From Peking To Canton

By Mimi Sheraton

As more Americans discover the exotic delights of the People's Republic of China and as business contacts between China and the U.S. multiply, there is growing curiosity about the state of Chinese cuisine and the quality of restaurants -- what will be offered and how it will taste. To find out, TIME Food Critic Mimi Sheraton spent three weeks tasting a variety of foods in eight cities: Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Peking, Xi'an, Chengdu and Canton. Her report:

Chi guo le mei you? That is Chinese for "Have you eaten yet?" and it is a standard greeting in a country where food is considered a subject worthy of the attention of poets and philosophers. For Americans traveling in China, the counterpart seems to be "How is the food?" It is virtually the first question tourists ask when they meet and one that evokes responses ranging from "wonderful" to "terrible." Based on meals and street snacks sampled on a gastronomic long march through China, this visitor can report that all the answers are true. There is indeed wonderful food, as well as some that is terrible, with much more that is merely mediocre. For every delectable experience, like a dinner of impeccable Peking duck with its glassily crisp skin folded into delicate crepes, there were several depressing meals of bland, gristly meat and canned vegetables swimming in grease, ineptly served in drab and dirty dining rooms.

What the traveler gets depends on many elements, but perhaps the most important are 1) knowing what is available and 2) being willing to spend considerable effort and money to locate the best. In short, one has to care a lot about food. It is possible to wander into a people's restaurant, order dishes seen on other tables and have a delicious meal for about $5 a person, but the odds are much against such a happy outcome. A more likely experience would be to spend $375 on a banquet for eight at a gleaming, modern hotel and have an exquisitely presented but virtually tasteless meal for which the delicate petals of a rose are meticulously carved from the Chinese equivalent of Spam.

To avoid disappointment a visitor should have realistic expectations about the restaurants in China today, most of which are below standards set in Hong Kong, Taipei and New York. Despite the country's ancient traditions of cuisine, most chefs now are out of practice when it comes to fine and careful cooking, and few dining-room staffs know how to serve in anything like first- class style. War, revolution, poverty and a Maoist regime that considered embellishment a manifestation of bourgeois decadence have taken their toll. "We lost the thread of our culinary tradition," says Hu Yulu, the retired chef and now adviser to Shanghai's Jinjiang Hotel. "Our cooking began to decline in the '50s, and we won't even talk about the '60s and '70s, when our most talented chefs left the country," he added. "We have to teach young cooks how traditional Chinese food should taste," agreed Zhang Songqi, secretary-general of the Shanghai International Culture Association, an organization that arranges tours for individuals and small groups interested in special subjects such as art, education or food.

The masters involved in training new chefs take their cue from the admonition of Yuan Mei, the 18th century poet who is considered the Brillat- Savarin of China: "Into no department of life should indifference be allowed to creep -- into none less than cookery." Instructors are trying to instill Yuan's philosophy in students at vocational schools and more advanced professional cooking schools in China. Novices first learn the intricacies of chopping and slicing, practicing on potatoes or turnips, before they graduate to basic cooking techniques and finally master the classic floral garnishes formed of fruits, vegetables, meat and eggs. As a new generation takes over in the kitchen, the general quality and authenticity of the food promises to improve. But for now, some of the best and most rarefied eating is to be found in hotels and restaurants where older chefs hold sway.

In the quest for good food in China, the most useful quality may be a spirit of adventure. Nowhere is an unprejudiced palate better rewarded. Many foods considered delicacies by the Chinese cause Westerners to shudder. Among such exotica are snake, sea slug, turtle, bird's nests formed of swallows' saliva, dried jellyfish and webs of duck feet. The faint-palated would bypass such choices and thereby miss some of the world's most carefully orchestrated seasonings as well as much of the drama of Chinese food. Snake cut in thin slivers and cooked in a soup suggests the most delicate chicken and, along with earthy black mushrooms, lends savor and body to the broth. Though a bit startling to the eye, thick, dark, firmly gelatinous sea slugs are delicious at Furong in Chengdu, where they are cooked in a velvety, dark sauce that is mellow with wine and fragrant with star anise. This is a sauce that would make even paper towels palatable. Much the same can be said for the rich black- bean-and-garlic sauce that envelops chewy webs of duck feet, and the winy marinade that adds piquancy to cool, translucent slivers of jellyfish that may be nested on pungent pickled vegetables, all usually included in the more lavish cold-appetizer arrangements for banquets.

Most enticing of all for the truly adventurous eater are the humble and succulent street snacks sold day and night in markets like those off Dongda Street in Xi'an. Here one can choose between the round, steamed, pleated dumplings known as jiaozi (or, in the larger size, baozi) that are filled with pork and aromatic hot broth, or the juicy, half-fried, half-steamed, pork- stuffed crescents called guotie. Breakfast purchased on Shanghai street corners can be the big snowy puffs of yeast buns filled with sweet red-bean paste. All day long there are noodles made of rice, wheat or mung beans, served hot, cold, with gravy or in soup, garnished with wisps of coriander and onions or more substantial bits of pork. (Travelers who want to enjoy the delights of food at unhygienic street stands as well as in the inexpensive, lively people's restaurants should carry their own chopsticks and spoons and an airline-size bottle of vodka, which is handy for cleaning bowls, dishes and cups.)

Such colorful eating brings a bonus in human contacts. Waiters and waitresses are especially solicitous, offering to show foreign guests exactly how to convey a jiaozi from plate to mouth with chopsticks so that the dumpling remains intact with no loss of broth. The Westerner who can master the technique may be rewarded with a free meal, plus a tour of the kitchen, where workers grinningly pose for pictures and shyly call, "Hello," the one English word they seem to know.

