I crap you not, I am lost in the confusing names of Chinese dishes

Bowen Bao  

I grew up in Shanghai, China and had Chinese food up the wazoo everyday for the past eighteen years. I had rice up the wazoo, dumplings up the wazoo, and fortune cookies up the wazoo. (Actually no, you can’t find any fortune cookies anywhere in a Chinese restaurant in my hometown.) Since I came to the United States last semester, I feel I am like a bull in a china shop everyday in the dining halls and the restaurants. Due to Chinese people’s habits of translating everything in English to Chinese, I have to relearn every dish’s name. I learned how to order a burrito with Mitchell and my roommate quad Cam, as you have learned in Mitchell’s article. I stopped calling “queso” the “yellow stuff”, and learned that “agua” is hidden in the machine. (I always paid for water). Thanks to my buddies, my life just became so much easier! However, just as I thought I am on the right track, everything changes when I walk into a Chinese restaurant.

As a sequel to the burrito battle article, we got bored one day and went to a very fancy restaurant on South U. On the window of this restaurant, it’s covered with the awards won by Chef Jan. He’s won all the awards for best restaurant, best dish, and best chef for the past five years or so. We were pretty impressed and couldn’t wait to get in. Thanks god, I said to myself, and I thought that I would be a pro in ordering this time. But when we looked at the menu, I knew I was totally wrong. I shit you not, I have never heard of General Tso’s chicken in any Chinese restaurant before. Though later experience proved it is very dank, I am still so surprised that the Chinese here are a different Chinese. “The cooks aren’t actually chinese,” Mitchell whispered to me. I really wish I could go check my self in the back. (side story: Don’t try going to the restroom here. Quad Cam went to the john for so long that we became worried. He said it was quite an adventure, though he didn’t see Chef Jan.)

As our interest in Chef Jan grow, so did our interest in the menu. From my perspective, this is the only Chinese dish on the menu that ever existed in my mind: Kungpao chicken. Every cultural cuisine has its tradition of specific combinations, so no offense, when I saw the Kung pao shrimp, which seemed to be appeared out of the blue, it just makes no sense. And where the hell does Cashew Shrimp come from? I wondered. I was looking forward to try something new so I accidentally ordered a dish called Yu shan chicken. I wondered about what this Yu shan thing was, just as I wondered about queso. This should not happen in a Chinese restaurant, though. So Mitchell became a pro again, getting sweet and sour chicken. Look how happy he got after getting this dish.

Here’s comes to our real food tasting period. My dish is in sliced meat in brown sauce and some bamboo shoots. Oh! I almost cried out when I realised that this is a dish which actually exists in China, a very famous dish in Sichuan. The people there eat a lot of spicy food and there is one bad outcome: you would sweat a lot and probably get swamp ass. The main ingredient is pork in a fish flavoured seasoning. I sighed and looked at my Yu shan chicken, which should be pork, and took a bite. Honestly, it doesn’t taste bad. It is just sweet as hell. As I would realize more and more later, the Chinese dishes are all in a kind of “brown sauce”. It doesn’t have the changing flavour of different regions in China as I expected, but that’s okay. Who made this? I guess it is Chef Jan.

We also got to taste sweet and sour chicken and pepper steak, though they have no similarities to any Chinese dish I have ever had. In China, there is sliced beef with green peppers, but never would I have pieces of beef and green pepper. You might argue that it is the same, but I would not buy it. It’s like having chunks of cheese in a burrito rather than sliced cheese. I don’t like being sound too critical, but I am just totally confused in the Chinese dishes that I should be familiar with. I didn’t expect the Chinese dishes to blow my mind completely.

I have to say, though, according to our squad’s opinion, China Gate is a wonderful place to have lunch. The lunch combo is only 6.99 to 7.99, with wanton soup and white rice. Another tip here, according to Cam: you can make you own delicious brown rice by pouring soy sauce into it. Now, we thought Pancheros and this place were going to be our lunch places, but before we even settle down, a sketchy place near East Quad is going to blow our mind. You’ll find out more in my next article.

See you next time.