A set of pictures taken by an anonymous chef working in a Chinese restaurant documents an incredibly long list of food additives and dirty tricks: Photos: What do you really eat when you go to a restaurant in China

I’ve seen people fishing discarded restaurant oil from the manholes outside restaurants, and every night in Tianjin you can see the trucks making their rounds to all the restaurants, filling up big barrels with used oil. That people illegally sell this oil back to restaurants, grocery stores and street vendors has been an open secret for a long time, but for some reason the State media has decided to make a big deal of it again. From the China Daily: Illegal cooking oil produced on huge scale

For more about “gutter oil”, see:

• GROOOOOOOSS!
• 地沟油

The carapace is tough but flexible. Biting down causes hot mush to burst out into your mouth. Two more chews and two squirts later it’s finally empty. You manage to down the bug guts in two or three swallows, but the outer shell is the challenging part. It takes a lot of chewing, and the thought of sliding it to the back of your mouth in order to swallow makes you wonder if you’ll gag. Your choice: try to swallow all of it quickly in one go and risk gagging, or chew and chew and chew, swallowing little shredded pieces of it at a time, prolonging the experience. You take the second option, feeling each piece of the exoskeleton slime across the back of your tongue and down your throat. Thankfully it doesn’t have much taste. And without legs and wings, it’s easier to eat than that giant cockroach in Thailand.

You can see more info and pictures of silk worm chrysalis (蚕蛹) here. I heard separately from friends and students that one of these things has the equivalent protein of three eggs.

We love this sidewalk BBQ place because of the 热闹 atmosphere. The wide sidewalks are usually filled with folding tables and stools and diners. This night we had to walk through the kitchen and eat in the back alley because three chéngguǎn were charged with doing nothing but standing on the opposite sidewalk from the afternoon until 12:30am to make sure none of these restaurants put out their tables! I went and complained to them. They were friendly, and said they had to manage that particular road (the restaurant is on the corner of a T-intersection). The other road, literally around the corner in plain view, had tables and stools and the usual illegal street vendors, but these three guys were only watching these particular restaurants on this particular road. All they did was stand there, for hours, looking at the opposite sidewalk. That’s how things work here. They’re the ones that said, Don’t worry, you can eat outside in the back alley.

The blurry, non-flash-or-tripod photo above on the right shows the true colours and lighting and warmth.

To put things in perspective, this place also offers giant (giant!) white snails, bullfrogs, the usual assorted animal organs, and… wait for it… sheep penis on a stick. So all things considered, silk worm larvae are not so far out of one’s comfort zone.

Related stuff:

• The Tianjin Chengguan Street Market Game
• Curiosity + China = way more than I bargained for
• Know your edible northern Chinese insects
• Dead puppies (don’t look, Grandma!) – menu included
• Snake soup
• Sheep brains (photo)
• An Irresistible Opportunity

I’ve never understood why some bourgeois Chinese make an issue of eating dog. I mean, I get that pet owners might develop less of an appetite, but staging demonstrations? Rescue missions? What do they care? It seems so … unChinese. Well, turns out there’s an interesting historical and social angle to dog’s as pets that I’d missed before, and that’s why eating dog can be such a sensitive issue in China: “During the Cultural Revolution, having a pet was seen as a capitalist activity. Only the rich and arrogant had dogs and allowed them to bite poor people. So there’s this implication that if you treated pets well, you will treat those who are weaker badly.” See: Eating Dog In China. It’s Very Complex. Very. and Chinese dog eaters and dog lovers spar over animal rights.

Our own dog-eating experiences are here:

• Dead puppies (don’t look, Grandma!) – menu included
• 菜狗
• “Cats are friends, not food!”

China’s the kind of place where you can ask a totally innocuous question:

“Hey, what’s that?”

…and get the most bizarre answers, like this one from last week:

“That’s Píxiū (貔貅). Businessmen like Píxiū because it doesn’t have an anus, so it can eat fortune but the fortune can’t ‘exit’.”

“… … ah.” (See Pixiu in Wikipedia.)

It’s easy for foreigners to get used to being surrounded by stuff we can’t name, can’t read, don’t recognize or don’t understand. It becomes so overwhelming that we don’t think to ask or even want to ask. But curiosity in China is worth it. There’s a lot of crazy-to-us stuff in Chinese culture, all around us, just sitting out there in plain sight. Píxiūs aren’t uncommon; these pictures are from the front desk of the gym where we exercise.

