Chinarchy » food

What Is This Fruit?

Anderson — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 05:49:32 +0000

For a long time now I’ve been hoping that Google will come out with a new kind of search that allows you to upload an image and it will find you pages with similar images. A search-by-image function. That way you could easily identify things in pictures by getting page results of websites that have similar pictures of those things. I’m pretty sure it would be a hard thing to program, but maybe one day.

Until that day comes I’ll just have to post pictures here and ask: Does anyone know what the hell this fruit is?

It looks like some kind of alien pod. I was scared to get closer because of my life-long fear of facehuggers.

Update: Apparently it’s a Durian. But even after reading that Wikipedia page I’m still not convinced it won’t kill me.

Our Little Dumpling Shop

McCoy — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:34:50 +0000

So Anderson and I have been looking for places to eat near our sweet apartment, and we found a little alleyway when Anderson, had to take a cab to work. There are a bunch of really cheap places to eat including a place that I am dubbing our little dumpling shop.

It’s really good food for a really low price, (13 yuan each or 1.90 USD) and also has cheap beers. Below are some pictures of our dinner tonight.

Here’s the inside of our shop.

Here are the dumplings or Jiaozi in Chinese.

Here are the xiaolongbao (which are nothing like the real things in Shanghai, too doughy).

More Jiaozi next to our 3 yuan (44 cents American) beers.

Jiaozi Soup.

The food being cooked outside.

McCoy’s Food Corner: Cafeteria Food

McCoy — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 04:01:39 +0000

I’ve decided, actually it was probably about a week ago, back when we didn’t have internet, that I wanted to try to do a weekly post about different foods in China, with a Chinese vocabulary section in it. I’m going to start taking pictures and stuff now that I know I’m going to do this, so get excited for that. However for the first week I’m just going to give you a normal post.

Vocabulary words for the week: 啤酒 pi jiu – beer

冷水 bing shui – cold water

(I’ll put the tones in there later when I figure out how but for now I’m not going to)

These words were very dear to Anderson and I upon our arrival, because we wanted cold water and also beers. See the Chinese have a habit of drinking boiling hot water (probably to kill the bacteria), but being from America we expect our water to be cold. Anyway back to actual food post.

So I found out that they are going to feed me at my school, which is pretty nice, because I can save money by not paying for lunch. I also found out that cafeteria food is actually not that bad. Monday was rice, vegetables, and pork; Tuesday was rice, a vegetable, and spare ribs; Wednesday rice, vegetables, and chicken; and Thursday rice, vegetable, fish; and Friday was rice a vegetable and chicken wings.

Are you sensing a pattern? Yup that’s right, rice meat and some sort of random vegetable. It’s actually very good though and they give you a lot of food, so I’m not complaining. The kids are also fed the same thing as the adults for lunch but they also get breakfast and dinner, which I find to be kind of odd.

The other problem is that they are fed the same thing for breakfast and dinner. It’s always a soup that has tofu in it for breakfast and something rather similar with rice for dinner. It seems like it would be pretty boring, and it’s also weird that they are fed all 3 meals, but hey, it’s China and they aren’t starving in the fields like in the past so they deal with it.

Anyway my food corner will be better when I start incorporating pictures and get into more interesting foods. While I’m still trying to get settled and on a real schedule I’ve been eating out of the school and the convenient store downstairs. Hopefully this week I’ll start exploring the food more in depth.

Beijing: Australian For “Crowded”

Anderson — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 13:01:32 +0000

All of today was spent running around the city getting things done before we start our jobs. I was able to take a few decent photos and if there is one thing they highlight it is that Beijing is a city full of people. Like really, really full of people. We’ve all heard the statistics about 13 million people living here and how crowded it is, but it’s hard to really get it until you see it. There are people every where. Lines of people all pushing and shoving, especially in the subway. The subway is the definition of “seething mass.”

Anyway, hopefully these pictures will help explain. (Click on them for a bigger version.)

This is a group of people lining up to get on a subway train. Notice how there are infinite of them.

Being on the subway is like an endless hall of mirrors. Except everyone is way too close and people are giving me dirty looks for taking pictures.

This is a packed wall-to-wall food court. Oh, by the way, below is an amazingly cheap and delicious meal that I bought in said food court.

This cost me 2 US dollars. Yup.

Speaking of food, there are so many street vendors (like the one above) that serve pretty legit food. I had one of those burrito-style wrap things. It was full of duck and veggies and really good. But not all street meat is legit.

This guy is cooking meat on top of a bucket. I passed at least a dozen other people doing the same thing. What the fuck? To his credit the meat smelled pretty good. (Also, I’m not sure why his face looks like that. Maybe he’s some sort of vampire shape-shifting meat cooker. I know it’s not because I fucked up the photo.)

One last thing. When we were at the hospital to take some medical exams we had to wait in line forever — which is typical — but for some reason the lines are labelled so strangely.

Why are there IP addresses labeling these lines? And why are they scrolling past on a stock ticker screen? Honestly, someone explain this to me.