In the US, I make a habit of avoiding fast food chains.* Eating horrible food, wasting mounds of plastic and styrofoam, and sitting somewhere with less charm than a high school cafeteria is not my idea of dining out. In Hong Kong, fast food is a different story. Famished after an afternoon of shopping on [...]
Pantyhose Milk Tea and Hong Kong “Fusion”
While sipping a Thai ice tea this afternoon, I was reminded of another tea using condensed milk that hasn’t quite made it to the US. On my last visit to Hong Kong, my uncle, a self-professed connossieur of Hong Kong-style cuisine, brought me to a tiny restaurant in Central to see how "silk stocking milk [...]
Video: Shanghai Street Food at Yuyuan Bazaar
Shanghai’s Yuyuan Bazaar is best known as a marketplace for all the souvenirs and tsotchkes you could want. It is also a haven for street food: soup dumplings, sweets, even birds-on-a-stick. Weekends are especially crowded, when even neighborhood grannies and little kids jostle with tourists to be next in line.
Chinese Road Trip Literature
The 50th anniversary of On the Road this week has inspired a flurry of Kerouac- and road-trip-related articles. Apparently Kerouac has quite a few fans in China as well. Eric Abrahamsen writes in the Chinese lit blog Paper Republic that "there are readers who wouldn’t know Hemingway’s beard if it turned up in their soup, [...]
老家 lǎo jiā: Hometowns
In late September or early October, Jacob and I are heading to Zhongshan to spend a few weeks with my parents and my grandparents. Zhongshan is my mother’s 老家, or home town. Since many people in China live in a place for generations, 老家 can also be an ancestral home. Zhongshan, in Guangdong province [...]
Carsick Cars
More Beijing indie rock to check out: According to Shanghaiist, Carsick Cars "is known for being the ones handpicked by Sonic Youth to open for them in Beijing. What brought Carsick even more attention was the fact the Chinese government decided to step in a few hours before the curtains fell and pull them from [...]
Video: Hong Kong Open-Air Market
Hong Kong’s Central district has a large open-air market that stretches for blocks and blocks. We head towards the egg stand and try the "Thousand-Year-Old Egg," a duck egg that has been preserved in clay, ash, salt, lime, and tea. Oh, and the name is a bit of an exaggeration.
Video: Street food in Macau
The "Las Vegas of Asia"? That’s not the Macau we found. Before casino developers raze the entire peninsula, we wander the back roads in search of authentic Macanese street food.
Appetite for China is all about fresh and simple Asian cooking. Welcome and bon appetit!