All you have to do is ask. Take, for example, the alcoholic drinks pictured below that are often seen at the front check-out counters of restaurants. They’re usually in big glass jars filled with all manner of marinated/preserved-in-alcohol animals like snakes and seahorses and turtles and who knows what else.

Sure, just peering into their interesting-in-a-bad-car-crash-sort-of-way depths is surprising enough for most lǎowàis that we don’t even think to try the labels. I saw these particular jars regularly for three YEARS before I finally tried to read/translate the outside of the container, and…

Red Ginseng Three Penis* Tonic Liquor
红参三鞭补酒
The nourish-kidneys-and-strengthen-male-virility type, Original “Folk Recipe”
滋肾壮阳型 来源《民间方剂》

This isn’t in some scuzzy adult store in a nasty part of town (if it was I probably wouldn’t be blogging it); it’s right up at the checkout counter of a regular neighbourhood family restaurant. Much like the menu of the dog meat restaurant near our old place, which I translated as a student just to get some vocab and ended up with way more than I bargained for.

I’ve encountered too many “No way!” “Way!” moments in China. I don’t know why they so often involve body parts. But I do know that next time I ask, the person could make up a completely bogus, far-flung explanation for whatever it is and I’d totally buy it.

*P.S. — You are undoubtedly wondering, “Which three?” Well, the ingredients aren’t listed on that label. However it turns out that there’s a famous, traditional brand of “three penis liquor” 三鞭酒 that can be found on the shelves of the average neighbourhood supermarket that does list the ingredients. I found this one at the supermarket closest to us, two minutes up the road. (Cost about $2.)

Zhang Yu’s Specialty Three Penis Liquor
张裕特质三鞭酒

The long list of ingredients begins with: “high-quality baijiu 优质白酒, edible alcohol 食用酒精, soft-ified water 软化水, seal penis 海狗鞭, deer penis 鹿鞭, dhole (Asiatic wild dog) penis 广狗鞭….” And, in case you’re also wondering, there’s a very good chance that those are Canadian seals.

P.P.S. – This is begging for a better title. How would you answer this question: “Curiosity + China = ______”?

In China, some bugs are for eating, others are for fighting, and still others are for raising as pets. This is your pictorial introduction to north China’s most commonly found edible insect offerings.

No doubt there are more insects than these on restaurant menus in northern China, but these are the ones I’ve innocently stumbled across during my three years is Tianjin. These are also the ones my students and coworkers say are most common, and the ones they admit to eating.

Insects aren’t the kind of thing people eat everyday, but they do occasionally appear on restaurant menus; they aren’t just tourist food, and this isn’t Guangdong province (广东), where southerners eat freaky stuff for fun. Most of my students have eaten at least one of these. In a large class, and among my coworkers, responses usually range from people making disgusted faces to “Those are delicious!”

(Mouseover the Chinese text to see the pronunciation.)

1. 蚕蛹 Silkworm chrysalises

蚕蛹 means silkworm chrysalis/silkworm pupa — the internet says a chrysalis is a hard-shelled pupa, while a cocoon is a protective covering around a pupa. Picky picky. Anyway, what you need to know is that when they’re deep-fried (炸) or BBQed (烤) you eat the whole thing. At least according to one class of adult students. Another student’s dad fried (爆炒) them at home for the family, but they didn’t eat the outside. They ate the yellow stuff inside, which this student said tastes like tofu and smells like raw meat or fish. Apparently there’s also black stuff inside that you don’t eat. 蚕茧 means silkworm cocoon.

We’ve found these at the Muslim sidewalk BBQ places in our area (pictured above) and at a nearby north-east peasant family style (东北农家) restaurant (below):

2. 知了猴儿 Cicada larva

In Tianjin people call these 知了猴儿，or you can just say 炸知了 (“fried cicadas”). Cicada larva, as an animal, is 知了幼虫。Cicadas, as animals, are also called 蝉。

You can see some fried scorpions in the background.

3. 蝎子 Scorpions

When it comes to food, these smaller scorpions are more common than the big gnarly black ones (shown in the second picture at the beginning). My students have also had 蝎子 in soup, and said it was really good.

4. 蚂蚱(儿) Locusts/grasshoppers

As food they’re called 蚂蚱; in a restaurant or at a vendor’s stall you can buy “fried locust” (炸蚂蚱). As an animal they’re also called 蝗虫。Everyone I asked said these two words were the same thing, but they weren’t 100% sure and there was disagreement. I checked four dictionaries and got conflicting answers depending on both which dictionary it was and whether I was searching the English or the Chinese. But whatever — I probably couldn’t distinguish a grasshopper from a locust in English. The important thing to know is that the thing in the pictures that people eat is called 炸蚂蚱。

These aren’t the ones used in cricket fighting (斗蛐蛐儿, also 蟋蟀), or the katydids (蝈蝈(儿)) that people raise as pets for their song.

