Guangzhou, Part 1: Round Mass of Food

Today, I start a series on Guangzhou. It's a city that enjoyed immensely thanks, in large part, to my younger brother, Justin. He showed me a lot, but made sure that I ate well, too. So, to begin, a note on Guangzhou's food.

I could eat my way through hundreds of restaurants in Guangzhou and still find more to sample. From steamy hot bao dzu at a corner stall to crispy, fried seafood to spicy, fresh-made noodles, this town has food for every palate. It more than lives up to its reputation for being serious about eating.

First stop, on a evening that poured warm rain, was a Buddhist vegetarian restaurant. We met my brother's co-worker, Leo, who stalked into the restaurant under his arch-villain eyebrows, all angles and bones, wearing a shirt that read "I'm not lovin' it" in English and Chinese. Through conversation about China and teaching English and American politics, we filled ourselves with cabbage in coconut milk, noodles, beans, pretend chicken with button mushroom - they served a bunch of meats that weren't, actually - and faux-fish in a sticky sweet sauce. We stayed away from the Burn Round Mass of Food, the Steam Turnip Pill and the Joss-Stick Frailty Duck.

Next morning, my brother treated me to dim sum. I've been for this type of meal before: sit at your table and order course upon course upon course of Chinese delicacies. But here was different; on Up Down 9 (Shang Xia Jiu) Street, this restaurant, this meal had ceremony to it. Take the tea: before we were even permitted to drink it, the server used the first pot to wash our bowls, our cups, our chopsticks. She poured water over the tea leaves and, from there, into two small cups. Using her own chopsticks, she ran all of our eating utensils through the weak tea and then poured it off into an ornate wooden receptacle. Everything had been cleansed; we were now permitted to eat.

The brothers dove into the menu. We ordered steamy shrimp dumplings, meat wrapped in thick rice noodle and pork with shitake mushroom in a savory soy-based sauce. When we ran out of our own ideas, we took suggestions and got dumplings stuffed with minced pork and soup and a very light, sweet pastry that rather looked the fossilized root of a tree. That was fun with chopsticks! But it was another fine meal.

That evening, my brother took us to a seafood restaurant in an alley - an alley where the words "no activity here at night" were written on the wall across from us. Two of my brother's other co-workers joined us to gorge. Susan was a shy Chinese girl with a round face, a smile and a good grasp of English. Ben, next to me, was an American with a slow drawl and a shaggy head. On plastic chairs, we sat and munched fresh fried squid, green beans and shrimp in a syrupy sauce that ran river-like down our hands and arms, diverted by knuckles and sinews. That last dish, the tangible nature of eating it, abandoning chopsticks, tearing off the shrimp heads and sucking our fingers afterwards, made the meal a particularly memorable experience.

The other food encounters that made Guangzhou great happened just around the corner from my brother's flat. For breakfast one morning we stopped at a corner stall and ordered bao dzu, which surprised me with juice and meat and steam when I bit in, and grilled flat bread with subtle hints of green onion and sesame. We did dinner that night at a Muslim restaurant down the street, where the owners made their own noodles, tossing them and stretching them and, finally, serving them in a rich, spicy sauce. It was wonderful!

These are only the highlights. I could go on and tell you, blow-by-blow, what I ate for every meal, but I suspect you're no longer listening. If I've done my job well, you're too hungry to continue. Enjoy your trip to the refrigerator.