凉面

I figured it was about time I set the tone of this blog and write something about food.

Last night, returning home from work, having walked through the steamy wide avenues which run around the outside of the worker’s stadium, I was hot, sweaty, irritable and hungry. I wanted something cool and soothing. Something that would fill me up, but not leave me with chilli prickle ™ or my mouth coated in cheap oil and I found it in my first bowl of liang mian in four years.

When I lived in Taipei in 2005 I frequently indulged in 凉面 (literally ‘cool noodles’) parking my scooter up against the curb and jumping into the countless restaurants which serve up this unique delicacy in that city*

Liang mian are common in Sichuan and Hunan in China’s southwest, where it is often served as a starter; something to cool the palate before the onslaught of fiery hotpot or spicy fish dishes. In those regions you can often choose between a soy sauce based version which is slightly sweet and presented scattered with coriander leaves on top of the noodles or a more spicy version with a thick sesame sauce and slivers of chicken. Either way, it’s a delicious, refreshing dish, with the intense flavours of Zhejiang vinegar, chilli oil and sesame mixing with the cool noodles to make the perfect antidote to a sweaty Beijing afternoon.

四川凉面
1 glug Chili oil
2 tsp chili paste
1 glug light Soy sauce
1 tsp sweet black vinegar
1 spring onion, white portion minced, green portion finely sliced for garnish
2 medium cloves garlic, very finely chopped
2 tsp rice wine vinegar
1 glug Zhejiang vinegar
3 tsp sugar
At least 2 1/2 cups cooked wheat noodles, cooled. Sichuan peppercorn, lightly toasted and ground, for garnish

Mix all the sauce ingredients thoroughly. Place cooked and cooled noodles in a bowl and top with about 2 tablespoons of the sauce.

Garnish with sesame oil, roasted and ground Sichuan peppercorn and green onion

And in 5 minutes, in the words of Gordon Ramsay, done.


*there definitely needs to be a separate blog entry on Taiwanese food at some point. Awesome stuff.

International Wonderland

I have a home.

After two weeks of living, at my company’s expense, in a spacious but rather camp monstrosity of an apartment complex somewhere out on the fourth ring road in the east of Beijing, I have found a nice little apartment, all to myself right in the middle of things in sanlitunrrrrrr.

From yesterday, I am now a proud(ish) resident of block 2, room 407, International Wonderland, Beijing.

I think the developers may have been just a little bit high when they named the apartments this, because although it does seem fairly international (have spotted quite a few laowais tottering around between the buildings, it really is a stretch to call it a ‘wonderland’

My colleague, who is also slightly randomly my new next door neighbour, described the complex as looking like “something built in the 1960’s Hackney”, and that is pretty accurate. It’s not a beauty. But inside its perfectly presentable and I look forward to putting my stamp on it.

The real draw for me was the location. In 10 minutes I can be drinking, shopping, sipping tea and reading, buying DVDs, or wandering the back streets, exploring the little restaurants and dodging tricycles piled high with watermelons…a further 10 minutes will get me to work, but let’s not dwell on that.

Last night i went for a little wonder down the street by the side of my new home. As far as i could tell, it boasts, a primary school, a noodle restaurant (with the obligatory seven waiters, and six cooks, all looking somewhat bored) a DVD shop which i poked around in whilst the fuwuyuan insisted to me that i should buy the box set of Heroes, season 3, a 名酒名烟 cigarette and alcohol shop and a dry cleaners...so, i am all set.

But for now, my priority is to make my new home a little more..well, homely.

Teething Problems

I have been attacked by China. Picked up, flung around, given a good few firm slaps and thrown to the ground disorientated and with a banging headache. Overdramatic? Possibly, but that is exactly how it feels.

As mentioned before I have been to China numerous times; whether to study, on holiday or once previously to work. I kind of feel like I have some kind of understanding of how the country works. I feel like I can handle it and, despite the numerous changes since my first visit in 1999, I feel I can deal with the country. Well the last weekend proved my wrong.

I arrived back in Beijing two weeks ago, landing in what the pilot rather optimistically called ‘a light mist’ but which looked to me a lot like a think, industrial smog – tinged yellow and hovering over everything like treacle. That aside, it felt good to be back, to breathe in China (which incidentally smells like garlic and exhaust with just a pinch of MSG) and I set about seeing friends, sweating away on city buses, drinking the local beer, preparing for work and then a week in my new office on the seventh floor of the China Life Tower in the city centre. It all felt pretty good. But then on Saturday afternoon it hit me. I don’t know whether it was the heat, the jet lag that I hadn’t really given myself the opportunity to get over or my body just wanting a break from too much beer, too little water and a million and one MSG laden dishes, but I just gave up. I felt irritable, hot, prickly and headachy. What’s more the enormity of the fact that I do now, to all intents and purposes, live here in China and am not just visiting, not just passing through, got the better of me and it seemed the only way to get through it was by retiring to bed, a/c on full blast and sleeping for 15 hours! I can’t even remember the last time I slept that long uninterrupted? The womb perhaps? Anyway, it did me the world of good and now I feel just about ready to get out and explore, experience and taste all that this city has to offer….but at half my normal pace perhaps? It is still very hot and not likely to cool for a while...

Beijing, Beijing

After a hectic few last weeks in London I have arrived in Beijing, capital of the People's Republic of China, city of 15 million people, administrative and political centre of what will surely be the world’s next superpower, centre of China’s cultural scene, city of Olympic mega construction and – unfortunately, less and less – back street hutongs and, perhaps most importantly a million and one restaurants, from the grandest award winning French eateries, to countless bubbling hot pot emporiums to the teeming, back street chuanr and stirfry holes in the wall.

I left London for two simple reasons:

1) The UK economy sucks at the moment
2) The economy in China sucks a lot less


So, here I am, in China...for maybe the 10th time in as many years. Its changed, of course it has, but I don’t want to dwell on that. I don’t want to dwell on China’s staggering economic growth, its stifled democratic ambitions, its pollution problems, its sudden lack of bicycles and appearance of BMWs or its post Olympics comedown. I want to talk about food and I want to talk about daily life and what it is like to live as a laowai in this buzzing, exciting metropolis of 15 million.

Let’s see how long I can keep this up...