They Just Call it Food

"Mr. Koch, I mean, you guys are gonna come back so super skinny; you'll probably lose like that tough 10 pounds, because, well all Chinese people are skinny...uh, but, ya know, not that you really need to."

Frequent conversations in many realms in the weeks leading up to our departure, but to this student, I replied, smiling with my eyebrows raised, "Uh yeah, thanks."

Prior to coming to China, I had visions of arriving, being unable to find foods which look and taste appealing, spending many hours a day working out and ultimately becoming the model of physical fitness I once was, just once, a long time ago, during football two-a-days at Abington High School in the North East suburbs of Philly. To this day that August is the best I ever felt about my physical condition, but it was all downhill from there, so to speak. There was the Freshman 15 at JMU, and the Sophomore 10-more, the I don't have time to work out much because I have a new job 5 or so, and the I met the girl of my dreams and just want to go out to eat with her every night 5 to 10 – the recipe for turning that football field svelte 175 into the hefty 235 it is today. Then of course, you throw in the battle with Winter and Summer weight that I have endured since becoming a coach. Throwing batting practice and doing field work all day from March to August, but living on a fast food diet, well Sheetz Corn Dusted Kaiser sandwiches, Subway subs, beef jerky, sunflower seeds and large Pepsi. The incredible amount of sweating it out that occurs during those days on the field makes up for the horrendous intake. Then the Winter weight, when I tell myself that now that the season is over I'm gonna go to the gym, make all healthy meals, maybe even ...oh whatever, school's back in session, Thanksgiving, Christmas, NYE, NFL, Superbowl, Feb and March birthdays...please just get back to season, so I can stay active enough to offset this good life I'm living.

In my best coach em up voice, "This is it. I am going to whip it into shape when I get to China."

We read blogs, heard first hand accounts, bought books, got stories from people who knew people, recounted all of the rumors about Chinese food(but they actually do just call it food here) we had heard our whole lives, each in some way indicating that we needed to exercise extreme care in eating the foods - their standards are so different, you wont be able to read the labels on anything, they smoke in restaurants, don't drink the water -

" - okay, okay, okay...we're never going to eat again, I get it! I could probably due for a change in intake."

We were tired the night we got here, so we called the first restaurant we could find; we found one located in the club section here in River Gardens. We had no idea what we were in for with Victor's Indian and Thai and almost felt like we were betraying our spirit of adventure by not eating Chinese food on our first day, yet exhausted from travel, and so hungry that we no longer cared about those rumors we'd heard about not eating the food in China, we called the front desk and asked to be connected to Victor's.

They delivered. Actually we soon found that everybody delivers. Not only pizza and Chinese take out, but everybody: the grocery store, the plant store, the fruit market, all of the restaurants, Ikea; heck we even had Parker's bike delivered to the house when our driver could only fit two of the three bikes in the car he was showing us around in that day. I know the term driver sounds a bit elitist, but it is simply a guy with a car, much like a taxi, but he will take you where you want to go, stay with you while you do what you need to do, and then return you home, for a negotiated fee. That day Alex, Mr. Charlie's cousin(Xiao Charlie's phone number we earlier learned about from a neighbor indicating that Charlie was a reputable and trutworthy choice for a driver) drove us, for three hours of bike shopping, and when he returned us home, he asked for 80 Quay, about 12 USD. That's the way most services are around here. There are lots of people willing to work for minimal wages, hence the ability to have anything delivered, cleaned, repaired etc. The materials may cost you, but the labor, not so much.

So that night Victor's delivered us Butter Chicken, Garlic Naan, Green Curry beef, Thai Spring Rolls, a bottle of red wine and a couple of set ups of rice and chopsticks. It was amazing food. Joanne and I, the boys had long since fallen asleep as their timing was incredibly out of whack during that first few days, ate, and ate, and ate, repeating again and again, "this is the best _________, I ever had..."

"Ohmigod, try this."

"Wait wait, try this, in this; uh, it is so good-"

"-did you try this in this, and then have it with some of this..."

