Living in Wuhan – Food and dining

Ah, food, my favourite subject ever. I’m surprised myself that the first post in the China mini-series wasn’t about food but about transportation, but it’s never too late to talk about food, so let’s get started.

There’s nothing too extravagant or unusual about eating and dining in Wuhan. As someone who grew up eating Chinese food and LOVES it, I couldn’t complain about having it every day. Compared to other provinces of China, Hubei (the province that Wuhan belongs to) doesn’t have a very well-defined “characteristic cuisine”, per se. Take Sichuanese or Cantonese cuisine, for example. The defining characteristic of Sichuanese cuisine is its “numbing spiciness” whereas for Cantonese cuisine, it’s the preservation of the original “freshness” of the raw ingredients. Nothing really comes to mind if you mention “cuisine of Hubei”. It’s not particularly spicy or sweet or salty or anything, and at least in terms of overall taste, it seems to be a blend of all types of cuisines.

Lotus root stuffed with glutinous rice, one of the regional specialties of Hubei province.

That is not to say that there’s nothing special about food here in Wuhan. Hubei cuisine uses a lot of lotus root in their cooking, and I’m not surprised because I see a lot of lotus ponds in the city as I walk around. As a result, I’ve had the pleasure of trying a few lotus-based dishes, including lotus root pork bone soup, lotus root tip, and glutinous rice-stuffed lotus root (photo shown above). You’d also see people selling lotus seed pods everywhere and they’re actually pretty good if they’re freshly harvested! (Some people may not feel comfortable with their appearance though…)

Lotus seed pods in their original form (left) and after being extracted (right). The shell of the pods themselves need to be peeled, exposing a white interior with a core that is sometimes bitter and should be avoided.

Of course we can’t forget the signature “hot dry noodles” of Wuhan (literal translation), which means…breakfast! If you’re not too familiar with Chinese-style breakfast, it’s very different than what you’d have in either North America or Europe. Stuff like pancakes, eggs/omelettes (not as uncommon), bacon, sausage, ham, waffles, etc…nope, not getting any of that. Instead, typical Chinese breakfast involves one or more of the following (or a variation of it): congee, dumplings, buns, and noodles. Often there are street vendors along the side of the road that I take to get to the bus station, and it’s super convenient to grab what you want and either eat it along the way or while waiting for the bus.

Breakfast stands on the side of the street. The first lady sells hot dry noodles and cold noodles, and the other vendors sell dumplings, buns, fried dough, etc…

My favourite breakfast item has been pan-fried dumplings from a particular vendor, but lately I’ve started getting hot dry noodles from another stand. I actually love hot dry noodles, but they’re just a bit more inconvenient to eat while walking, so I sometimes opt not to get it. What ARE hot dry noodles, you ask? They are a very popular Wuhan street food, though also sold at many sit-down places, that is most often eaten for breakfast (or whenever you want, really). As the name implies, they are VERY HOT (temperature), as they are strained right out of boiling water, and VERY DRY, even though a sesame-based sauce is poured onto the noodles. A variety of sides can be added, including pickled radish, pickled green beans, scallions, etc. A good bowl of hot dry noodles to get the day started – sounds like a perfect morning to me!

Hot dry noodles! Not the ones I got from the lady at the breakfast stand, but they’re similar. I like it with a lot of sesame paste and a lot of scallions. One bowl is super filling!

There are also lots of regional cuisines all over the place. J (the boyfriend) and I recently discovered a nice Cantonese restaurant that serves authentic dim sum – MY STAPLE as a Cantonese! – and a variety of Cantonese dishes, like white-cut chicken and stir-fried beef noodles. The menu is a bit limited but it’s got the most essential items, so it’s definitely a necessary dose of home once in a while. We also frequent this small restaurant that specializes in noodles of the Xi’an region in Shaanxi province. It’s close to where we live, cheap, and everything we’ve tried so far has been super delicious. I especially like their “biang biang” noodles, which are really wide (about the width of a waist belt) and really long. They were as good as the ones I’ve tried in Xi’an, though I should bring my friend from Xi’an to this place next time she visits, to validate its authenticity. In contrast to the Cantonese restaurant, this one has quite an extensive menu, so it’ll take many more visits to try everything! If you’re in the mood for something super spicy, there are quite a few Sichuanese restaurants, some specializing in hot pots. Recently we visited a place that serves “mao cai”, which is just a mix of everything you’d have at a hot pot all in one bowl at once. “Slightly spicy” is often already too spicy for us, so next time we’ll skip spiciness and just add chili sauce ourselves, thank you very much!

