Food

Sara enjoying a plate of pork dumplings.


Many people have asked us about the food. It was awesome! We took pictures of almost everything we had. Sometimes we forgot until we only had a few bites left, but we still took pictures. We had a wide variety of food, but there was almost always meat of some kind. There was almost always white rice, sometimes they were replaced with dumplings or fried rice. White rice comes in bowls for each person. Fried rice comes like the other dishes, piled up on a plate for everyone to share.

When eating out the Chinese order one dish more than the number of people at the table. So when there was four of us we'd order five dishes, plus our rice. One time we had eight or nine people at a table and we ordered like the Chinese. It was a great time to taste different dishes.

We didn't have American food until we met up with some American's on our fifth day. That day John told me he was proud of me that I never asked for McDonald's and I told him that I hadn't wanted any. The food in China is so good that it took some American's living in China to get me to eat McD's. We met them at Starbucks, then had lunch at Subway and it was so late when we finally got to their town that night that the only thing open was McDonald's.

We did end up having McD's four times on the trip, sometimes it was just because we needed something real quick. We had KFC once in our last city - they call chicken sandwiches burgers, I was a little confused. Thankfully John knew that and helped me out.

I'll show y'all some pics of our food. It looks just like the Chinese food in America, it just tastes sooooo much better!



A plate of dumplings. We also had tea, sunflower seeds, watermelon (not pictured) and a fruit a little bit like an apple, but with a pit and a little drier.



A plate of green beans in the foreground, in the background is our Kung Pow Chicken, to the left of that is a bowl of white rice and in the bottom right corner is potato strings. We also got sweet and sour pork that night. In the green beans they had the mouth numbing spice. They use it in really spicy dishes so they can eat it with out their mouths hurting too much. We tried one little pellet and it made whatever part of the mouth it touched numb. I didn't like it at all. John thought it was ok. (3 people = 4 dishes plus rice)







This was our most expensive meal in China. For both of us it cost about $50. This was our Beijing Duck meal that we shared with Philip and Doris (the Canadian couple). They brought out a whole duck that had been cooking over a fire. They first cut off the skin and we ate that, dunked in either sugar or plum sauce - both tasty. Then the cut off the meat. We put meat into little "pancakes" with some plum sauce, onions, peppers, or garlic. You roll it up and eat it like that. It was a really tasty dish. We also had some asparagus and mushrooms, some beef, and a cold dish with duck, beef, fish and asparagus and pickled radish. That was a great meal.





These were the dishes we had at a Muslim restaurant. Unfortunately I didn't like the contents in one dish and I didn't like the sauce on the other. But we did have good lamp kabobs and flat bread at that meal.



This is the meal that I thought was ok and John hated. He said it tasted like frozen breaded chicken that they fried up and threw in some sauce, poor John. He didn't even like the fried rice that night.



This is egg and tomato fried up together. This is a very common dish in China. This version of the dish was really good, but it was sweet. It's not normally like that. We had it another time and it wasn't sweet. I didn't like it as much that time.



This is our meal on a train. We bought the Oreo's and Chips Ahoy cookies beforehand and then I got the ramen noodles on the train. They are very common to see on trains.



Oh yeah - we ate at T.G.I. Friday's one day for lunch.



This meal we have (clockwise) beef on the left (bones included!) then chicken (this was really good) snap peas and bread dumplings (also really good). You can also see tea on the table. We had dessert dumplings at the meal and we also had white rice.



This was a pretty good meal. There's a plate of vegetables, I remember not liking that. We had some good dumplings and a pork dish I really liked. John had this in Tianjin when he went before and he remembered liking it. You put the pork and some onions (that are hidden by the pork in this pic) into the square pancake things, roll it up and eat it. That was very, very tasty. You can see part of John's friend Jason in this picture. They met when John was there nine years ago. We took him to T.G.I. Friday's after dinner for some dessert. We had a great brownie/ice cream dessert and Jason got to have his first brownie. He was a little confused at first, but I think he liked it.



This was a meal that I didn't like very much. We left ordering lunch up to Jason (that was a mistake), we did tell him to not get fish (good idea for us). But he still got dishes that I didn't like. I'm glad that John liked the meal. Starting in front of Jason and going clockwise: pumpkin fries, beef (with fat and bones), cold dish with noodles (tasted like bologna) and cucumbers, eggplant with shrimp. The eggplant dish was the worst for me because the skin was really chewy and hard for me to swallow. I learned that I should always make some suggestion that I like so I'm guaranteed to have something I enjoy.



We ate at McDonald's in Tianjin where John and all the guys took all the girls eight or nine years ago. This is where I learned that in China a small is still a small. It was kind of nice. I also learned I don't really like Big Mac's anymore.



We toured the Tsingtao (pronounced Ching dao) brewery and got free beer and beer peanuts in the middle of the tour. John liked the beer and nuts. I tried the beer and didn't like it (no surprise) and we kept my packet of nuts for a friend back here in the states. The end of the tour puts you into their restaurant which is their beer plus some fried fish snack things. We got more free beer there. It wasn't a weak beer and John hadn't eaten much that day. If we had a car, he would've been handing over the keys. Not that he was drunk, but he was feeling it.



This is the ice cream sundae we got. Well, it's the end of it anyway. The ice cream was on a bed of watermelon - it was strange at first, but it was pretty good. That night we went to a Chinese/Brazilian fusion restaurant. We got only Chinese food because the Brazilian food was mostly seafood on a grill. We had some really good chicken and some pretty good friend rice with pineapple. Unfortunately the fried rice also had shrimp and this shaved stuff on top that I really didn't like. But if you went around that stuff it was pretty good.



We went to a German Restaurant in Qingdao called Monnemer Eck. The food was really good and the portions were HUGE!


Well, that's the end of my food pictures. I hope you guys got nice and hungry for some good Chinese food. Unfortunately to get some good Chinese food, you'll have to go over there.