Recent Posts

What do you eat for your tea James?

Family and friends back home often axe me what I eat for dinner now that I�m living in foreign climes.

�Is it all pigs snouts and dumplings full of ants and that?�

they ask, like fools.

Well, no. It seems difficult to me to order Chinese food for one, and I�m such a busy young go-getter that I�m normally very pushed for time. The last few days I�ve been eating in the food court at the airport- �Rose House� sounds like an English country garden where you sip tea on the lawn, but it�s actually a drafty corridor alongside the Maglev station where people go to drink Soy milk, smoke, and occasionally eat food.

The menu at Rose House is just plates of the food left out to go cold

On the way from Jing-an metro station to my house, I pass by a Muslim restaurant where they have a guy knocking out Chicken kebabs. These things are delicious, even deliciouser than the Old Beijing Chicken Wrap from KFC which was my previous favourite. Fresh coriander and onions beat the Colonel�s best offering and for half the price too.

I keep asking the kebab guy to teach my how to say the name of these things, but it goes in one ear and out the next- so I just tell em

�I�ve got 6RMB. I want a chicken thingy�

Sometimes (OK then, twice) I go to the dark and slightly ominous restaurant on Beijing Xi Lu where they have reasonable (but not in my top 3) Xiao Long Bao. The reason I only go occasionally (OK! OK! Once!) is because they ask you what you want as soon as you walk in the place, and get impatient when it takes you any time at all to decipher the (huge, chinese) menu.

Then they make you wait 15 minutes for the dumplings.

In Jing-An