One of the first things that impressed us when coming to China in general, and Yinchuan in special, is the enormous varieties of tastes and flavours. This goes for both food and drinks. It didn't take us many days to understand that China is paradise to food lovers.
Woman eating at a marketpalce, using chopsticks (kuaizi).
When we eat here, we use the same cutlery as the local inhabitants. For those who don't know they use chopsticks, made of wood. We must admit that this is the first challenge we meet. The first times we ate with these, our fingers hurt, and we lost alot of food on the table and in our lap. The good thing though is that since we are foreigners it's not considered such a big of a deal. The way we use our chopsticks so far seems quite amusing to the locals. They look, laugh and smile, which we think is fun. They are very helpful when it comes to giving advice about how to use them. Luckily for us the Chinese people are very friendly and polite.
Unlike in the country we come from it is accepted to eat loudly and noisy in China. It seems that people enjoy the food alot and they can eat it the way they want to. To understand how important food and the meal is to the chinese we can just look at a common way of greeting: ni chi le ma (have you eaten)...
All the meals that are served are hot, even breakfast. It is considered to be better for the digestion than eating cold food. This does not mean that it is not possible to get cold dishes as well, like vegetables. But warm food is common to every meal.
When we are served soup in China, we are given a small porcelain spoon to use. Soup is also a very important dish, and very often served with all of the daily meal.
Rice is an essential part of a meal, as long as you don't eat dumplings. Those two dishes rarely come together in the same meal. Cooked is the most common way to both prepare and eat rice in China.
Dumpling come both cooked, steamed and fried. The number of fillings they have witness how much effort, pride and creativity they put into making food. Amazing mixtures between vegetables and meat and vegetarian dumplings. To mention a few, dumplings with lamb and carrot, beef and onion, mixed vegetables, seafood and vegetables.......(i'll stop there, because it makes my mouth drool)
Dumplin
gs are rarely eaten alone, usually they are eaten together with fried, raw or cooked vegetables, and different spices and sauces. Usually people dip the dumplings in a spice mixture and add soy oil and vinegar to the spice. Really tasty...
This man is making noodles
In the North of China noodles is also very common for people to eat. The North is famous for it's spicy food, noodles and mutton (lamb meat).
This man is making hotpot
Huo Guo (Hotpot) or directly translated Firepot is a spicy meal made of mutton in iron pans over open fire. This is a dish for those with strong stomachs....
China also has an amazing variety of tea. The tea is usually with water or milk. In the Ningxia region you can get tea of all kinds.
Ningxia is famous for their wolfberries, which is thought to be very healthy, among other things for it's high level of antioxidants.
