The Day I Stopped Ordering Kung Pao Chicken
I landed in China knowing exactly what I liked: kung pao, sweet and sour pork, the usual. By night three in Chengdu, I was sweating through a Sichuan hotpot and couldn’t remember the last time I’d thought about home. Chinese food isn’t a cuisine. It’s thirty cuisines pretending to be one.
“In Yangshuo, a lady ran a kitchen out of her front room. I shrugged. She brought out three dishes and rice. No English, no menu, no prices. I ate fish I couldn’t name, greens I couldn’t identify, a sauce that made my eyes water. On the walk back I kept trying to describe it. All I could say was: ‘It tasted like somewhere else.'”
You’re not eating one cuisine. You’re eating a country.
Cantonese is sweet and delicate. Sichuan is numb and loud. Xinjiang is lamb and bread. Yunnan is mushrooms and flowers. A different region every day for a month, never the same flavor. The version back home is a Greatest Hits album. China is the live show.
Not ordering is the point.
I spent the first three days scrolling menus on a translation app. By day four, I stopped. I’d point at what the next table was eating, or smile and say “you choose.” That’s when the food got interesting. Some of it I didn’t love. All of it I remembered.
Streets food is also amazing.
A Xi’an noodle shop where the lady just looks at you and hands you a bowl. A Guilin farmhouse where they killed the chicken when we walked in. A Beijing dumpling cart where the steam hit your glasses. These aren’t “restaurants.” They’re kitchens that let you sit down.
I came home. My local Chinese place still tastes good. It just doesn’t sound like the original anymore.