In Xi'an, this visitor found a spirit of instant camaraderie at Tongshengxiang, a restaurant featuring dishes that are Mongolian-Muslim, the geographic and religious origins of much of this city's population. What pleased the local diners so heartily was a hastily acquired skill at crumbling bits of half-baked yeast buns into a bowl that was then taken to the kitchen where it was brought to a frothy boil along with mutton, beef, noodles, vegetables, coriander and scallions. Puffed up like tiny spaetzle, the bread dumplings fleshed out a satisfying soup that was made fiery, sharp and aromatic with additions of chili and sesame oils, and winy, amber-colored aged vinegar. Many ganbei, or toasts, drunk with the strong-smelling mao-tai whisky, cloyingly sweet orange soda or cool, refreshing Chinese beer were raised.

Food has its operatic side in China, and anyone who savors local color will be repeatedly drawn to the street food markets, like Canton's Qingping, an enormous, dazzling maze where private enterprise is allowed to thrive. Here, more than in the sparsely stocked indoor government markets, are stacks of jade green cabbages, gigantic leeks, silvery winter melons, woodsy mushrooms, mounds of gnarled ginger roots, pomegranates and persimmons, displayed alongside skeins of noodles, fish swimming in vats of running water, and live geese and ducks, sitting sleepily in place with their feet tied together. Also live in crates and on sale as food are kittens, puppies and monkeys, as well as snakes writhing in shallow pools. (The Westerner need not fear that such animals will appear without notice on his plate. All are expensive and are prepared in specialty restaurants or at banquets.)

Amid the jumble of stalls, dense with the flow of human traffic and clattering with the din of vendors hawking wares, shoppers poke animals for tenderness and watch closely as purchases are weighed in hand-held balance scales, and mothers quiet crying children with cuts of sugarcane or towering lollipops of golden caramelized sugar pulled into flamboyant dragons.

An air of plenty also prevails in the bakeries selling moon cakes, a delicacy favored during the autumn harvest-moon festival. Shoppers line up for these heavy round pastries, embossed with good-luck symbols and filled with candied fruits or spiced meats, much like mincemeat.

Yet despite this apparent abundance, there are persistent shortages of fresh vegetables, fish and high-quality meat, more marked in some cities than in others. In Shanghai, for example, shoppers with families to feed will go to market at 4:30 or 5 in the morning; by noon in Peking, vegetable stalls are often out of everything except onions and cabbages.

Small wonder, then, that the best quality of such basic staples as tea, rice and oil is not used in ordinary restaurants. An overabundance of oil is a complaint most Westerners make about the food. But to the Chinese, oil is a sign of opulence, and so it is often poured generously. Yet quantity seems less a problem than quality. In the cheapest restaurants oil generally had a harsh, acrid flavor, a result of either poor processing or having been reused. The practice is not uncommon in American Chinese restaurants. Those who are sensitive to MSG (monosodium glutamate) have an even more difficult time, for that flavor enhancer is virtually ubiquitous. The only solution would be to order Western food in advance in the dining rooms of tourist hotels.

China's system of restaurant organization seems to cater to foreigners and to take great pains to please them. Restaurants are generally laid out on two - or three levels. The street level offers the simplest food at the lowest prices, as well as poor sanitary conditions that usually include cuspidors near all tables. The second floor is slightly cleaner, has a larger menu and somewhat higher prices, though it is primarily frequented by Chinese. Most foreigners are shown to the top floor for pre-ordered meals at the highest prices and in what the Chinese consider the most attractive surroundings. That may mean a genuinely handsome setting or a seedy, badly lighted room in need of fresh paint and curtains. Hotels have similarly layered facilities. (Hotels also have the cleanest public bathrooms, a feature that tourists come to cherish early on.)

Many American visitors are insulted when they are directed to the private rooms or segregated sections of dining rooms; they feel an attempt is being made to separate foreigners from locals. Yet there appears to be genuinely hospitable planning behind the division. In addition to being cleaner, tourist sections provide menus with English translations. Nevertheless, foreigners who insist on being seated on the lower floors will be.

Any Chinese dish, by the way, is likely to be better than a Western-style choice, judging by the sorry fare offered at places such as the Golden Flower Hotel in Xi'an, the Jinjiang Guest House in Chengdu and the somewhat macabre copy of the Parisian Maxim's in Peking. Even Chinese breakfasts of rice porridge, pickles, pork and dumplings surpass their Western counterparts, although there were excellent room-service breakfasts at the Jinling Hotel in Nanjing and the luxurious White Swan Hotel in Canton.

As for beverages, tap water cannot be used, even for ice or brushing teeth, but most hotels supply unlimited quantities of boiled water, hot and cold. With food, the best choices are bottled mineral waters and the excellent, clean-tasting Chinese beer, both preferable to the flowery local wines. And jasmine or chrysanthemum teas are more pleasant than the ordinary rough green and black teas.

The future for restaurant hopping in China looks bright, since there has been much improvement during the past five years in food, service and cleanliness. Most progressive of all are the joint-venture operations that are cooperative efforts between the Chinese government and a foreign corporation that sets up procedures, provides management personnel and trains the local staff.

Few Western visitors in China choose restaurants for themselves. Most are in tour groups; the arrangement may or may not lead to good food, depending on the knowledge and diligence of the travel agency and the price of the tour. It is best to tell the agency of any special restaurants one wants to visit so that arrangements can be made. In addition, individuals or small groups can go off to restaurants on their own, although because of the language barrier it is best to have the hotel or tour guide engage a taxi and call the restaurant. Even so, reservations may not be honored unless a deposit or, at times, the full price of the meal has been paid in advance.

Fortunately, there is a greater choice of food in China than there has been for several generations. If such progress continues, Americans in China may feel almost too much at home as menus begin to offer choices from columns A and B and meals wind up with fortune cookies.