Visiting China for the Games is the perfect excuse for a few gastronomic explorations. For the first-timer, what amazes is the sheer variety of foods on offer. China is more of a continent than a country, and the differences among its regional cuisines are as great as those among European nations.
The culinary traditions of Beijing alone are many-layered. As the capital of imperial China for some 600 years, it had its own haute cuisine, the diet of emperors and high officials. Based on the culinary traditions of northern Shandong province, it was seasoned with influences from other regions, and from the Manchu invaders who had founded the last dynasty, the Qing. The Fangshan restaurant in Beihai Park still offers a taste of imperial dining, with its Manchu sweetmeats, and expensive exotica like camel’s hump and sea cucumber. And Peking Duck, that unmissable treat of lacquer-skinned duck roasted over a fruitwood fire, served with thin pancakes and a rich, dark sauce, is also said to have originated in the palace kitchens.
Outside the palace, officials from all over the Chinese empire met and mingled. This made Beijing a melting pot of local and far-flung cuisines, as it remains today. Look around and you’ll find delicacies from every corner of the country, from Sichuanese la zi ji (chicken in an improbable pile of chillies), to Kashgar nan breads and Chaozhou cold meats. And for those with a penchant for the weird Chinese delicacies that are so notorious in the West, there’s the Guo Li Zhuang restaurant, specialising in the cooked members of various species, or the nightmarket off Wangfujing for deep-fried silkworm cocoons and scorpions.
Everyday meals, however, aren’t centred on extreme ingredients like these but on wheat made into all kinds of breads, noodles and dumplings, such as jiao zi boiled dumplings stuffed with pork and cabbage, and zha jiang mian, noodles topped with an intensely flavoured pork sauce and raw vegetables, which you toss together at the table. Beijing is also a place to sample Chinese Muslim cooking, with its emphasis on lamb or mutton, as in the famous shuan yang rou (‘scalded mutton’, often known in the West as ‘Mongolian firepot’), where you cook your own meat and vegetables in a simmering copper hotpot on the table.
Sports fans visiting Shanghai will find themselves in the midst of an entirely different culinary region, famed for its mellow Shaoxing wine; delicate freshwater fish and crustaceans; soy-dark braises; and casual snacks like xiao long bao (juicy steamed dumplings) and irresistible sheng jian man tou (pot-sticker buns). And for those venturing to the far south for events in Hong Kong, a dim sum tea breakfast is de rigueur – perhaps at an old-style teahouse like the Luk Yu in Central. With so many temptations, perhaps only the most dedicated sports devotees will actually make it to the stadium.
Fuchsia Dunlop’s new book, Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China (Ebury Press, £12.99), is out now.
