On Chinese Food

One of the things most of my non-Chinese friends are curious about when they strike up a conversation with me, is Chinese food. "Do you eat dogs? Cats? Worms? What about rats?"

Well, to the first question, I am very sorry to say that I did--but without my knowing. One day grandma told me that I was given dog meat when I was little, perhaps 3 years old, when the family was still living in China.

As for the other questions, seriously I don't know. Perhaps those of you who are or have been to China in recent years can enlighten me. Hong Kong, where I grew up, has not adopted these eating habits.

I do remember seeing grilled sparrows on a stick while strolling down the Dong An Men night market in Beijing. Another time I ordered "deep fried scorpions" in a Shichuan restaurant, which turned out to be four tiny hard-shelled (crispy?) insects in pitch black, standing on four shrimp chips with their sharp tails pointing upwards. They gave me the chills and I requested the dish to be returned. The waitress smiled in pleasant surprise. I think she went back to the kitchen and consumed this delicacy without delay.

Shocking dishes aside, the rest of the vast selection of Chinese cuisine is just heaven to me. I can't stop drooling when I think of the countless wonderful dishes my mom cooked throughout my childhood, and the delicious dim sums and Hong Kong-style bakery I enjoyed so much while in Hong Kong (and to a lesser extend, New York).

Wherever I go, I try to adapt to the local cuisine and eating habits. But sometimes I can't help but miss those habits I acquired as a child--habits that are synonymous with comfort and well-being. Picking up a sweet potato deep fried in batter or a piece of fried bell pepper stuffed with fish paste, or else a stick of curry fishballs on my way home from school was the highlight of the day, no doubt! Often, this after-school snacking habit was shared with a couple of good friends.

And then there are those Hong Kong bakeries that have borrowed partly from the French boulangerie tradition, partly from the Swiss cake tradition and added some Macau-Portuguese elements. Every morning, buns are continuously baked for the thousands of people rushing to school and work, so we got fresh bread the first thing in the morning. Here in Sweden, such bakeries are almost non-existent in neighborhoods, so one often has to buy packaged bread from the supermarket and consume it unfresh. I have actually given up on eating bread because of this. My favorite item of the Hong Kong-style bakeries is the egg tart, warm from the oven with a puff pastry shell. On special occasions, a dozen small cream and fruit cakes in Swiss and French styles packed in a colorful cardboard box became the sweet little things that lightened up my day.

Although I never had time to have dim sum in the early morning--a habit of many older people in Hong Kong--I did enjoy noodles in the street for breakfast sometimes. The noodles were freshly fried in a humongous wok and put into a brown paper bag with a pair of disposible chopsticks. Perfectly filling breakfast in the winter months. And then sometimes there is porridge--not the sweet kind with milk and sugar that the Swedes eat, but plain old rice porridge with water. Of course this plain porridge has to be consumed with sticks of deep fried doughs called "fried ghosts," dipped in light soy sauce.

When I was an adult returning to Hong Kong after having lived in the States for four years, my palette got a pleasant surprise as I became aware of the many culinary delights that I either took for granted as a kid, or had simply missed because my family could seldom afford to eat out. My several business trips to mainland China gave me a chance to taste a broad range of local cuisines, from "cross-the-bridge rice threads", "dan dan noodles" to Beijing dumplings by the kilo and yin-yan hot pot with paper-thin mutton slices.

Living in Sweden, I sorely miss good-quality Chinese food. Even the best dim sum restaurant in Stockholm lacks variety. I don't even want to eat in the Chinese restaurants here anymore. Without exaggeration, I can say that I cook better than the chefs there.

And speaking of cooking, I really miss the fresh meat and vegetables we could buy daily from the open grocery markets in Hong Kong. Not frozen meat and vegetables from the supermarket. But freshly slaughtered chickens, pigs and cows, hung in the butchers' shop for your careful inspection. I still remember the sight of pultry butchers slitting the necks of chickens and plucking their feathers; meat butchers transporting dead pigs on their shoulders in the early morning bustles; and hawkers chopping of the heads from frogs and eels and peeling their skin off while the bodies continued to twitch in spasms. Well, perhaps that's too much for you to swallow. Uh-hum.

Now, need I say how much I long to go back to Hong Kong and China and have a feast? No, not just a feast, but feasts for a thousand evenings.