China: FoooooD

Greasy, cheap and at times unbearably spicy--Chinese cuisine is as delicious as it is diverse.  

Fresh noodles with a basic sauce--the poor man's dish of China

Chow Mein

Fried Rice

In the SW it's common for restaurants to display their raw ingredients curbside--point at what looks good and they'll concoct something tasty. 

By total accident, but much to my delight, we hit mushroom season perfectly in this region .  

Look at that fungus!

Eggplant:Scrumptious  

A typical spread.

Bok Choy and Shrooms. 

In China you eat most meals out of a bowl. 

a-BUN-dance! 

Get a bag full of steamed buns with assorted fillings for the equivalent of $2 dollars. 

Dumplings (rice flour skin with a filling) cooked in different ways are very popular in the cuisine, get them fried...

steamed...

...or baked. 

Crawdads were a treat while in Shanghai. A tray comes out, they give you plastic gloves and you go to work--many Chinese crunch down the whole creature.  

We spent a couple days in Chongqing, a town in the center on the country known for the hottest hot pots... Adam and I love spicy food so we leaped at the opportunity. You're brought raw ingredients (below) that you cook yourself in this vat of chilies and peppercorns submersed in oil simmering over a burner in the middle of the table. The result is like nothing I'd ever had--extremely spicy upfront with a lingering mouth-numbing tingle that I found rather unpleasant...and my digestive system felt the same. Within hours and all through the night I got to enjoy the meal again and again upon the porcelain throne with diarrhea and a serious ring of fire. NOT RECOMMENDED             

I think the appeal of some menu items gets lost in translation. 

Sea Cucumbers 

Jellyfish--they taste like nothing and have little nutritional value, but they're taking over the oceans so eat up!

Shark Fins

The culinary preferences are undergoing a transformation with the rest of the nation. Western fast food offerings are wildly popular--here's a line out the door to get Pizza Hut. 

In one of the most famous food epicenters in Shanghai, McDonald's occupies the prime real estate... 

...and again there's a line out the door.