Signature red rice rolls with shrimp

“Little boat” congee and steamed chicken feet

Cantonese “white-cut” chicken with ginger dip

Ham hock flower

Biangbiang noodles with barbecued meat sauce

“Mao cai” of Chengdu

 

(Click to view the full image.) Cantonese cuisine (top row), Shaanxi cuisine (bottom left and middle), and Sichuanese “mao cai” (bottom right). We’re also discovering new restaurants every week!

Of course, these are just a few of the many types of regional Chinese cuisine scattered around the area. There are also international options, like Italian, Japanese (man I miss good sushi), Korean, and French. These options are rather limited, however, and they tend to be on the pricey side, so they’re more like a treat/splurge/indulgence for special occasions only. I’m craving a good steak right now…*drools*

Do we eat out all the time? You ask. Oh, we certainly do not eat out all the time, or else we’d be broke. Since J works at a university and I live close by, we like to go to one of the many university canteens for dinner. (That doesn’t count as eating out…does it?) The canteen themselves are quite an impressive sight and so much larger than the canteens or cafeterias I’ve been to in Canada or in Europe. And the variety of food is insane – from noodles to barbecue to soup dumplings to bi bim bap, if you could name it, you could probably find it! It’s almost like a hawker center in Singapore, and whereas you’d usually expect canteen food to be subpar, the food here is not bad at all! For less than $3 Canadian I can get a decent rice dish or several small portions of meats and vegetables. Maybe I should consider enrolling as a mature student in a Chinese university…just for the food 😛

One of the larger university canteen at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology. I heard there are around 30 canteens of various sizes at this university and I’ve definitely been to no fewer than 5. They’re only open at specific times during lunch and dinner and so they’re usually super crowded. You’d be lucky if you didn’t have to share a table with someone.

Oh, we do cook. Even though the kitchen at my small apartment is tiny, it is still a functional kitchen and from the first day I moved in, I intended to make good use of it. The thing is, after I started working, I’m too tired to cook when I get home (around 7pm by the time I arrive). Cooking at home now mostly occurs on weekends, when J and I would take turn cooking and washing the dishes. One thing I did notice when we did groceries was that meat and fish are rather expensive here. Well, compared to fruits and vegetables, that is. While 1 jin (the unit of measurement used here, equivalent to half a kg) of green beans cost 4 yuan (approximately 80 Canadian cents, all prices hereafter are stated in Canadian dollar), 1 jin of potatoes cost 60 cents, and a large watermelon costs $2.5, 1 jin of beef may cost around $6. And it isn’t even high-quality beef! Quite ridiculous, if you ask me. As a result, my meat intake has decreased significantly and I’ve been eating a lot more vegetables recently. Healthier, I suppose, but I do miss my chicken and salmon sometimes!

First home-cooked meal after moving into my apartment! Steamed spare ribs, stir-fried potato, and green beans with ground pork. Add a side of egg drop seaweed soup, please. Very satisfying!

Meanwhile, it’s almost dinner time and I’m waiting for J to come home after his basketball game so we can make our only home-cooked meal of the week. And I’ve got some lotus seed pods next to me that we gotta finish tonight. Life is good 🙂

Italy 2.1 – Getting lost in Venice

I’m back in Canada…! That means it’s time to catch up on the blog posts for all the travel done within the past two months, starting with…Italy with dad! So if you’ve been reading the (not so) recent posts, you’d realize that my dad visited me in France for a few weeks, mainly to attend my thesis defense. Of course, since him being in Europe is a rarity and I was leaving soon, we had to take the opportunity to travel around a little. We had several choices in destinations, including eastern Europe (Prague, Budapest, Vienna, etc.), Switzerland (one of the most beautiful countries I’ve been to), and Italy (lots of places worth seeing still on my list). After lots of contemplation and weighing pros and cons, we decided on the classic Italian route: Venice-Rome-Florence-Pisa over a course of 5 days. And so the first stop was…Venice!