P.S.
I think I’ve got these straight; let me know if any names are inaccurate or if I’ve left out anything important!

P.P.S.
Contrary to the expectations of friends and family, I haven’t actually eaten anyone of these. I sort of got the self-challenge adventure-eating stomach-over-mind insect-consuming impulse out of my system with the cockroach in Thailand, but I suppose if I had an excuse I’d go sample this stuff with someone, just for kicks. Plus, my younger sister’s boyfriend really upped the ante this summer when he ate his way through southeast Asia, so I need to reassert my superiority.

All these photos except for the silkworm chrysalises (蚕蛹) were taken at the Ditan Temple fair in February 2010. The 蚕蛹 photos come from our neighbourhood, taken last week.

Living in Tianjin and not knowing about this food is like living in America and not knowing about hamburgers, except that maybe there aren’t giant Chinese corporations more powerful than some national governments selling “oil sticks” and “tofu brains” next to KFC on every potentially profitable street corner on the globe. Still, you can find Tianjin’s local … delicacies … within walking distance of most neighbourhoods here. These local foods are a defining characteristic of the city, and you can feel the warmth and even a little pride from locals when you ask about them.

Breakfast is an especially big deal in Tianjin. Many people don’t like to cook breakfast themselves and the sidewalks are filled from early to late morning with folding tables, plastic stools, and crowds of people enjoying their very public meals.

Last week my sister came from Canada to see us, so I took her out before 6am one morning to sample both the local daily exercise scene and some breakfast. We took pictures, so here’s breakfast, Tianjiner-style, in no particular order. See the warning label at the bottom. Most dishes cost around two kuài ($0.30).

When Tianjiners travel overseas and get homesick, this is the stuff they miss.

1. 锅巴菜 gābacài

I like this stuff, though I wouldn’t have a clue what it’s made of just from eating it: maybe some sesame sauce, strips of something, some pink sauce, thick brown broth, and you can throw in some cilantro and crushed hot peppers in oil if you want. Apparently gābacài (锅巴菜) is a Tianjin original, and it’s seriously high-energy food; you feel like running a few miles afterward. According to this online recipe, it’s made with a mung bean-&-millet broth, strips of chopped, crepe-like jiānbǐng (煎饼), some of kind of gravy made with over ten kinds of seasonings, sesame paste, chilis in oil, pink fermented tofu sauce and cilantro. In standard Mandarin it should be guōbacài, but in Tianjin it’s gābacài — people often think it’s funny if the foreigner knows to use the local pronunciation.

2. 老豆腐 lǎodòufu

My students rave about “old tofu” (老豆腐) or “tofu brains” (豆腐脑) whenever I bring it up in class, but even they admit that it looks disgusting.

From what I can tell, it’s slimy lumps of tofu in an oil bath with some brown (sesame?) sauce thrown in. For me, the taste doesn’t come anywhere close to making up for its appearance. Of all the Tianjin breakfast foods, we liked this one the least. I think my sister stopped after the first or second spoonful.

3. 油条 yóutiáo

Two small strips of dough pinched together at the ends and deep fried, “oil sticks” are pretty much donuts without any sugar or flavouring. I honestly don’t see the point, unless you were trying to consume as much oil as possible without actually drinking it straight, though for some reason I still eat them occasionally. These things are everywhere at breakfast time, perhaps the most ubiquitous of all Tianjin’s breakfast offerings, maybe because they travel easily. 5 máo ($0.07) each.

The wider thing in the fry pot in the above photo is called a guǒbìngr (果饼儿) in Tianjin (薄脆 báocuì in Beijing). Guǒbìngr are thin and crispy rather than donut-y.

4. 面茶 miànchá

If you cooked it in less oil and traded the salt for brown sugar, you could slip bowls of miànchá (面茶) onto a Canadian family breakfast table and no one would notice (assuming that some Canadians actually still have family breakfasts). According to this online recipe and my Chinese-English dictionary, it’s made from millet, sesame paste, sesame oil, and sesame seeds. Unsweetened porridge, basically. I don’t know how to translate the name; the characters are the ones for “noodles” (面) and “tea” (茶), but I’m not seeing either in this dish [see comment #14]. Anyway, I’ll definitely be eating this again on a somewhat regular basis, though I can’t say the same or the “tofu brains” in the right half of the photo above.

