EatingAsia

That Was Now, This is Then

Our visit to Chengdu last January was a shock -- not the shock of being in China, but the shock of So. Much. Change. Good change, bad change, whatever. Just change.

When Dave and I walk Chengdu's streets we'll say -- or just think to ourselves, simultaneously -- things like "Oh my gosh, wasn't that where the ....stood?" or "Can you believe there was ever a time when that side of the river had absolutely nothing on it?" Even when we visited last month there were buildings that didn't exist in January.

It's difficult -- almost impossible I think -- to fully appreciate just how far Chengdu, and China, have come in 25 years if you didn't know it then.

All of what Chengdu was in 1984 and 1985 is in my head, and only in my head. That's what I thought anyway, until one day last January we turned a corner and suddenly we'd gone back in time. One minute we were here,

 
 

and the next we were there.

This is what pretty much all of Chengdu, except for a very small area around the Jinjiang Hotel, looked like in the mid-eighties. These are the sort of streets we cycled through every day. These are the sorts of things we saw. This is what we took for granted.

These photos of 'old Chengdu' were taken last January. Amazingly, this little neighborhood of traditional single- and double-story tile-roofed brick houses near the Sichuan Music Conservatory has survived while similar ones around it are long gone. It hasn't been tarted up, it hasn't been Disney-fied. Many of its residents are long-timers, and they don't have the easiest life. None of these houses have indoor plumbing. Unlike in 1985 however, most of them have heaters, and TVs and washing machines. We even saw the flickering blue screens of a few PCs.

We found this clutch of old buildings quite by accident, as we walked toward the university from the bus station. First we saw, on a side street, this row of old timber-fronted shop houses and the gaggle of tea-drinkers and mahjong players out front.

Everyone was friendly, chatty. When I told a group of ladies that Dave and I lived in Chengdu 25 years ago they immediately understood why we were staring, goggle-eyed, at the structures they idle in front of every day. "It looks just like it did then!" one beamed. 

They encouraged us to follow the side street past to where it narrows into a one bike cart-wide lane. So we did.

Plastic stools are new. Children's backpacks are new. Motorbikes are too. Strips of radish and laundry hung from trees to dry are not.

Buried at the dead end of one lane we found a double-story building that we think might be an old water plant. It's been sub-divided into residences but we peaked through the slats of a door and saw an old well. A man living in one of the rooms, who ushered us into the the old structure told us that, whatever it was, it ceased operations after kaifang, as the economic reforms initiated by Deng Xiaoping in the early 1980s are referred to.

Our heads spinning, we left the warren of narrow lanes and set off towards the university in search of lunch.

Two bowls of zhajiang mian with plenty of la jiao in a knock-up noodle shop set us right. I don't recall ever encountering zhajiang mian when we lived in Chengdu. Nor any dish, for that matter, made with as much pork as that bowl of noodles held.

But right after we ordered and before she brought us our noodles the woman running the place hurried over and set before us two steaming bowls of milky pasta water, something I hadn't been offered in 25 years.

It Lives

If you've ever wondered if Dave is in fact a real person -- not just a character dreamed up for the purposes of EatingAsia''s narrative -- now is your chance to find out.

Tomorrow, October 23 at 2pm he'll be showing his work (we're talkin' BIG screen here) and discussing photography as part of a photo fair being held this weekend at Kuala Lumpurs's Berjaya Times Square.

Details -- and some nice images -- on Dave's photo blog, here. Come on down! I'll be in the crowd. We'd love to meet you.

You Know What They Say About a Picture...

Thanks SM, for sending us this EatingAsia word cloud. Couldn't have written or photographed it better ourselves.

 

Tofu and Chilies and Veggies, Oh My!

While in Chengdu last January we spent a few mornings at a small but fabulous wet market (you can read about it here). When we returned to the city last month we found that the market had become a construction site. In many Chinese cities this would be cause for sadness. But Chengdu is bucking general trend away from traditional wet markets and even building new ones in the center of the city. We found that our little market had been moved up the street and around the corner into a big, new, covered home.

