By Birth and Craig
This week I have eaten 3 times at restaurants with no English and no pictures on the menu. The first was on Friday, I went into Tianjin with a translator for work and we had lunch out. It was a fantastic meal (best Chinese food yet), a spicy chicken and vegetable dish, a sweet and spicy beef dish, a cold cucumber, ham and noodle dish. I enjoyed it so much, I had Mina (my translator) right down how to order the dishes. When I went to the counter to pay there was a big rubber maid tote half full of water by the counter. It was full of live bullfrogs, turtles and a couple big carp. Happily, I'm quite sure I hadn't eaten any of their friends. There was also a cage full of pigeons by the front door, but Mina assured me I really did eat chicken. Mina took great delight in sharing some of the interesting Chinese dishes. While she enjoys frogs a great deal, she told me that the idea of eating dog makes her throw up. At least, I'm hoping she meant "the idea".

Anyway, a bunch of us were in Tanggu on Saturday and we had lunch at a very popular, very Chinese restaurant. We had a fantastic meal, the foods just kept coming! The great thing about eating at these restaurants that don't cater to foreigners is its dirt cheap. Our meal cost us about 3 dollars each. Admittedly, we had a Chinese TA out with us to help us order, so we weren't truly on our own...yet!

Feeling more confident on Sunday night, Craig, Aaron and I ventured to a Chinese Restaurant right outside the gate to our apartment complex. I ordered Gong Bao Ji Ding (a spicy chicken dish) and ban san si (the cucumber noodle salad) and white rice. A little later on, feeling we needed more vegetables, using my "Chinese for Dummies" book (Thanks to Kelsey and Allysia here), I tried to order spicy eggplant.

Well, 5 minutes later they came out with a huge platter of coconut shrimp! None of us really like shrimp and were generally embarrassed thinking eggplant must sound like shrimp! We phoned a Chinese friend and had them explain to our waitress that we were very sorry, we don't want the shrimp but will still pay, could we please have eggplant? Well it turns out we didn't mess up! The shrimp was meant for the next table. The waitress simply took the plate from our table over to the next and soon enough we had our tasty dish. The food was great, we need to learn some more dishes to order though, as I had these two dishes three days in a row.

We have also ventured into the world of street food. Again, just by the gate to our complex. The first item we tried just looked too good to pass up. Basically, they deep fry dough into sticks. Its actually not sweet...(most breads in china are sweet). It's incredibly good, but very greasy and salty. We had one each on the way to work and had to stop at a magazine stand to get bottles of water. Since then we share just one. Craig commented that if only we could have them dip it in honey, and serve coffee, we would have our own Tim Hortons outlet. Craig is somewhat serious about bringing honey next time. It's quite fattening, so its not an everyday treat. However now that the dough guys recognize us as "their westerners", they yell for us to come over every morning as we walk to work. TEMPTATION!!!

The next interesting treat we saw being cooked up inside our local corner store. It's kind of a crepe, with egg and green onion. Then they put this big deep fried piece of batter. They brush it with hoi sin sauce and fold it up. So it's warm, soft and crunch in the middle. It's really good. There is a movie attached of the girl making it for us.