We kneeled on the floor around our coffee table, the smells of newly renovated house in the air, unpacked bags still stacked in the foyer. We mumbled through clicking chopsticks and stuffed cheeks about how good this food was, and how incredibly simple it was to call and order, and probably so convenient that it would spell disaster for sticking to that most recent health food kick we thought we'd try out once we got to China, once we were removed from the cycle of fun, but highly caloric, dinners, parties, lunches and visits that we enjoyed leading up to our departure. We ate ourselves to bed.

On our shopping trip the next day we stopped and ate at The Hungry Horse – An American Cafe. Wedged between a Subway sandwich shop and a Starbucks in the local shopping area, The Hungry Horse has a huge menu of "American" food; hamburgers, chicken sandwiches, quesadillas, burritos, buffalo wings, hot dogs and fries. The decor was ice cream shop Americana, the large diagonals of black and white linoleum, wood toned booths and tables with red plastic cushioning, and a little row of swively bar stools edged up to an ice cream case. The boys fell right in love with a Foosball table that drew lots of attention in the middle of the restaurant and the walls were hung with some soccer jerseys, seemingly to make the European customers feel more welcome, or to imply that soccer, to the Chinese anyway, is the one thing that all of us non-Chinese patrons have in common. Interestingly enough, the only beers they have on tap in the American cafe are Belgian Beers - Stella and Hoegaarden, . I've ordered two beers since coming to China, the Hoegaarden at The Hungry Horse, which came in the giant glass which really did look like like a bucket, and in an adventure to another establishment near to our compound, a Tsing Tao, which came in a bottle the size of a wine bottle. Chinese beer is BIG!

After just a few days of exploring, ironing out sleep schedules, and trying out some of the Expat recommendations, Parker was the first to break the ice,"Dad, we've been in China for three days and I still haven't had any Chinese food."

Knowing what he was getting at, but being the smart alec that I am, I replied, "Hmm, Parks, don't you think that because we are in China, it is all Chinese food?"

He rolled his eyes in his fast developing te(e)n year old fashion and said, "C'mon, you know what I mean."

He was right, and I did; I was feeling much the same way.

I met Joanne at the Embassy for lunch one day last week, and after a tour, a few introductions, a visit to the commissary and the post office, and finally a peek into the cafeteria, we decided to try out some "Chinese food." Not a hundred yards from the exit to the embassy on a bustling street of cabs and faces and shops stood a white building. We were told by Joanne's co-workers that if we go into that white building, we would find what we were looking for; moreover, the folks in that white building were willing to put up with, "stupid foreigners who make fools of themselves when ordering." Not moments later we were following suit, grunting and pointing at photos of what looked like something we might want to eat. The girl who took our order(or interpreted our grunts and points) was also the girl who had directed us through the smokey restaurant to a table in the back, the top of which sat still covered in the bowls and cups and chopsticks of the previous diners. She handed us the menus, picked up the used dishware and wiped the remaining mess to the floor, clearing the way for our meal.

"Eh-cuse me, may sit – ear," a voice in newly forming English came from behind Joanne; in an apparent customary fashion, our "two for lunch" became three and we were joined at our table by a young man, no older than twenty, dressed in the garb of a University student, who sat and joined us for lunch. We spoke with him, and he spoke to us, and he did interpret to the waitress for us when we pointed and said, "no too spicy," in that weirdly loud voice I am embarrassed that I revert to when talking to someone who doesn't understand me, as if saying it in louder and in more caveman-like English is going to help them better undertand what I mean.

"Shay-Shay," we responded to her in the overly Americanized version of, "Xiexie", the Chinese phrase for "thank you,"(a good one to start with if you are planning on coming soon, as "xiexie" and "ni hao" are widely used if you want to be friendly and polite).

"Bu keqi," replied our waitress, smiling,not too frustrated - yes, quite accommodating to us limping foreigners.

