The company we work for here (called "the House of I") offers us meals as part of our compensation. They originally only gave us 2 options of where we can eat (a bit further down I'll get to the third option): Wayne Castle and Chopsticks. These are 2 restaurants that are nearby.
Wayne Castle: This restaurant is about 200 meters up the hill from our house. Following in the wild west theme it is named after John Wayne. They serve only Chinese food and the menu is entirely in Chinese. We do though have a photocopy of the menu that someone has written an English approximation of each item on it. We have since found out this is last year's menu and we don't have a translation of this year's menu. We can order anything on last years menu (and if it is available they'll serve it but some things they just say not available) then we sign for it when we leave and I guess they send the bill to House of I. We don't eat in the dining room with paying customers. Instead they guide us into the room where staff hangs out, here it is:
We have eaten there a few times and it is quite tasty authentic
Chinese food. But most of it is cooked in so much oil of a type
that Carole's digestive system reacts to it rather violently. By
trial and error we have found 2 items on the menu not cooked in
oil, but there has been such discomfort after eating some of the
other trials that we try to not go there anymore. So that leaves
just one more choice that is at no expense to us
Chopsticks: While the above restaurant with the American name only serves Chinese food, "Chopsticks" only serves western food - with a knife and fork (no chopsticks). Conveniently this restaurant is directly across the road from our house:
The food here is excellent and although we enjoy authentic Chinese
food and want to experience it while in China, this place is very
convenient to us and it is completely compatible with our
digestive systems. The downside is that it is quite expensive and
although we don't pay, the House of I also does not want to pay
the full price. So the arrangement is that each month the chef
creates 3 or four dishes that fit the budget and for that whole
month we have only those 3 or 4 menu choices from which to choose.
This month our choices are:
Even for me who usually does not require a lot of variety in my
menu, I get tired of the same thing over and over again. And the
next month, probably only one or 2 of the 4 dishes will be changed
to something different as there are a limited number of choices
available.
So, on to our third option - the staff canteen. This was not originally offered to us I think because they thought it was not good enough for us. Chinese companies are required to provide meals for their staff so how it works here is the House of I purchases meal cards for each of their staff and when we enter the canteen they check off the day and meal on our card. This is not fine dining and the service costs the company about $70/month for each card (about the same as 5 meals at Chopsticks or Wayne Castle). As you can see, we are not waited on at our tables:
And we even supply our own eating bowls (You can see in the back
wall little cubicles where we each keep our bowls and chopsticks).
We even do our own washing up when finished:
We generally like the taste and our digestive systems also get
along nicely with this food. Sure its an assembly line and isn't
beautiful, but we can see what we are getting and can choose how
much of each dish we want:
This has become our favourite place to eat and its nice sometimes
to eat with the staff rather than hobnobbing at the restaurants.
One of the disadvantages to the canteen is that it is has very
restrictive hours: 7:00-8:00, 12:00-13:00 and 18:00-19:00.
Officially that is the time, but in reality, if we don't get there
within the first 15 minutes of opening, we usually find just rice
and a few remains of just one or 2 dishes. So, when it is not
convenient to go there at exactly service time we eat at
chopsticks.
There are a few other eating establishments in this development but most of them are reserved for homeowners only (and of course they are expensive). There is though an option, if we arrange in advance to eat at the Teton Hotel. Since yesterday was our wedding anniversary we arranged to eat at the hotel. We were told it was a wonderful buffet for $300 RMB ($60) each. Well when we arrived there was no buffet. So after getting one of our translators on the phone and passing the phone back an forth with the restaurant manager we figured out that tonight is not a buffet, but rather a multi course full service meal (also known as a Chinese Banquet), so we just pay our $300 RMB each, sit down and they start bringing us food - plate after plate after plate ... So in reality it was like a buffet because they brought such a variety of food to our table. I thought I'd have a photo of a wonderful buffet spread but instead I shot this of what came to our table at the beginning:
This was after a small bowl of yougurt and then soup. So we
thought this was it but in fact this was still just the beginning,
it just kept on coming. What we have here as best we can tell is
(front to back) Stomach lining of some animal, thinly sliced
slightly pickled green stuff, seaweed with a few fish eggs for
garnish, duck (real duck this time, not the white geese that I
said were ducks in my last letter), and finally Chinese greens.
All very delicious. Finally, once we where completely stuffed and
still had food left on the table they brought us a big bowl of
noodles. I saw that another table beyond us got their leftovers
boxed up to take home so I asked (in sign language) for ours to go
too - another full meal's worth.
Breakfasts: We don't go out for breakfast but stay in our house and eat fruit, then eggs or bread and peanut butter. So we have to go shopping for fresh fruit. Last week you saw the outdoor market in Yanqing which has lots of produce but is not at all convenient to get to. Now we have learned of a local market, just a 15 minute bicycle ride away which has as much produce as Yanqing plus some other market type stuff. This is a rotating market. The vendors set up in a different village each day so it ends up in this village every 5 days. OK, so how to know when is market day? Easy, its every date that ends with a 4 or a 9 of the lunar calendar. I knew that Chinese new year was determined by the moon but I didn't know before how much daily life (in the countryside) is regulated by the lunar calendar. Anyway, here's a shot of the village market:
and while we are here, a shot of a typical street corner in this
village just a couple of blocks past the market:
We went together last Tuesday on our day off to check it out but
we had already stocked up in Yanqing the day before. But this last
Sunday I rushed in to the market at 7:40 and made it back home by
8:30 with the following bounty:
The final entry in this food edition is the meal we had the day we
went to Beijing. So one day we went in to the city for a business
meeting. While waiting for the meeting we sat and chatted with the
president of the company in his office. Of course being in China
is great for a tea lover like me, and I was quite excited to see
that here a feature of an executive desk, rather than a cigar box
and mini bar is a tea service. This one is so cool, he just opens
the lid of the kettle, turns on the water tap to fill it and
switches on the heating element. Old tea can be poured into the
wooden grill where it flows out the drain:
After the meeting and presentation they took us on a tour of their
facility and then out for dinner. This is the dinner, it is called
"Hot Pot" which is a Beijing specialty. In the bottom of pot is a
charcoal fire coming up through the chimney in the middle which
heats the spicy boiling water around the outside. We then take
food from around the table (vegetables and thinly sliced meet) and
drop it in the water for a minute or 2 before then take it out to
our bowls to eat. The staff keeps on bringing more food, and beer,
and tea to make sure the table is always full.
Not a scenic location here as it is actually the garbage dump.
But is is the only open spot nearby with no trees blocking the
wind. We also wanted to try a couple of other types of kite so we
made a delta kite which never did fly properly and also a "barn
door" kite. We made the barn door because it is something a bit
fancier than your basic diamond kite plus the website said this is
a "uniquely American" kite - so perfect for Jackson Hole. Here it
is just getting up in the breeze:
And here is where the fun really shows. Look at Carole's face once
she had her hand on the string: