Outside the gate of the college where I teach in
Haikou
a row of small family-run restaurants have sprung up along the dirt road. They don’t look like much. The floors are concrete, the walls grease-stained. Chickens run around freely until one is needed for the pot, then the cook comes out, grabs it by the neck and disappears in the back. This is food at its most basic. Every evening the owners set up card tables with plastic stools, a pot of tea and plastic cups, a box of tissues, and go to work in their kitchens. Most of these people are from
Sichuan
and the food is extremely spicy.
My favorite of these restaurants is The Old Place. I get the bonus of practicing my Chinese while eating an extraordinary meal for about $3. During my first year in
Haikou
I moved from the only thing I could order—kung pao chicken to being able to ask for steamed fish, fried eggs with pepper, spinach with garlic and oyster sauce, and iron plates of beef and onion. Their hot and spicy tofu pushes the limit of how peppery food can be while the sweet and sour pork has just enough tang to leave your tongue tingling. Specials change regularly. Once I inadvertently ate a river rat (a Hainanese delicacy) that some students ordered. Had I not been told I was eating a rat, I would have never known.
Unfortunately, a lot of local
Hainan
food doesn’t meet the high culinary standards of the rest of the county.
Hainan
fare is unlikely to become popular outside of the island. At my friend Lulu’s house, we regularly eat “traditional island food.” Wenchang chicken is the main course. I still haven’t figured out how they prepare this but it gives the illusion of eating raw chicken. Sauces make all the difference in this dish. With enough soy sauce and vinegar, anything becomes edible. Small, pickled fish languish among slabs of bacon and tofu. Watermelon rind sautéed with garlic make a rather limp dish. A tepid bowl of sliced cucumber, seaweed, or other wild greens completes the meal. Fortunately, for dessert, there is always plenty of fresh fruit which is
Hainan
’s great treasure. And this does include Qing Buliang, a Hainanese dish consisting of watermelon, coconut milk, beans, some sort of pasta, gelatin and quail eggs. Strange as it sounds, Qing Buliang is one of the better local dishes.
‘Yezi’—coconut is one of the first Chinese words I learned to say along with ‘Hello,’ ‘I’m sorry,’ and ‘too expensive.’ Coconut milk is high up there on my list of things I love about living in
Hainan
. Coconut trees line the boulevards. They grow in groves along the beaches and are here for the picking. Every store that has a refrigerator sells them. For 1 ½ Yuan (about 15 cents), the shopkeeper will take the cold coconut out of the refrigerator, whack off the stem with a machete, poke a straw through the hole and serve it to you. During some seasons, they are large and green; they say these ones are particularly good for the throat. At other times, they are brown and hairy as a monkey’s head. Both are full of rich, sweet milk.
My main disappoints have been with beverages, not counting coconut milk. One night at a bar I saw a bottle of decent Cabernet on the shelves and ordered it. When the waitress took it back to the kitchen, I assumed she was opening it. However, she brought it to the table in a pitcher mixed with ice and Sprite.
Much to my surprise, makes some great cappuccinos. But only at night. Unless you carry your coffee supplies with you, it is nearly impossible to get a cup of coffee before 10 a.m. at the earliest. Often, you are lucky if you can find a coffee shop open in the daytime at all. On campus, the best coffee shops don’t open until 6 p.m.
During Spring Festival, I traveled around the country and tried a number of regional dishes. I learned to make dumplings with the grandmother of one of my students, an austere old lady with iron gray hair who still wore the dark blue Mao uniform of the Cultural Revolution. At the home of another student, Tu Liang Jun, we made egg dumplings. We held a spoon with hot oil over the fire, added the beaten eggs, then a small bit of sausage. Just when the egg was finished, we folded it over into a triangle and pinched the ends together. I learned to make Ming Shong Shu, steamed fish, and ma po tofu, a spicy hot dish with garlic, red peppers and tofu. Afterwards, I visited another student, Lu Tian Xi, in Guangdong where I discovered food that was completely different from the meat-filled dumplings of the north, the blandness of
Hainan
dishes, or the hot and spicy fare of the southwest.
Guangdong
food is sweet and delicate. In my case, I had the benefit of Lu’s father, who is one of the best chefs I have encountered in a lifetime of eating.
There are exceptions, of course. Stinky tofu, for instance. It smells like—there is no other word to describe it—shit. When I first moved into the college and walked out the gates in the evenings I truly thought that people were defecating in the field. Everyone agrees that it smells really bad. Stinky tofu is a literal translation from the Chinese. Yet, it’s a favorite street food and is sold all over the city from small vendors. I did try it and while I guess it wasn’t all that bad, I simply couldn’t get past the smell. Scent, after all, is a big part of dining.
In
Harbin
, scorpions roasted on a stick are sold everywhere. In Dali, you can buy bags of worms. I have not tried dog or snake or the various bugs that are prepared in reputedly savory sauces, although I have eaten shrimp that was trying to climb out of the bowl. I have nothing against any of these foods. Some people find it offensive to eat cows. If anything, I admire the pragmatic approach that the Chinese have. In a country that has often been starving, they’ve learned to make use of everything that is edible. And they do it spectacularly.