That day Joanne and I ate a beef dish, which despite the meat being chopped up while on the bone, leaving quite a few shards to deal with, had excellent flavor. We also shared something called chicken with pickles which resembled Kung Pao Chicken back in the states; it came in a huge portion, tasted very good, had lots of peanuts, but was incredibly MSG-salty. The pickles were actually what we call cucumbers back home. Later in the week I encountered these "pickles" again when, with the help of a neighbor who was willing to assist someone more newly arrived, I visited the wet market in a nearby hutong. The trip was awesome. The vegetable hall, which was the real purpose of our journey, had all of the trappings of a Virginia farmer's market. Each segment of the large dirt-floored room appeared operated by an independent dealer, who provided little blue bags to fill with the produce of your choosing, then scanning each bag, tallied the purchases, and turned the face of the calculator indicating the figure in RMB which I should peel from my wad of cash to settle up(cash only here). The standards were all there: tomatoes, potatoes, broccoli, lettuce and onions, and of course, the "pickles" - just a little skinnier and knobbier-skinned than the ones at Wegmans, and also donning a little yellow flower at the end of each. The difference between the wet market and those rural markets back home was the vast amount of available tofu, some vegetables which I had not seen before, and the fact that upon paying my ¥140 for a weeks worth of veggies the operator handed me bag of fresh herbs and spring onions, as if to say, "xiexie" for choosing her stand out of the many in the vegetable hall.

The fruit hall next door was full of vibrant colors, and we sampled everything we wanted to buy: the most magnificent strawberries I have ever seen in every respect, size, color and taste; a grapefruit the size of a basketball; tiny oranges no bigger than golf balls; and a fruit that Devon coined "the eyeball fruit". I can't say the real name for it, but it is small(eyeball-sized), has a hard skin which is removed with a firm bite, a soft, white, sweet, pulp which is sucked from the skin, and a hard, dark seed to spit out. At the back of the fruit hall stood a long table, covered with piles of dried fruits, nuts and seeds. I bought a pound of peanuts for 7 Quay and the guy I was with, we were among the very few non-Chinese in the market, said, "I never haggle over prices here, the peanuts literally almost cost nothin."

The return to the car was a maze of doorways and rooms, each with a unique theme: the pig room – the butchered animals hanging for inspection from patrons and sold in chopped up parts following the standard bit of haggling. I laughed aloud at the juxtaposition of the hanging side of pork and the picture of a fuzzy headed pig, almost smiling for the camera, which hung above the butcher's table advertising what to find in this room. The fish room looked more like a fish store than a fish market with tanks of swimming fish everywhere. I walked past a van that was blocking the alley and I peered inside, wondering why this van was parked in the middle of the market; and more so, how it even got in here. Inside, all around the floor of the beat up vehicle, the heads of thirty rust brown hens bobbed and pecked. Five feet away the plucked and cleaned bodies of the last travelers in that van hung ready for purchase, heads, clawed feet, and all – it certainly doesn't get any fresher than that.

I had a birthday this week. In honor of me, I did what I like best - and have missed much since our kitchen was packed by the movers back in February – cooked! I used the local produce from the wet market, the meats Joanne returned home with from her shopping trips, and the few cooking utensils provided by the State in the "welcome kit", to muster up an all day Bolognese sauce. I sauteed, broiled, stewed and grilled my way to a meaty, home cooked meal(which ended up tasting more like beef stew than spaghetti sauce), and after little bit of mushroom transfer from Parker's plate to Benne's, my boys enjoyed it, or at least claimed to, over pasta.

We've tried, and introduced the boys to, most everything we've come across, taking harder consideration when it comes to milk, as people here do still purchase milk with the memory of the Melamine scare lingering in their heads. We also learned that we need to buy "day-of" veggies and bread, as the desert climate yields those items useless in short time. But all in all, while I see the delivery person mopeding the neighborhood with gourmet meals from Victors or the Piazza, a few beers or a bottle of wine from Jenny's shop, a pizza from The Hungry Horse, or a few Subway subs, I also see almost 100% of the local occupants riding bikes, walking, or getting exercise around the 'hood. For me, I think I am going to have to coach myself up - "focus and show some discipline, Paul." Portion control, drink more water, maybe go for a run with Joanne(what a STUD! She is running The Great Wall ½ Marathon in May - maybe I will try half, of half, of half of that). Just do something if I am going to keep off(or lose) the Beijing 10.

xoxo

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Paul Koch (@pkoch9999)

http://dug-a-hole.com/

(703) 608-2556