The food!

     Rice.  Rice is eaten with every meal in the form of noodles or just plain rice.  It is hard to imagine, but fried rice or stir fry noodles are sold on the streets for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  Breakfast time also sees the proliferation of warm soy juice.  One of my favorite things to eat for breakfast, other than a PBJ sandwich (cold, easy, portable), consists of a tiny amount of ground pork(?), a thin layer of rice flour batter (think very thin crepe) mixed with a raw egg, lettuce, and green onions.  They mix the pork, egg and batter, and then top with lettuce and green onions and then steam the thin layer.  When it is finished, it is scooped up and put into a container.  You are given a small plastic bag of brown sauce to pour over it.  It is like eating the Chinese version of a smothered omelette and it is very satisfying for breakfast, if I am in the mood for something hot.  By the time I am writing this, I have already eaten a large peach and two small egg custards for "breakfast", or I would have gone out and ordered one in order to take a pic.

 I promise to take more food pics!
     Now let's talk about street food.  "Street food" comes in all shapes, sizes, forms and stages of life.  Sometimes it comes in cages, sometimes it is simply tied up, and sometimes it just surprises you.

When I bought this chicken at the grocer, the feet and head were tucked into the carcass, so this was NOT what I expected.  The feet and head are in a ziplock in the freezer until Sherrie wants them for a soup, or I decide to feed them to the guard dogs next door.

The left side of the street is a part of the row of open air, outdoor, "dining establishments" that line my back street.  You sit at tables on plastic stools to eat what you have selected and they have cooked.  You can get your meal stir fried, boiled, steamed, or something to eat cold that is already cooked.  I have been warned repeatedly about eating anything raw from these places, and I tend to heed their warnings.  I am also extremely leery of raw veggies and I take care to wash them at home before I eat them.
     People ask me all the time if it is true they really eat dog.  I have to say, that based on the picture that a co-worker showed me of the carcass, yes, it is true.  I will NOT post the pic, but trust me, that animal barked in its former life.  There are allegedly signs on shops advertising dog meat, but it is all Chinese to me :')
     Like I said before, they eat rice or rice noodles with all three meals.  White rice tends to back me up, so I generally steer clear of it.  They make these delicious sweet potato noodles that are transparent, but I thought I heard those were worse for you...who cares, I am eating them in China.  A number of people back home warned me I would grow sick of Chinese food and would switch to a Western diet.  I disagree!  While I do not care for hot rice, noodles, and steamed veggies for breakfast, I love my lunches at school.  I eat there every day except the days I need to run errands or I am just too tired to hike to the cafeteria.
     I find that authentic Chinese food is high in starch with very little in the way of veggies and almost no protein.  I cook with a lot of the local veggies at home, but I tend to put mostly veggies with a little bit of noodles running through it.  I bought a toaster oven so I can do some baking, but it also works for open faced grilled cheese sandwiches and mini pizzas.  Cheese is very hard to find and extremely expensive, but a world without cheese is not one I care to live in.  The biggest reason I don't eat much "actual Chinese food" is because I would rather control my calories and fat.  In addition, all the Western people I meet agree that the Chinese have taken the concept of "mystery meat" to a WHOLE NEW LEVEL!  Their "hot dogs" and "sausages" tend to take on  really weird colors that don't usually appear in nature.
     I thought I would be living in a land free from processed foods and artificial crap.  I was very wrong on that note as well.

I have seen some weird ass flavors here, and trust me, there is nothing "natural" about it.  I would say they take processed foods to a whole new level as well.