For a long time I had wanted to visit Venice and I didn’t really know why. In my mind, Venice was a city built on water and when I first heard of it, I really had no idea what it would look like. I did get to visit a few European cities deemed “Venice of the North”, namely Bruges and Amsterdam. I’ve been to both of these cities twice and strangely both appeared on my list of “cities that didn’t quite appeal to me too much”. Yet, the real Venice was too elusive and I hadn’t had a chance to visit until this time around. So my dad and I hopped onto a Volotea flight directly from Bordeaux to Venice to find out what’s so special about this place.

First impression of Venice: lotsa canals and bridges! Well duh, that was expected, but they were more numerous and more beautiful than I had imagined. My dad and I actually got lost for about half an hour trying to navigate the narrow streets while looking for our hotel. Google maps didn’t help at all! (Well, I was mostly at fault because I followed the wrong signs…teehee!) A lot of frustration later, I happened to look up at the street signs and saw…our street! Ehhhhhh??? What are the chances! So without any systematic directions, we ended up finding the hotel (bed and breakfast) by luck 😉 Oh dear, the joys of getting lost. At least now we have a home-base…we think!

Pretty much as soon as we checked in, we headed out to explore as the days were short and daylight was precious. I was totally ready to get lost again, which was in fact the most enjoyable part of the trip. Turn a corner here to find a random little courtyard, or follow the really confusing and sometimes contradictory signs to discover a hidden church – surprises are everywhere waiting to be found. We did the wise thing to get a map and I would be lying if I said we didn’t consult it almost every five minutes. While getting lost is fun, it is good to know where you are headed to sometimes!

Back to France part 2: My Bordeaux

Read part 1 here and part 3 here.

Bordeaux! Je t’aime!

Yup, after a month and a half of being away from Bordeaux, I was finally going back, albeit only for two days. My friend and I decided that we’d make a short stop by Bordeaux, since her European experience wouldn’t be complete without a visit to my main base in France. I will be going to her headquarter in London in May, so let’s just call this an exchange!

The trip was actually quite well-timed, though unintentionally. Just last week, while talking with my supervisor, he was saying how it’d be nice if we could try a different approach with our experiments, the only problem being that the chemicals we need were in Bordeaux and we’d need to get them shipped. You probably saw where this is going. So I said, “Um…actually I planned a trip to Bordeaux this weekend, so…I can go to the lab and bring them back?” My supervisor literally jumped for joy at the suggestion, and so my return had an added purpose. What perfect coincidence.

So you see, my stay in Europe is not all fun and play; I do work too ^_^

Anyway, back to Bordeaux. Remember that word that I used to describe Bordeaux? Elegant. I arrived in Bordeaux during the autumn season, spending my first European fall and winter there. Even then the city was elegant, but my goodness, Bordeaux is a heavenly beauty during the springtime. I felt like I was falling in love with it all over again. Quinconces, St. Catherine, the Garonne River, Place de la Bourse, Victoire…everything felt so renewed, so FRESH under the sun! I absolutely did not want to come back to Louvain-la-Neuve.

Of course, with a friend close by, I finally have some pictures of myself in Bordeaux! The following were all taken near some of my favourite spots in downtown Bordeaux.

A view of the St. André Cathedral outside my apartment. It still looks so majestic and so grand. Oh, I haven’t forgotten about the special entry that I said I’d dedicate to the cathedral. I still intend to do it because it deserves such recognition. Once I’m back in Bordeaux from Louvain-la-Neuve, I’ll find a day to take only pictures of the cathedral from every angle possible. Let’s hope I don’t put it to shame!