Just Eat It

What is this?

Just eat it!

But what is it?

Cow stomach.

Ever since I first came to China, I've been doing my best to try Chinese foods. Considering that I used to be a picky eater (my dad called it my white food diet), I thought I was being plenty adventurous. Until I took this trip.

In Beijing, we went to a donkey meat specialty shop for donkey soup and buns. Donkey, it turns out, is a lean, tasty meat. That came after we ate cow intestines at a famous snack shop and before a business associate insisted we try deer ligaments. Mmm.

Here in Xi'an, we visited my first ever all you can eat (and drink) Chinese restaurant. Let's just say that buffets in the US definitely don't have all you can kill fish tanks.

It helps that my Chinese coworker and traveling companion, Aimee, wants to open a restaurant someday and enjoys introducing new foods wherever we go. I've pretty much stopped trying to figure out what's going to be on my plate because she usually has a favorite food in mind.

But deferring to her ordering skills hasn't stopped me from playing the "menu game." Even after all my Chinese classes, I still have a hard time ordering from Chinese menus, so in each restaurant I look up as many characters as possible and then try to get Aimee to explain what dishes they describe. 

Often, the real dish is very different from the sum of its characters. Who would have known that 臊 (pronounced sao), which my dictionary defines as "smell of urine," actually refers to small pieces of pork?

Luckily, some characters are more straight forward. Throughout the city vendors cook and sell skewered meats and vegetables. The character for this, 串 (chuan), looks exactly like the food!

Tonight, we leave for Chengdu, a city famous for its insanely spicy (and delicious) cuisine. Sounds good to me!

(Photo: Eating skewered cow stomach in the Muslim quarter of Xi'an.)