this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2025
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Oh yeah I know both of those dishes, they are excellent as well! Pickled garlic is also amazing, especially on a Friday night if you don't plan to meet anyone all weekend 😂
How challenging was it to bring across that you don't eat meat? I have a feeling that would be quite alienating with my in-laws, their whole world revolves around meat.
That’s fun they make it too :) Is your Henan food spicy or what? Never been!
I think pretty much every family member in China doesn’t really get it and frequently tells me I can in fact eat meat. They said, my PILs have cooked plenty of plantbased meals for me. Eating this way was a personal choice but I am also Buddhist. I also get a lot of comments telling me that monastics in China eat meat, which isn’t necessarily true, so why don’t I. Then I also get the silly questions saying well what about shrimp? Or fish? Or pork? lol more silly than pressured.
Henan food is actually quite mild, Hunan is the chilli province. Here it's mostly stews or an assortment of dough stuffed with veggies and meat in an shapes and forms, from dumplings over pancakes to steamed buns. Allegedly the original baozi came from here, but I'm sure if you research it you'll find a million origin stories for every province.
Right and I guess if you cite religious reasons, they leave you mostly alone. Alcohol wasn't as straightforward since I have no reasons aside from health benefits, and then it's the usual "but once a year won't kill you" spiel (that I have to go through on every single occasion, even if they drop it ultimately and are happy to have a dedicated driver when the night moves on...).
How many times a year do you generally visit the hometown?
That sounds not up my alley compared to Sichuan food, haha! That's interesting about baozi!
IDK your family, but the religious reasons is where they say oh monastics really eat meat.... My PhD studies are Chinese Buddhism, I would know haha. The once a year this is annoying. You can always say you're eating some medicine that you can't drink. No crazy drinkers there?
Last week I went with an uncle and his friends and they drank an absurd amount. I probably had 5 plus standard drinks of baijiu. Too much... I don't get the fun in too much.
If we are in Asia we always come but I haven't been back since COVID so this year is a big one for us. What about you? I hope to come annually in the future.
I guess there might be some monks that stray into haram territory, but yeah following the doctrine properly, they sure aren't allowed to.
Love Sichuan food, though it fucks up my stomach regularly... And yeah we got crazy drinkers here as well, but if I say no then it's a hard no and they understand I don't budge, so that's that. I can't handle the taste of baijiu at all, had to drink years ago with some business partners, and ever since my first proper baijiu vomit session, I'm done and over with that stuff.
Opposite for me by the way, I'vebeen living in China all through covid since late 2017, and we only just left to Malaysia last August. So I've been in the village a bunch of times, though usually we'd celebrate CNY where the family actually lives, trips to the village are only for special occasions. In the future we'll probably still come annually, but not necessarily for CNY when everybody is crazy, roads blocked and shit twice as expensive as regular.
My academic understanding is that in Japan since meiji nikujiki saitai rules were repealed this is 99.99% common but in China that has rarely been the case. But yeah, there are certainly monastics in it for the money like at Leshandafo.
Glad you love it too :) Yeah it sometimes hurts my stomach but I've relaxed on eating too spicy. That sounds horrible! My uncle had me drink too much the first few days as well and it also made me slow down.
Wow! That's a long time. How was it living through COVID? Was being closer to Wuhan difficult? Are you all in Kuala Lumpur? We lived there back in 2018. Very fun but not that walkable. Sounds like you've had a lot of good family time!
Oh we lived in Suzhou, so not close to Wuhan at all. Just traveling to the village over CNY, year round nobody really lives here.
Covid was still terrible, Suzhou had the strictest measures in all China since they are a hotbed of the medical industry and absolutely wanted to avoid any slowdowns, so we spent a collective total of 3 months in home isolation, experienced food shortages, had alarms taped to our doors that would trigger text messages to the nearest police station if we opened it outside of mandatory testing windows, the whole nine yards. That's also mostly what motivated us to gtfo, made us realize we live there like cattle without free will or rights.
In Malaysia we live in Seremban, capital city of the neighboring state to KL, and actually closer to KL airport since that's so far out of town. I need to travel quite a bit for work, so that comes in handy.
Not walkable either, so had to get a car first thing after arriving; relying on grab was a bit cumbersome. Now I work from home 99% of the time when I'm not visiting suppliers. We have a small representative office in KL that acts as my formal employer, but I'm functionally fully attached to the Chinese/HK company. Thanks to covid we had missed some mandatory supplier audits, and ultimately decided that to counter this in the future, someone qualified/certified needs to live in a third country jurisdiction, and I was the lucky choice.
That’s absolutely insane! I cannot imagine living like that.
Lucky you got to choose to continue in the company abroad.
Your comment maybe adds to my reasoning of why I love China and east Asia but don’t want to live in China. Still aiming for Japan.
Yeah I wouldn't want to live here again anymore, it's not fun long term. I could imagine Taiwan on the other hand side, it's pretty awesome. Though I could imagine the constant threat from China looming over you isn't particularly nice.
Japan is also lovely, friend of mine just moved over last year. He married a Japanese woman he met in China though, that made it rather easy.
Personally I would consider Vietnam or Thailand and maybe Philippines long term (especially after retirement), mid term we are headed for Scandinavia first.