February 24, 2018

As I sit down to write this blog entry, there’s a topic that I think I have been subconsciously noticing – subliminally, perhaps – for a long time, but one that has recently been brought to the forefront of my mind, and as such, I began noticing it everywhere.

It’s food. Yes, if anyone knows me, particularly my friends and colleagues and host families here in China, food is a topic that is always on my mind. My Chengdu host mom calls me a ‘foodie,’ my Peace Corps doctor called me the only volunteer in Peace Corps China 23 to have gained weight over the first semester. I call myself … hungry.

But, beyond the incredible amounts, variety and flavors of food that exist here in China – particularly for vegetarians! Yes! – which I share quite often through my Daily Discoveries, I want to specifically share with you the confluence of different cuisines into the mainstream, popular Chinese culture as I experience it.

Before we talk about food, let’s talk about how information and trends, particularly food trends, spread throughout China. I don’t think it’s any different than the States – thanks, social media! It spreads like wildfire in a dry forest whose floor is piled high with pine needles. Or some analogy like that. My frequent readers might remember the ‘dirty dirty bao’ dessert treat that I discovered last month. It’s a chocolate bun, filled with chocolate, topped with chocolate and dusted with cocoa powder, that I hadn’t heard about until I came to Chengdu for IST, but a trend and phenomenon that beat me back to Wuwei, with every store in China making and selling this treat, and the bakeries in China selling out of them within minutes of them being placed for sale.

Now that we know how quickly it can spread, the convergence of cuisine and culture can be seen through any number of examples, and on any number of levels, but let’s start with the simplest, and most evident: western restaurants. Chinese people are starting to enjoy, and seek out, western restaurants more and more. Walking through Chengdu, this can be seen from the Western restaurants that dot the streets: McDonalds, Burger King, Pizza Hut, KFC and Starbucks, each multiplying their presence throughout the city as construction scaffolding is put up. In addition to these Western restaurants that I knew before coming here to China, there are even more ‘western/foreign food’ restaurants that originated in China, often by foreigners who have moved here for this particular reason: a tex-mex place called Peters, a classic sub stand called MunchWich, a burger restaurant called Charlies’, Indian restaurants loved dearly by my fellow volunteers, and a few pizza and Italian restaurants that draw large numbers of devoted followers.

Now that my eyes were opened to this cultural change, it’s been fascinating to see how it varies throughout the parts of the country I have experienced. Chengdu has these restaurants throughout streets and shopping malls, guaranteeing that if you’d like one, you can find it. Smaller, less developed, but still a provincial capital city, Lanzhou has a few of each restaurant, but you might have to walk or travel a bit further to find one. Wuwei, my site, much smaller and greatly less developed than even Lanzhou, has a single western restaurant, a KFC inconspicuously placed on the corner of the walking street that I didn’t notice for a good two months after my arrival.

It’s important to keep in mind, though, that even though a restaurant might be the same company as we’ve seen in the United States, it, too, has changed to suit and adapt to the culture and cuisine preferences of the customers it serves. An important note to understand, too, about western restaurants is that for the majority of Chinese people and Peace Corps Volunteers, they are always relatively more expensive than local, Chinese restaurants and food; McDonalds isn’t cheap, coffee is a treat, and you might actually feel like royalty at Burger King.

To illustrate this, let’s take Pizza Hut as an example, as I recently tested it out here in Chengdu. Tested.. for you! :)

To keep this blog post within reasonable length, as I tend to ramble, let’s switch to bullet format for my main observations:

1. Pizza Hut is quite nice, upscale and considered to be a treat, a place you might take your first date to be fancy, which isn’t quite my experience back in the States.

2. Pizza Hut here understands #1, and has adapted their atmosphere and menu to match: there’s a bar with imported (AKA: expensive!) alcohols like Baileys, Corona, Bacardi, champagne and ‘homemade’ margaritas, and they also serve steaks, seafood, and coffee.

3. The menu has a decided Chinese twist: serving afternoon teas, Peking Roast Duck style pizza, mashed potatoes with durian (a fruit you should try with caution), and baked rice dishes with meat and veggies, fondly called a ‘goulash.’

I’ve included a few pictures of the menu below, but to check out pictures of the full menu, click here.

What did we order? A few things. Ranked by my scoring, and I’ll stick to the pizza in the future, though it’s worth trying a few of the cultural twists if you visit China and end up at a Pizza Hut (please make sure to try hot pot, shao kao barbecue, chuan chuan and other dishes first!).

Beyond Pizza Hut, and KFC, and the western style restaurants, these influences and exchanges of culture and making it in to homes, too, sometimes by personal introduction (as when I taught my host mom in Chengdu how to make pizza and cheesy potatoes over break) and sometimes on their own (as when I was surprised to show up to my supervisor’s house for a Spring Festival get-together with her family and we ended up making a pizza with all of the young children).

This confluence also arrives in unexpected places and moments. You’ve hopefully seen my Daily Discovery from last week where I tried out the huge French fries with a variety of sauces being sold amongst traditional Chinese foods at a large cultural exhibition and activity in Chengdu. And then, a few days ago, I was getting tea with my host parents and a few of their friends at a tea house just outside the third ring road in Chengdu, and what did we order with the tea? French fries, and ketchup. What did every subsequent group of patrons order when they arrived for tea? Yep, French fries.

My final thoughts, for now. I’ve realized that food is food, and culture is culture, but food is also culture, and culture changes, adapts and grow as food movements change, adapt and grow… and as they culture and cuisine converge together here in China, I’m here growing and changing, too, as I’m able to watch China do the same, for it is these experiences of differences that we teach us the most. My question, then, for you, is similar: which of your favorite foods can be considered truly American? Which are born of another culture, immigrants to our palate from birthplaces outside our country? And perhaps, what else can we learn together about the world and others, starting with what has connected people for thousands of years: this most simple convergence of cuisine and culture.