Food!

Hey All!

Hope life's good! It's getting into the home stretch for my exchange year here in Hong Kong. I'm busy with essays, projects, studying, and most importantly getting those last sight-seeing trips, outings with friends, and travels to other countries done. But, I've decided that I want to make sure I don't miss anything, so I'll be trying to blog once or twice a week until I go home now, both on things going on and on various subjects. Today's subject is one I've been meaning to write about for a while-Food!

Hong Kong Style Food
In Cantonese, a common greeting is to ask someone if they've eaten rice yet today. In fact, in Cantonese (and Mandarin too, I do believe), rice is substituted in when talking about food to mean anything in general. That is to say, there's a lot of rice! Generally, a meal consists of meat with a sauce, some vegetables, all in a bowl of rice. Siu Mei, or roasted food, is quite common: usually, it's chicken or duck (with the bones in) or roasted pork or Chinese sausage (both without bones) and rice. Spareribs are also quite common. Different kinds of soups are had as well: at local house holds, I've had soup you actually drink out of the bowl! Soup in Hong Kong is usually a flavoured broth that goes with what you eat-I've never seen it as a meal all by itself like in Canada. Generally, when you're eating Chinese food, all of the dishes are placed in the middle of the table. Everyone has their own bowl of rice, and you add food from the middle to your bowl. This is the style at some restaurants (especially ones serving Mainland food), and in houses. In our hall, however, meals are individual. Some of the other interesting HK foods I've tried are Pineapple buns, Egg Tarts, Portuguese Egg Tarts, various sweet breads, and toasted buns with sweetened condensed milk. One of the most interesting I've tried is a dish called "Clay pot rice", which is rice cooked in very hot pot, often with an egg which you add raw yourself, and then mix in to cook. Finally, all over the city are tiny stalls selling a variety of foods-some sell foods eaten with sticks that look like long toothpicks, such as wontons or dumplings; others sell waffles, chestnuts, etc.
Dim Sum
Dim Sum literally translates to "A little bit of heart." Actually, when you say you want to go for dim sum, you usually say you want to go for "yam Cha" (Literally, drinking tea). You start by ordering a pot of tea. Then, you order a bunch of small dishes-Rice Noodle Rolls, Shrimp Dumplings, Fried Turnip Cake, Spring Rolls, Barbecue Pork Buns, etc. etc. etc. Recently, I discovered that many small restaurants have little windows out of which you can get dim sum dishes to go!
Drinks
In Hong Kong, the standard drink at any restaurant is usually tea. This is even true for local fast food chains-you can order something else, but unlike Canada, where the standard drink is a coke, you'll usually be served a green tea. All sorts of tea drinks exist-Lemon Tea and Hong Kong Style Milk Tea are the most common ones that I've seen. They can be ordered hot or cold (although cold usually costs 2HKD (25 Cents) more), and sometimes are served unsweetened, with the milk and liquid sugar in tiny shot-glass like containers.  What we generally refer to as bubble tea is also really popular here-10 HKD (1.20 CAD), can get you a large drink without the bubbles, and all sorts of different bubble teas, milk teas, iced green teas, and juices are on offer.
Restaurants
In small little local restaurants, some things differ quite a bit from restaurants in Canada and the US. To begin, it's not unusual to be given your bowls, glasses, and chopsticks along with a large bowl and a pot of either tea or boiling water. This is actually to wash your dishes off with. In almost all restaurants, water is served either boiling hot or lukewarm-I've been told that Chinese medicine states that it's unhealthy to eat or drink anything too cold. Another strange thing for many foreigners is that the servers don't come to you-you must wave them down, often having to say "M Goi" (Please/thank you/excuse me) very loudly. At the end of the meal, it's not uncommon to simply catch the eye of a server and shout "M Goi Maidan!" (The bill please!). A group of people eating together will almost always be given one bill.
Non-Hong Kong Food
I've had the opportunity to try lots of non-local Asian foods here as well. At home, we generally refer to "Chinese food," but in fact China is considered to have atleast 8 distinct regional cuisines, with some variety within. Macanese food (from Macau), for example, includes porkchop buns and Portuguese Egg Tarts. Northern Chinese cuisine involves lots of bread, and Sichuan cuisine is quite spicy. A few weeks ago, my roommates and I tried out Xinjiang food. Xinjiang is along the old silk road, and an ethnic minority region with a Muslim majority population. Their food was quite flavourful. Korean barbecue, which I've had several times, is a sort of all-you-can-eat affair; the catch is, you take the raw meats back to your table and cook them on your own grill. Malaysian food is definitely one of my favourites-almost a combination of Indian, Chinese, and Thai foods, but still very unique, there are lots of noodles, nuts, and, best of all, rice in coconut milk!