The Dry-it Diet

Another Kind of See Food

Food is a very important part of the Chinese culture.  It’s an important aspect of any culture really, but it takes time to understand the real subtleties of it.  I’ve been here for more than a year and I’m still fairly ignorant.  Because the cultural aspect is so huge, I’ve been too intimidated and avoided writing about food completely.  That was a mistake.  Food is fascinating here and is worth writing about, even if it’s only one small aspect of it.  So rather than diving deep into the cultural implications I’ll merely scratch at the surface and write about what I’ve seen.  Literally.
 

China has to feed 20 percent of the world’s population, and though it has the greatest agricultural crop output in the world, it only has seven percent of the earth’s farmland.  Thus, the people here are incredibly resourceful and will grow crops on any available land.  In pots on their balcony, on little plots next to the rivers or freeways, on impossibly steep hillsides, even between cracks in the pavement.  Along those lines, almost nothing goes to waste here.  One of the most visible ways they preserve food is by drying it.  They dry vegetables, tea leaves, meat, fish, seaweed and fungus collected from wherever they could find it in nature.  I once saw a woman washing what I thought was a thick down coat in a huge red basin near the river.  As I got closer I realized she was scrubbing a massive section of ribs from some animal.  There were already about 15 other huge squares of ribs sitting on the cement wall drying in the sun. 

Perhaps the most staggering aspect of the practice of drying food here is that they will dry it anywhere.  When they harvest rice, often they will use portions of roads that cars were driving on the day before.  They will dry things on sidewalks, roads, draped over railings or sometimes right under their dripping AC/Heating units.  They use very public places to dry their foods, and I have no idea how they ensure that nobody will steal it or contaminate it.  I also don’t know if they wash the surface before they dry their things on them.  I hope they do.  I cringe a little knowing that this is a culture where babies wear pants with no crotches so they can just go potty on the sidewalk, or wherever they are, including inside on a grocery store or bus station floor.  Similarly, I’ve never been anywhere where people spit and hock more serious loogies than in China.  Thankfully, even foods that have been dried often get stir-fried up again before being consumed.

 

Aside from seeing things drying in interesting and questionable places, I’ve also been taken aback at the things I’ve seen hanging up to dry.  Massive legs of cow and pig seem commonplace to me now, but I still get a jolt anytime I see an actual pig face or a dog carcass like it’s no big deal.  But then I guess that’s the point, in China, it’s not.  There is a saying about the eating habits of the people from the Canton region of China that goes, “They will eat anything with legs but a table, and anything with wings but an airplane.”  I’ve seen it, and I believe it.   

Summary: If you visit China, stay away from dry food that hasn’t been cooked up again.  There is a reason the Chinese fry everything: you never know where it’s been before and that’s the best way to kill any lingering germs and bacteria.