use hot red chili peppers for most of their spicy foods. We can recognize the small bits of pepper in the dish or if the dish has a red hue to it indicating chili powder. We have discovered a number of wonderful dishes and if we can just remember which dining hall and which floor we got them, we could enjoy them again. Oh well, we have another nine months to find them.
Thanks to a some colleagues who have lived here for a while, we have explored a few of the many restaurants in the area. The 50,000 plus people living in a small area have spawned dozens of places to eat. Our favorite has become the local pizza parlour. The owner/chef/delivery guy is very friendly and produces a pretty good product. Again, not totally the same as our pizza but with some interesting Chinese variations. We have named this place as our "go to restaurant" on Friday nights. Two beers and a "spicy beef" pizza costs us about $4.00. So far we have eaten at a Mongolian, two Muslim restaurants and last weekend went to a bone restaurant. At least thats what our host called the place. The restaurant specializes in cooking meat with the bone left in. The eating utensils include a plastic glove for holding the bones while you tear off the meat and a straw for sucking out the marrow. Interesting to watch the locals eat. They get right into it, sucking the last shred of meat from each bone/rib.
Except for the pizza, we have managed to stay away from McDonalds, KFC and Pizza Hut. We did take a break from Chinese food this weekend and went to the "Bullfighter". It is a Chinese restaurant trying to be a steakhouse. Again, we had been cautioned by others on which steak to order and that we would probably have to send the steak back a few time to reach the desired state of medium rare. Also, not to expect everyones food to arrive at the same time. All of which came to pass. In China, most dishes served are common and everyone would share from the same dish. So dishes come out as they are ready which does not work as well when everyone orders their own dish. Everything was great and probably in another five of six weeks when we feel the need for MEAT, we will go back.
Not a lot of cooking going on at the apartment at the moment but it will probably increase as time goes on as eating out every meal can get a little monotonous.
Bon apetite everyone!
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