5. 煎饼果子 jiānbing guǒzi

This is more or less the Chinese breakfast burrito, except that other than having a thin crepe-like wrapper, it’s (sadly) nothing at all like a burrito. The styles can vary and you can sometimes choose for yourself (see a list here), but a standard jiānbing guǒzi (煎饼果子) will be a green onion crepe lined with egg wrapped around a yóutiáo (油条 “oil stick”) or a crunchy guǒbìngr (果饼儿 — stacked overhead in the photo below), with some sauce and crushed red peppers in oil, and then folded twice. These transport well, and I often see them on the subway in the morning.

6. 豆浆 dòujiāng

“Bean broth” (豆浆) is better known in North America as soy milk, only the Tianjin variety is unsweetened and served really hot in a brimming bowl, scooped out of a big pot. Dòujiāng to-go comes in a bag with a straw. Sometimes they’ll add sugar to it if you ask. I like dipping the yóutiáo (油条 “oil stick”) in it, but I get funny looks from my Chinese friends when I do this.

This post doesn’t include every single kind of Tianjin breakfast food (there’d be no end; Tianjiners love them some breakfast!), but these are all the biggies. Hungry?

P.S. — Warning

Adventure eaters, be ye warned: This kind of local food is pretty much guaranteed to use the cheapest, poorest quality ingredients, and in China that means something different than it does back home. If, for example, you were deliberately trying to consume “gutter oil” (地沟油), which is discarded cooking oil that’s been skimmed off the sewer slop that was scooped out of manholes and resold in used containers back to restaurants and street vendors, you would eat things like yóutiáo (油条 “oil sticks”) or lǎodòufu (老豆腐 “old tofu”) at places like those pictured above, or you could go to an average local restaurant and order shuǐzhǔròu (水煮肉 “water boiled meat”), which is basically meat and vegetables in a serving bowl filled with oil. Most Chinese dishes use incredible amounts of oil, but the ones I’ve mentioned here use even more than usual and are therefore thought to be the most likely candidates for gutter oil.

I’ve seen people scooping slop out of manholes beside restaurants in Tianjin before, but I didn’t know they were doing it to skim off the waste oil and resell it back to the restaurants! If you’re not sick, you will be after reading the reports about 地沟油 linked below.

Translated from the Chinese internet: Restaurant head chef talks about drainage oil in China
From the China Daily: Old oil used in ’1 in 10 meals’

Pronounced: dì gōu yóu
Literally: drainage oil
Means: used cooking oil from restaurants that is typically dumped down the drain or directly into the manholes outside, then scooped out of said manholes by enterprising citizens and resold as cooking oil. I so wish I was kidding.

I’m not kidding; that’s exactly what these signs say:

Currently in the Chinese media, and now all over the English China blog world, is the news that China is considering passing a law that would make it illegal to eat dogs and cats. But even if it passes, I have my doubts that those hypocritical pork-eating bourgeois specie-ists will succeed in enforcing their shameless attack on cultural practices that go back thousands of years.

The image on the right is a bag of dog meat one of our Chinese teachers gave us as a gift.

Anyway, I just couldn’t pass up sharing a photo of a sign that says “Cats are friends, not food!” （猫是朋友，不是食物）。 Also visible in the photo:

• “Refuse to eat cats.” （拒绝吃猫）
• “Please show humanitarianism, set them free.” （请发扬人道主义 放过它们）
• “Cherish humanity’s good friends! Refuse to eat cat and dog meat.” （爱护人类好友！拒绝吃猫狗肉）
• “Refuse to eat cat and dog meat. Cherish humanity’s friends.” (拒食猫狗肉 爱护人类之友)
• 请口下留情 is a play on the phrase 手下留情 (“restrain your hand”), as in showing mercy or sparing someone’s feelings by not meting out more punishment than is needed, often in the context of criticizing. On the sign they switched “hand” (手) for “mouth” （口）, so it might mean something like, “Be merciful; please restrain your mouth”.

For our personal encounters with cats and dogs as food in China, including a downloadable translated menu from a local dog meat restaurant, see here:

• Dead puppies (don’t look, Grandma!) – menu included
• Obligatory cat eating post
• 龙虎斗

This is a dog meat restaurant near our old apartment:

The last time we ate dog, at a Korean restaurant with one of our teachers and her Korean fiancé:

Honestly, it tasted better at the dump-of-a-restaurant two photos up, but it wasn’t great at either place. Not like some of the donkey I’ve had.