China’s Noodle Culture

September 18, 2012

China has a unique food culture. My wife loves noodles. I’ve followed her down narrow Shanghai streets to a famous won-ton and noodle shop on the corner of Chang-le and Shang-yang Road. The front is open and the ceiling low with each narrow table crowded with Chinese sitting on small chairs shoveling noodles in with chopsticks.

My wife orders a small bowl of noodles with peanut sauce for me and a bowl of blood soup and another bowl of noodles with spicy hot Sichuan peppercorn sauce for her.  As she eats, sweat beads her face but there is not one word of complaint—not one sign that she suffers. Instead, this seriously satisfied look spreads across her face as if she has entered a Chinese noodle heaven.

When we are visiting Nanjing Road in Shanghai between People Square and the Bund, we always stop at the same food shop where my wife orders steaming hot noodles with the same peppercorn sauce, and I order deep fried, fresh chou dofu (stinky tofu) with the same sauce that makes me sweat.

At celebration feasts, a wider variety of food will be served from whole fish, crab, a variety of vegetable dishes and tofu.

Discover China’s Invasion of Fat from the West

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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Leave a Comment » | China, Chinese Culture, Chinese food, Chinese women, cultural differences, tourism | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Eating Gourmet in Shanghai

May 25, 2010

I wrote about the Blog post in the “Lost Laowai” in my last post about the sunken South Korean navy ship.

There was another funny facetious remark about China sharing a distaste for McDonald’s that was a cause for smiles.

Maybe China’s government doesn’t care for McDonalds, but many Chinese see McDonald’s and Pizza Hut as gourmet restaurants.  McDonalds is even planning to increase the number of outlets in China to 2,000 by year’s end.

Multi-story Pizza Hut in Shanghai

Several years ago, my sister-in-law hired a Shanghai ballerina to model for a photo shoot.  Afterwards, the ballerina called her husband on a cell phone and told him to meet her at the large, two story McDonalds in the middle of Shanghai to celebrate earning the extra cash.

In addition, we have often seen long waiting lines outside a swanky Pizza Hut on Shanghai’s Nanjing Road, and crowded pedestrian mall.

To discover more about Shanghai visit:
Shanghai
Shanghai Huxinting Teahouse
Shanghai Huangpu River Tour
Shanghai’s History & Culture
Chinese Pavilion, Shanghai World Expo

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the author of the award winning novels My Splendid Concubine and Our Hart. He also Blogs at The Soulful Veteran and Crazy Normal.

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1 Comment | business, China | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Noodle Culture

April 4, 2010

China has a unique food culture. My wife loves noodles. I’ve followed her down narrow Shanghai streets to a famous won-ton and noodle shop on the corner of Chang-le and Shang-yang Road. The front is open and the ceiling low with each narrow table crowded with Chinese sitting on small chairs shoveling noodles in with chopsticks.

My wife orders a small bowl of noodles with peanut sauce for me and a bowl of blood soup and another bowl of noodles with spicy hot Sichuan peppercorn sauce for her.  As she eats, sweat beads her face but there is not one word of complaint—not one sign that she suffers. Instead, this seriously satisfied look spreads across her face as if she has entered a Chinese noodle heaven.

When we are visiting Nanjing Road in Shanghai between People Square and the Bund, we always stop at the same food shop where my wife orders steaming hot noodles with the same peppercorn sauce, and I order deep fried, fresh chou dofu (stinky tofu) with the same sauce that makes me sweat.

At celebration feasts, a wider variety of food will be served from whole fish, crab, a variety of vegetable dishes and tofu.

See how Western culture has created An Invasion of Fat http://wp.me/pN4pY-hb

 

1 Comment | Chinese Culture, Chinese food, tourism | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Tolerance to Infinity Guest Post by Bob Grant

March 13, 2010

Originally published at Speak Without Interruption on February 17, 2010 by Bob Grant — publisher/editor for Speak Without Interruption. Posted on iLook China, 3/13/10 at 08:00

(Note: There are more photos at the original site. The Nanjing Road photo here does not appear at Speak Without Interruption.)

Wherever people normally congregate in groups—shopping areas, elevators, subways, airports, city streets, and the like—there are a lot more people in China congregating in those same places.  Again, I can only use my own experiences – in these types of crowds in China – but I was amazed how tolerant people were of each other.  In some cases I was squeezed to the people next to me so closely that I could almost feel their hearts beating.  In these situations – personal space was at zero.  I was crammed into a subway once and could literally stand – without holding on to anything – because we were packed so close together (not that I really had anything to hold on to anyway).  The exit from this subway was orderly and people were polite to each other – and me.  At our stop, we had to ask people to move, which was difficult for them, but we got off with no problems or delays.

Nanjing Road, Shanghai - this is the normal crowd

 I am not certain the Chinese people have a choice living – and working – among that many other people.  However, I saw it as another attribute of China and its people.  As a “Westerner” I could have easily been accosted by anyone in these large crowds as most of the time I was the only non-Chinese among them.  But this never happened.  No one stared at me or otherwise acknowledged me as anything other than one of them.  Perhaps I am reading too much into these situations, but I will go with my feelings here and believe this is a nation of extremely tolerant individuals. 

 Places I went did not always have these types of crowds, but in the locations where large crowds congregated, I was always impressed by the politeness of my fellow “Crowdies”.  I can’t say the same for other crowds, in which I have found myself, in the US and other parts of the world.  I think China is unique in this area and its people have Tolerance to Infinity.

 Read China Trip 2008 at  http://wp.me/pN4pY-c

 

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse