Challenge!

It has been slow at work recently. I don’t know if it is because most of our clients are sunning themselves in Phuket over the summer or because the global financial crisis has scared them away for good, but my outlook folder has pretty much gone to sleep and I don’t expect it will be roused until September.

Anyway, this has got me to daydreaming. My daydreams are generally quite bizarre/scary/confusing/inappropriate and involve things I wouldn’t want to impose on the people of the internet, or ‘netizens’ which the Chinese media insists on calling them, but the other day, I was staring at out the office window and the thought occurred to me, Beijing is the centre of the Chinese universe right? Whatever their degree of ‘autonomy’, all of China’s 23 provinces* must at some time have to report back to the big boys in the capital, right? Therefore it stands to reason (sort of, don’t question my logic) that there is at least one gastronomic representative of each province in Beijing…..right?

Hmmmm. I have nothing whatsoever to base this on, but I am going to stand by it and make it my mission – well, one of my many missions** – to sample the delights of all of China’s provinces in its big ol' brash capital city.

Now, obviously some will be easy. I would guestimate that there are dozens of Sichaun places in Beijing, scores of Cantonese dim sum emporiums and countless Beijing duck restaurants. Some will take some hunting, but I know for a fact that there are Yunnan, Shandong and Hunan places dotted around the city.

But, Qinghai? Jilin? Anhui? Are these provinces represented in Beijing’s gastronomic hotpot? I reckon they are, but god knows where…

So, I take it upon myself to find them all and to record it here. It may take some time, it may be impossible, but lets face it, it will be quite cool to say to someone “What?! Liaoning cai? Don’t you know it? Jeeez! Get yourself down to the east sixth ring road, there is a great little joint there”…

Smugness. It’s not a nice quality.

*China has 23 provinces if you include Taiwan which I don’t politically, but I do here for the purposes of my stomach, Taiwanese food rocks.
** Other missions include moving as little as possible until the Autumn and working out how to get past the Chinese internet police and put some photos on this blog