(Its copious traditional wet markets, by the way, were just one reason cited by UNESCO when the organization named Chengdu Asia's first City of Gastronomy.)

So we spent a few more mornings there. And wrote and photographed all about it for Zester Daily. Read the story and see the mouthwatering slideshow here.

In George Town, Timing is Everything

"Ten years!" Eng replied, when I asked her how long she'd been serving curry mee from her stall on George Town's Cintra Street. I had to ask again to be sure I'd heard her right. Dave and I have been eating the relatively decent koay teow th'ng at the stall just across the street for a good while now but I couldn't recall ever having noticed Eng or her bubbling cauldron of currry.

Apparently timing is everything. Eng is off Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. I can only assume that for the last couple of years our occasional wanderings in what is pretty much the center of George Town have been confined to the first three days of the week.

Penang-native Eng's curry mee is worth working your schedule around, traversing as it does that fine line between unctuously coconut-y and weigh-you-down rich. We asked for extra heat and she delivered, in the form of a large blob of sambal dissolved in the broth and an extra-large portion in our spoon. Eng's is chicken curry mee -- expect a fair bit of gizzard and a chicken wing (more protein on request).

There's attention to detail in the way Eng warms the bowl before dishing up your noodles. She places noodles (ask for a mixture of beehoon and yellow mee) into a wire basket and softens them with several dips into boiling water, lifting them over the bowl and letting the hot liquid run into and then out of it. Care is also evident in the sprigs of fresh mint leaves (a wonderfully sprightly counterpoint to the mellow, sweetish curry) and chopped torch ginger flower that garnish each serving.

The voluble Eng doesn't speak much English but she's generous with her smiles. You'll know her cart by the gaggle of regulars camped out at her four tables.

Eng's Curry Mee stall, Cintra between Campbell and Chulia, George Town Penang. 8am-4pm, Wed-Sat only.

 

New But Not-So-New in George Town

 

Dave and I spent last week in George Town, Penang. We were there mostly for work, and to be honest eating well was not Priority Number 1. In fact there were moments, whole hours even, during which I didn't think about food at all. Meals were skipped. Imagine that.

But while I was busy with interviews Dave was out scouring the city for images and in the process, ended up discovering and sampling some new-to-us fare. That's the beauty of George Town -- no matter how much time you've spent there, if you roam far and wide enough you're bound to find something yet untasted.

We sincerely hope that the city never gentrifies so much (and gentrifying it is) that the Municipal Council does away with George Town's mobile hawker stalls. Like this one, parked on a lonely stretch of Lebuh Pantai just east of Lebuh Melayu.

It seems to be a mother-and-son operation; he stir-fries, and she tells him how to stir-fry (when she's not assembling and delivering condiments). Around 4pm they push their cart up the street, set up their ingredients, and place a few tables in the portico of a crumbling warehouse

After eating here Dave raved about the gorgeous late afternoon light -- and the noodles. Then he dragged me to Lebuh Pantai.

They do two dishes here: Hokkien char and char hor fun. The former is not to be confused with Hokkien mee Kuala Lumpur-style, which is a greasily indulgent dish of yellow noodles stir-fried (in lard, preferably) with lots of dark soy sauce and pork. Nor is it to be confused with Hokkien mee Penang-style, which isn't a stir-fried dish but a soupy noodle featuring a rich, spicy prawn and pork stock. Confused yet?

Hokkien char, we think, is the Penang version of KL-style Hokkien mee, but lighter and saucier and relatively oil- if not fat-free (tucked in amongst those noodles, prawns, slices of pork, and stems of Chinese mustard are bits of crackling). It's served with a sour-and-fiery sambal.

A tasty dish and Dave's quite keen on it, but I took a shine to this gentleman's char hor fun, rice vermicelli and wide rice noodles stir-fried with pretty much the same mix of vegetable and protein as the Hokkien char, but in a lighter Cantonese-style sauce (egg optional -- we didn't go for it this time around).

