What We Ate In Zhuhai

We were in Zhuhai ('pearl sea') for a night and day only. It's a pleasant city, but there's not much you can do there. Except eat.

For convenience, we ate lunch at our hotel's Chinese restaurant which features different types of mushrooms in every dish. When the black chicken mushroom soup came, the waitress politely told me that pics taking is not allowed. Hmm. Never encountered that before. All food bloggers would shudder at that. A lesson to remember is: big chunky cameras are giveaways. Another lesson is : do not eat in hotels. For four small dishes and a soup, the bill came to RMB275 (US$40). Expensive for China food.


Front: mushrooms with duck gizzards, back: mushroom with duck breastmeat.

If you pick up a book on the food of China, it would most likely tell you that Chinese food is divided into Sichuan (numbing hot), Cantonese (freshness, light with little oil, stir-frying, exotic meats), Northern (oily, wheat-based: dumplings, noodles) and Huaiyang ('red-stewing', which is marinading meat in soy sauce, sugar, ginger, wine etc and cooking over slow fire. My MIL's very good with red-stewing). However, we found that Chinese people don't divide their food into regional specialties. Instead, they often ask if we would like xiang cai (meaning fragant, such as Hunanese food), la cai (meaning hot, such as Sichuan food), huen cai (meaning vegetarian food),
These are some of the food we ate in Zuhai. Most are xiang cai.

Dim sum. that ubiquitous Cantonese breakfast.



Pork ribs


Ducks' webs


Steamed fish head


Left: fragrant fried tofu; right: fragrant fried pork shank

Zhuhai, China

Are we happy to be home! Seems like we've been away a long time. I swear Wey has grown taller and last night when we got in, I really loved KK's low buildings and my house looked big and beautiful (after all those cramped cities). This morning when I woke up, I felt restless. I think it's Shopping Withdrawal Syndrome. Not being able to pound the streets from 11 am to 12 midnight will be hard on me. And the thought of shopping in Wisma Merdeka depresses me.

We arrived in Macau last Friday and crossed over (you just take a short bus ride to Luohu immigration center and walk through the Macau immigration and then the China immigration) to Zhuhai, China. We chose the worst time to go--a weekend. Armies of gamblers were crossing over from China into Macau for the weekend and thousands of Macauians were crossing over to China to spend the weekend home so the center, which handles the most number of people in China, was crazily busy. It took us one and a half hours to get through immigration.



My half-bro, whom I first met 4 years ago, and a cousin and their families took us to the outskirts of Zhuhai for an oysters meal when I told him that's what I wanted to eat. Brother Ming ordered BBQ oysters (not half as good as Guangzhou's) and a seafood steamboat. That's when I understood the phrase 'too much of a good thing' because they must've loaded my bowl with 3 dozens boiled oysters throughout the meal. Oysters are good BBQ/grilled or battered and deep-fried but try eating that many boiled oysters, size of a big walnut, and not feel nauseated. But I'm a glut, and I ate so much I had to press my lips with my fingers when I burped...The steamboat fish slices were simply excellent in flavor, taste and texture. I think they were from the 'big-head fish'.






'Indian Cakes'

Yummy. These are actually roti canai with different kinds of fillings, some are sweet while some are savory. I like the ones with fruit cocktail. That small glass of jiu is 52% alcohol! It evaporated when it touched my lips.



The Cantonese, as everybody knows, are not only very gutsy when it comes to food, they are very creative too. I had to keep reminding my dear relatives that we don't want anything exotic. I remember a friend telling me years ago that when he visit his Chinese relatives, they treated him to a grand banquet and one memorable dish was 'pheonix with dragon'. When they opened the silver dish cover, he nearly passed out. In the dish was a big snake (the dragon), curled around a chicken (the phoenix)! What could he do, he said, but eat it! I think that was the tale that hindered me from venturing into China until 1999.

Proceed to the next pic only if you can take it. Many times Yi and I screamed when we scanned through our pics and come to this pic. One time, in the Macau airport, I threw the camera away and was lucky it landed on Yi's big bag. But Yi has challenged me to put this pic on my blog, and I think its good to see what other people are eating...I'm told that these members of the Annelida family are turned inside out with a chopstick to wash off the slime and dirt, then cut up and they make a sweet, delicious soup while giving a good crunch at the same time. Presenting .....

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The Sandworms!

Note: The sandworms have brought a couple of interesting comments. I'd love to get more comments about your thinking/experience/love for exotic food. Tell me what's the most unusual thing you've eaten!