Beijing Gourmand Blog: China Through The Food Door.

So all this time we've had a secret veggie in our midst!?! One question for you hotshot: How do you survive on your visits to China without eating meat?

Brian,

That's my store!

Dan,

Coming from a vegetarian household (my mother and all of my siblings were vegetarians), I'm amazed that anyone can stay vegetarian in China. Firstly most dishes seem to include it, and secondly because it's so delicious. I spent a few weeks working on a pig farm back in the day, I guess if that didn't put me off meat, then nothing would, but I admire anyone who can swear off meat and stick to it.

Well Dan looks like Whole Foods is the barometer for the economy. Whole Foods was to build one of its largest stores this past year in Madison. They bought the land, ripped down the old building on it, dug the footings out and then there was a sudden halt in the activity this spring. Whole Foods just announced last month that building a new store during the poor economy was not in their best interest. So, they are still operating out of their older, much smaller, store. And, we are stuck with a huge eye sore in the middle of town. Who knew Whole Foods would an important economic meter for the country.

I'm very happy to see links on food and eating in China, but I have yet to find a blog on eating healthy there over time. I'm talking where to eat organic in the cities, tricks for avoiding refined flours (besides white rice), what are the up-to-date secrets? Who is inventing the healthy eating market? I know this is hard enough to navigate in the U.S., but there must be someone fanatic in China that has some secrets to share...

The Quanjude Restaurant is probably the only one place I will go to fro Peking Duck in Beijing. They are usually very busy but they do have special floors for foreigners which is worth teh wait (less nois and smoke, probaby better services), they even give you a small card listing the number of the poor duck you just consumed!!

Sadly, the blogspot.com domain is blocked in China, unless you have a VPN.

There are a lot of places to eat here if you are vegetarian. When I was vegetarian many years ago in Nanjing, I had no problems surviving happily on non-meat dishes. That said, I was not very strict - if there was a meat broth, I had to simply accept that they were not going to make a special broth for me. If I carefully explained to them that I was Buddhist (code for vegetarian), and I subsequently got a bowl of soup with a giant chunk meat floating in it, I did not freak out when they explained to me that I shouldn't eat that part, that it's just for flavor. In big cities, it's getting much easier to avoid all meat, though, and though you do miss out on a lot of culinary experiences, you are not going to starve. Just remember that meat is traditionally too expensive, so getting served lots of meat is an honor and a privilege, and people aren't necessarily going to understand your desire to reject it. Say you're Buddhist, and it will be a little more understandable.

There is a move towards organic products in Beijing grocery stores (I can't speak to other cities), but what organic means in this context may be hard to determine - there is awareness that organic foods are trendy in the West, and a total lack of regulation could mean that your organic rice or organic sugar is simply the same sugar or rice with a different package. I do not know of any brands that have established reliable reputations as organic foods purveyors.

That said, there are some CSA type organizations in Beijing suburbs, though they are very difficult to get to and seem to be primarily targeting the foreign population and wealthy Chinese population with cars. It's a start, though.