What I love about this dish is the way the rice vermicelli wrap around the wide noodles, forming a web that, when it rests on the surface of the wok, firms and sucks up the pan's smokiness. What you end up with then are wok hei-infiltrated, triple-textured noodle nubs: crispy on the outside of the 'nest', yielding but toothsome just beneath the outer layer, and soft inside.

A very simple dish that I would never be able to recreate at home. Which pretty much guarantees that we'll be visiting this hawker stall again on our next trip to George Town.

Char hor fun and Hokkien char, Lebuh Pantai between Malay and Aceh streets, from about 4:30pm (to be safe) until ????, George Town, Penang.

A Chengdu Street Food Survivor

It's a challenge to find genuine street food in Chengdu. Last year, in a bid to have Chengdu declared China's most wenming (cultured, civilized) city the municipal government initiated a campaign to sweep food vendors from its roads. It seems to have worked pretty well, at least in the center of town.

But one local specialty has survived the purge: dou hua.

Malaysians will recognize dou hua as tau foo fah; it's also known as bean curd custard. In one incarnation (I'll get to the other in a bit) dou hua is silky-smooth soft bean curd that holds it's shape when scooped but jiggles nicely and gives way with the slightest pressure of a spoon. It's eaten warm -- here in Malaysia, most often with a slug of white or palm sugar syrup but in Chengdu,with all of the condiments that make Sichuan food so wonderfully addictive. (Children often eat it with only granulated sugar).

"Dou hua liang mian dou huaaaaaa! Dou hua liang mian dou huaaaaa!" (Dou hua cold noodles dou hua!)

That's a cry you're guaranteed to hear if you set for a spell at the tea garden in the park that runs along the north bank of the Jinjiang River east of Renmin Nan Lu. Several bike-riding female dou hua sellers share the territory, parking one at a time near the the tea garden's entrance, making the rounds shouting their douhua come-on, kicking back for half an hour or so, and then making another effort to rustle up business before hopping on their bikes and moving elsewhere. Within 15 minutes the next seller arrives.

Dou hua is completely personalize-able. I ordered one for Dave and I to share, and after the vendor scooped a bean curd cloud from her plastic bucket and slid it into a paper bowl, answered "yes" to ground Sichuan peppercorns, la jiao (chili flakes in oil), chopped scallion greens, chopped preserved vegetable, black vinegar, soy sauce, and white sugar (just a wee bit). I declined MSG. (I would have ordered cold noodles too but we'd just eaten lunch.)

I suppose that for those not fond of bean curd dou hua might seem a strange and unappetizing snack. All I can say is that the bean curd in Sichuan is delicious (as is the bean curd in Malaysia) -- mildly earthy and well, beany in a way that bean curd made in large factories never can be. It's a fantastic flavor carrier, in this case a vehicle for ma-la (hot and numbing), sour, salty, and sweet.

 

I find almost anything with a custard-like texture to be comforting and the thing about dou hua is that even though it's served hot it's a perfect warm-weather food (believe me, we had some balmy days, weather that made Malaysia seem downright cool, while in Chengdu). It's satisfying and energy-giving, but also quite light.The perfect thing to reverse the effects of heat so hot it sucks the strength right out of you.

Dou hua may just be one of the world's perfect foods.

 

It's also suited to cold weather, as we found last January.

 

An aside -- custardy dou hua is not to be confused with a firmer sort of dou hua with an almost cottage cheese-y texture that's usually available at kuai can ('quick eats') places and restaurants specializing in rice-steamed meat and other steamed dishes.

Kept warm in big bowls of hot water, the firmer version has a slightly sour-ish flavor -- not at all unpleasant -- crumbles wonderfully into rice, and is usually eaten with a heap of one or another type of chili-basd condiment: fermented black beans mixed with chili flakes in oil, salt, and chopped green onions, for instance, or a cooked almost Mexican salsa-like concoction made with fiery long green peppers.

Sadly, we missed out on the latter type of douhua this last trip -- something we'll be sure to make up for in spades on the next.