China Trip Notes, Chapter 4: A Traditional Suzhou Banquet; or, “Dude, this is so not Pei Wei.” (05.22.2008)

One very striking thing one observes in China: I saw almost no fat people. OK, there are a few people who have maybe an extra 10 or 15 pounds on them, but that’s it, and they’re mostly grandmas. Most people look very fit, and the young ones are pretty much bamboo shoots. This is true despite the fact that there is enough oil in their food to cause cardiac arrest. So what’s different? I counted five big differences:

1) Very few sweets, and mostly they are in tiny quantities, or found in locations where western tourists eat. Dessert here is fruit.
2) Almost a complete absence of dairy (except for the Chinese versions of Klondike bars, most of which were in tourist areas.) I hardly saw one piece of cheese, except in hotels that catered to westerners; and the only milk is the stuff they pour in the Nescafe for the Americans.
3) Exercise - Walking, biking, moving, and manual labor.
4) A huge number of them smoke like chimneys.
5) They don’t eat enough for the entire People’s Liberation Army every time they sit down to eat.

And folks, that’s the bottom line. If you’d like to feel embarrassed, watch the faces of the Asians as they observe the Americans who go back to the buffet table three times and fill their large plates every single time. Forget all the analyses of the American diet – we’re not just fat because we eat too many sweets, too much dairy, and too much meat; you can say the same for half of Northern Europe. People, Americans are fat because we eat like hogs.

Americans also like Chinese food. In fact, for many of us, “Chinese take out” was our first experience of any ethnic cuisine. When I was a little girl, my parents used to take me and my sister to a restaurant in Springfield, MA, called The Canton. This was always a special occasion. I have no idea how the place would seem to me today, but as a little child who already had an overactive imagination, it was like a visit to another land. I can remember the dim lighting, the lanterns with the red hanging tassels, and the jade green and white tiles, many of which had pictures that were slightly raised in 3D relief. (My little sister really liked the bathroom there; more green tiles, porcelain, and lanterns. It was pretty, and I had to escort her there several times during each visit.) There was also a bowl of sugar cubes on the table, wrapped delicately in little pieces of paper. While waiting for our order (probably 10 minutes, but interminable for a child), those sugar cubes looked completely irresistible. Fearing (correctly) that Mom would cast a dim eye on the tooth-corroding practice of sucking on sugar cubes, we would attempt to get Dad to slip a few cubes to us, mostly by staring at the bowl of cubes and then looking up at Dad while attempting to be as adorable as possible, a tactic that worked 100 per cent of the time.

My parents always ordered the same thing: chicken chow mein (Mom), shrimp chow mein (Dad – or was it the other way around?), pork fried rice, tea, wonton soup, and egg rolls. I don’t remember what my little sister used to order; I only remember that she used to end up eating a respectable portion of the shrimp chow mein. The chow mein looked very scary to me; I was one of those little kids who isolated each different kind of food into separate piles, and heaven forbid any of them should touch (no sign yet of the future vegetarian). So, they would order me a cup of egg drop soup, an egg roll, a little plate of lean pork “strips,” and ginger ale. I was a happy camper.

This childhood experience led in turn to many happy hours chowing on chicken with cashew nuts and hot and sour soup, and after going vegetarian, mu shu vegetables, spring rolls, Buddha's Delight, and multiple variations on Bean Curd (tofu). But folks, I have now discovered an important thing. The food that I and three hundred million other Americans have come to love is Chinese-American food. This is not the same as real Chinese food. I thought I was a fairly adventuresome diner -- not as adventurous as Coyotebanjo and Coop, but not a total wimp either. I am embarrassed to say this, but the Chinese food in China kicked my butt.

The problem is, my #1 nemesis has always been certain kinds of animal-based food, especially organ meats and critters that come out of the water, and my #2 nemesis is slimy or “gushy” textures. (My Dad had to cram a steamed clam into 3 inches worth of Italian bread before I would even deign to try it, and even then I almost perished.) I simply can’t seem to choke down something that was once someone else’s innards, and I have a difficult time with crustaceans. A plate of eels – fuggedaboudit. And it was mighty tough to be a vegetarian in China. To be fair, there were always at least one or two dishes that are mainly tofu or egg or a vegetable; but in almost every case, those dishes also involved some traces of piggy, broth, or lard – a strict vegetarian would be up the creek. There are also a lot of challenging textures (even the tofu is the slippery silken tofu variety).

All this is leading up to the story of the Traditional Suzhou Banquet that was prepared for the group at the end of our afternoon of sight-seeing in Suzhou. The entire group congregated at the meeting point, and our tour director led us to a very old and venerable restaurant in Suzhou, where a feast of “traditional Suzhou food” had been prepared for us.

Dear readers, I believe that a multi-course meal of traditional Suzhou delicacies and a large group of American kids from Kentucky probably qualifies for the descriptive phrase “cultural train wreck.” This is no one's fault; it's simply two different worlds colliding. If you consult Wikipedia’s entry on Suzhou, you will find a list of the following famous dishes from Suzhou: Whitebait Soup; Squirrel-shaped Mandarin Fish; Cracking Eel Paste; Soft-shelled Turtle with Cream Sauce; Cabbage Heart in Chicken Fat; Green Bean Cake; and something called Taicang Wine-pickled Oil & Dried Meat Floss.

I’m not sure which of these were on the table, because no one identified anything for us. So, we just all sat there and visited cheerfully with each other while dish after dish of beautifully presented but terrifying stuff appeared. I felt really bad for the cooks – these were extremely kind people who spent hours preparing things that are precious recipes to them, and I am quite sure that it was beautifully prepared and delicious for the right palate; but I was embarrassed to witness the casting of these culinary pearls before us poor American swine. A shameful amount of it was wasted (although not by Coyotebanjo and Coop, who seemed to be putting it away happily, and not by our Korean-American flute section leader, who enthusiastically offered to eat the duck head). The students were brave – they tasted almost everything, and were relentlessly good-natured about it, as band kids tend to be – but they didn’t eat very much, and the amount of wasted food was just a shame.

As for me, it was (by far) the most challenging food experience I had while in China, and possibly the most challenging food experience I’ve had since the 7-course meal I had 30 years ago in Boston’s Chinatown after playing for the wedding of two Chinese-Americans, when someone had to explain bird’s nest soup to me. After Suzhou, most of the other food in China seemed pretty approachable, if you just avoided the street vendors and the scorpion-on-a-stick.

Now, where were those Klondike Bars?