China Fakes
Slowly munching my veggies like a ruminating quadruped I can still taste the piping-hot baozi, a faux meat dish at Xuxiangzai, Beijing’s Veggie haven
Slowly munching my veggies like a ruminating quadruped I can still taste the piping-hot baozi, a faux meat dish at Xuxiangzai, Beijing’s Veggie haven
A Fearsome foursome of vegan shengjian baozi
I’m sitting in a Czech restaurant in Ulan Bator drinking Budweiser (the real one) and missing the one thing about China that Mongolia cannot replicate: the food. Wondering what to order, other than copies of eastern European fare and after three weeks of forced consumption of mutton tail, freeze-dried beef, and yak fat (there’s not much else in the countryside), I opt for the Greek salad and the veggie sandwich.
Slowly munching my pickled cucumbers and wilted lettuce like a ruminating quadruped whilst fantasizing about frolicking on the steppes with the imported Russian waitress, I can still taste the piping-hot Shanghai baozi, absurdly juicy buns of faux pork filled with tofu jelly, which when heated in the cast iron pans of a local popular breakfast dive, melts into a scalding mass of liquid one quickly learns to let air cool before eating and recoagulating into a semi-solid mass of quivering vegetarian delight. These Shanghai specialties are one of the many variations on the ubiquitous dumpling, served boiled, steamed, grilled, and as here, pan-fried in batches of seventy-five or so for the multitude queuing in tens and twenties on the sidewalk outside. Topped with green onion and chili oil to taste, they are the most memorable food on the two month-old trip to date.
The waitress walks by and smiles suggestively and as the strong Czech Budwar begins to kick in I am transported back to a night in old Beijing, out to dinner with a strange woman I met on couchsurfing.org. From my notebook:
She is obsessed and seeks adventure. Just as quickly as she started, she has stopped staring at me, making me think there is some particle of food in my beard. I wonder if I’m sleeping at her house tonight. She did remove her jacket and is constantly adjusting her hair. When she was talking about the Thai ladyboys she met in Patpong, she did gesture to her breasts. I’m probably reaching. She begins talking about a German guy she stayed with in Phuket, “He picked me up from the airport and took me everywhere. We stayed in the same hotel room and split everything, though I thought he might try something, because I am attractive,” here she looks off into nowhere in particular, and continues, “but he was a good boy.” She pops a simulacrum squid bite into her mouth and chews slowly.
The woman and I are eating vegetarian Chinese food at Xuxiangzai, Beijing’s Veggie haven near Lama Temple made to look and taste exactly like the real thing: faux beef and garlic shoots, pineapple soy chicken, artificial crispy Sichuan eel, pseudo Peking duck. Whereas the consistency gave itself away with the beef, chicken and duck, the eel was scarily realistic. So much so I imagined the chef, harried and overworked as most chefs are, having one helluva time getting it so spot on, and probably just replacing it with the real thing in the kitchen when no one was looking. This could get to be a regular practice as, if he were to switch back to the backbreaking routine of creating a believably crispy eel meat out of a pastiche of soy and mung bean molds with mushrooms extract added for flavor, a noticeable slip in quality might be noticed and he would be scolded. Eventually, all of the dishes would slowly revert to their original animal flesh-based selves and no one would be the wiser. The chef would go on to become a highly touted professional and the restaurant’s business would likely double.
Fatty Tofu Duck & Yanjing Beer
“This is so real tasting. It’s amazing.” she said, nibbling on a piece of braised pork with asparagus.
“The Chinese can copy anything.” I deadpan as I pull what looks to be a fishbone out of my counterfeit catfish. “Yes, almost too authentic,” I mutter incoherently out of my beard.
It isn’t long before I have to visit the facilities. It has been three days since my last trip, a fact that I am aware of though not particularly worried about. Traveling, eating new and strange food, disrupting normal sleeping habits and all around screwing with the body’s internal functions usually results in bouts of abnormal behavior. I deal with it by thinking as little as possible of what it is that I am carrying around with me as I walk through Tiananmen Square and downplaying the humanity of walking along the Great Wall knowing everything I’ve consumed in the last few days is still weighing me down, though occasionally it’s hard to avoid it. Three days is a long time, especially in China. After a holiday weekend of waiting patiently of course my body decides the best time to announce it’s readiness to evacuate is over the phony pistachio ice cream I’m spooning into my mouth.
Suddenly, “I’m sorry, I have to excuse myself.”
Eyes down, face aglow, her fingers already crawling spider-like across the keypad of her mobile, “Yeah.”
It can’t be the mock moo shoo pork already, can it? I think as I lightly jog past waiters lounging on empty tables still cluttered with dishes from long gone patrons. Despite her flirtatious gestures, in terms of how things are actually going with the girl, my gut’s timing in shedding unwanted carriage could not be more apt. “You aren’t doing any sleeping or otherwise between any commodiously sweet perfumed stranger’s bedsheets, mister! You might as well get used to staring at the tile…
Back to the beer-goggle-induced Czech restaurant and the thought of returning to three squares of fermented yogurt (Mongolian “candy”), yak-tail porridge and goat testicles (chewy, but not bad actually) gives me the shudders and leaves me wishing for an alternate reality in which to play with my fake food while the Russian strips down to nothing but Vodka and a smile.
