Hello! I’m knee deep in client projects and Eat Drink Blog 3 conference organisation at the moment, working on getting everything done before I head to the Australian Almond Conference in the Barossa Valley on Wednesday, the ProBlogger Conference in Melbourne on Friday and Saturday and to Dubai next Friday for a one-week famil.
Thankfully, my dear friend Cheng Lei (a super dynamic Chinese-Australian television journalist working in Beijing) has come up with another mouth-watering guest post. Her last post was a glorious tribute to Singapore’s local breakfast culture. This post, however, is an ode of joy to Shandong’s fabulous street food, and in particular, the wonderful Bing. Enjoy!
The State of Bing
Autumn is the harvest season and on crisp fall mornings, the bounty at a Shandong street market is magnificent. Crash-dieters, stay away. Carb-freaks, rejoice. Shandong, in eastern China, aside from being the birthplace of Confucius, is also the country’s grain belt and veggie basket.
The produce here is — like Shandong people and their appetites, extra large. Eggplants like footballs. Peaches you need both hands to hold.
Novelty-seekers, checkout the silkworm larvae (to be deep-fried into a crunchy appetiser) and hawthorn fruit (most often made into toffee fruit on a stick).
Thanks to the agricultural bent and abundance of wheat, the province is a state of Bing — the Chinese version of bread. It is the sturdier cousin to the fluffy “bao” or steamed bun of the South that yum-cha afficionadoes are familiar with.
In Shandong, where being means bing, there is a bewildering array of the stuff — the sesame sprinkled shallots filled carpet sized “you bing”, “majiang shaobing” with their crunchy shells housing multiple soft folds of sesame paste, or the “jianbing guozi” — a popular crepe creation jammed with dough fritter, egg, chopped coriander and pickles. Elsewhere, Muslim vendors serve queues of breakfasters the piping hot “niurou huoshao” — a Chinese version of the “Reuben” sandwich consisting of oven-fresh crusty bread packed with tender stewed beef seeping delicious gravy.
Locals wash down their bing with fresh soymilk (BYOB — bring your own beans) and tofu soup, or a peppery broth called “hu la tang” or a bowl of “tian mo” — an unlikely sounding concotion made with peanuts, tofu, noodles and spinach.
Prices are dirt cheap, so come with pocket change. Bring pocket-sized hand disinfectant if you’re that way inclined, hold your toilet urges, forget calories. It’s a small price to pay for simple and honest street food that will be the stuff of hungry dreams for years to come.
Words and images by Cheng Lei.
