Journey to the East

When I was in Kunming during my semester abroad in China, one of the best downtime activities was to go out onto the little alleyway beside the university at which our group stayed, and eat food from the various street vendors’ stalls. One of the regular fixtures on this narrow little street– one crowded with carts used for flash frying noodles or tofu and potatoes, char-grilling spicy meat and vegetable kebabs and steaming stuffed buns– was a single guy with megaphone selling Shandong Mantou (little steamed rice flour buns) out of a basket on his bicycle for the price of about 1/2 of a kuai (about 7 cents US).

A big plate of Shandong Mantou

Like clockwork, every afternoon at about 4:30. you could hear his megaphone (which he had set up to simply play a looped recording of his voice) coming through the windows of our dormitory: “MANTOU! SHANDONG MANTOU! MANTOU! SHANDONG MANTOU!,” would echo up and down the street, over and over again for the better part of an hour or so. To this day, my only impressions of the regional cuisine of Ji’nan and Shandong Province are of Shandong Mantou, which are described in great detail here:

One very popular food in China is mantou (“steamed buns”). This is a very common dish at either breakfast, lunch, or dinner. They are normally 3-4 inches in diameter. The buns come in many different forms and varieties and are available throughout China and in Chinese restaurants around the world.

Otherwise, my experience with the food of my soon-to-be homecity is lacking. So, where else would I turn, but the all-knowing Wikipedia, which tells me the following:

-Shandong Cuisine is one of the Eight Culinary Traditions of China, also referred to as “The Eight Great Schools.” Most of Northern Chinese cuisine is derived from the Shandong School (I suppose this doesn’t include the REALLY far northern schools associated with cities like Haerbin or areas like Manchuria or Inner Mongolia– but does, according to Wikipedia,  include several facets of the cuisine of surrounding important cities like Beijing and Tianjin). The food of Ji’nan forms a sub-branch of the Shandong style.

-Shandong cuisine is widely renowned for its soups.

-Unlike many other Chinese schools of cooking– including the Cantonese School upon which most of Chinese-American food is based– Shandong cuisine does not use rice as its staple grain. Rice, while still frequently used, is accompanied by a variety of other grains like oats, barley, wheat and millet. This means that Shandong, more than any other Chinese province, uses bread (mantou, for instance), as a staple in meals.

-Other common ingedients include: peanuts, corn, potatoes, cabbages, onions, tomatoes, garlic and eggplant.

-Finally, Wikipedia tells us that vinegar is the most important contribution of Shandong Cuisine to the larger community of Chinese food. The province is one of the most prolific producers of vinegar in the region, and produces some of the highest quality vinegar in the country (supposedly good enough to enjoy on its own– like really good Balsamic Vinegar in western cooking, I guess).

An even more detailed analysis of Shandong’s culinary offerings is found at this site, which gives a fairly detailed history of the emergence of the Shandong style and says this about about the cooking style and signature foods within the province:

Shandong cuisine is characterized by quick frying, stir- frying, braising, and deep fat frying. Its dishes are crisp, tender, delicious, and greasy with salty and some sweet and sour flavors. Its main condiment is salt, but it also uses salted fermented soybeans and soy sauce…

… The most typical Jinan dishes are sea cucumber with mat balls; braised shark’s fin with shredded chicken; sea cucumber, mushroom, and bamboo shoots; clam in egg white; and fried oysters. Jinan cuisine is known for its soups, quick stir frying, deep frying, and stewing. The most common raw materials are river fish, pork, and vegetables. Some typical dishes are carp in milk soup, Yellow River carp in sweet and sour sauce, stewed pork leg, and quick fried double crisps.

Overall, nothing that sounds too outrageous when compared to the elements you’d find in the average American diet (I’m sure I’ll be wrong about this later when I have to log an entry about eating something incredibly strange… just wait). Looks like there’ll be a lot of seafood, given the close proximity to the ocean, which I can appreciate. It will, however, be quite a different experience from the food I ate in Yunnan, which was heavily influenced by the spicier traditions of Sichuan (the hottest food amongst the Chinese schools), and Southeast Asia (particularly from Thailand and Vietnam, which provide some unique ingredients like lemongrass and also MEGA-HOT peppers and spice blends). I am sure, though, that I can count on some staples… if nothing else I’m sure that there will be plenty of jiaozi (steamed dumplings) for me to gorge myself on.  And of course, there’s always Shandong Mantou…

A view of downtown Ji'nan.

As I continue to prepare for departure, here’s some info about Ji’nan, my home in China over the next year.

Ji’nan is the capital of Shandong Province in Eastern China. You can see it circled on the map below. I’ve been told that it is about 3 1/2 hours away from Beijing  by train, while traveling to Shanghai requires  an overnight trainride. When I was in China during my semester abroad, I mainly stayed in Kunming (also pictured on the map), in the southwest part of the country. The map pretty well demonstrates– by showing how far apart the two are– just how different these two places are going to be. As a city on a border province, Kunming took on a very distinct feel (imagine the flavor of cities near the border in the US); it is a centrifuge for convergent cultures.  Ji’nan, by contrast is located in the East, closer to what is considered the “traditional Chinese heartland.” I don’t really know what to expect from Ji’nan in terms of food, culture, language, weather, affluence, pace of life, etc.  I do know, however, that its going to be quite a different experience.

A map of China, showing the location of Ji'nan and Shandong Province.

Ji’nan is, according to this list, the 15th largest city in China, and has a population between 4 and 6 million (not counting the metropolitan area, which is somewhat larger). When included amongst the most populous cities in the United States (also not counting the metropolitan areas), Ji’nan would rank second behind only New York City, and ahead of L.A. and Chicago, a fact that blows my mind a little.

Other tidbits that I can glean from a cursory overview of the Wikipedia page on the city:

- Ji’nan is written as “济南” in Chinese, and literally means “South of the Ji River.” Apparently, the Ji River was swallowed up by the Yellow River, which now flows past Ji’nan. The Yellow River is the second longest in the country, and is strongly associated with the cradle of Chinese civilization.

-Ji’nan is called the “City of Springs” because of the high number of artesian springs located around the city.

- Ji’nan is located very close to Qufu (about an hour and a half away), the hometown of Confucius.

-Tai Shan, one of the five sacred mountains of Daoism and a major natural attraction, is also close (about an hour away).

Ok… that seems like about enough for now. I’ll continue to post as the countdown to departure continues.

A scene from "The Journey to the West."

A word about the name of this blog: I realized after launching it that the title for this page seems a little general… or at least a little self-evident. Yes, any trip to China from the US is truly a “Journey to the East,” so why a title which seems a little blase? This blog takes its name from the Chinese novel The Journey to West, which is considered along with Dream of a Red Chamber, to be one of the greatest novels of Classical Chinese literature. The story– which was written in the 15th century– is an epic with a fairly complicated plot which spans at least 4 volumes, and has scores of characters. It’s immensely popular and has been adapted into TV shows, stage plays, movies, comic books, and all kinds of other media in China.  In this  sense, “Journey to the East” is a nod to this, more famous tale of discovery and adventure. As I set off on my own journey, I thought that this kind of title made quite a bit of sense. I can only hope that my own travels live up to the hype. 

The cover of "The Journey to the West"