So a good friend of mine Betty Zhang decided to leave us all in Vancouver and jet out to China for four months to teach English overseas. Luckily, she’s been good keeping in touch with us and you can follow her blog here, at Sans Veronique (get it ? Betty without Veronica?).
I remember the first reason she told me for going back to China were for these delicious creepy looking shrimp-lobster hybrid shell-fish that they only have in her home-city. So, I pretty much told her she had to do a guest post for me and share some of the delicious food on her trip, and here it is!
I recently had the chance to go to Sanya, Hainan with one of my favorite cousins and her twenty-something friends. While we are all residing in the northeast section of China, our destination was the southern most point of the country.
If you think Canadians have little in common from coast to coast, it would be an understatement to say that the Chinese is much worse. There is a tangible mutual distrust between Northerners and Southerners. It doesn’t help, of course, that many parts of China have enigmatic dialects. As a result, traveling with my cousin meant constantly seeking out the best prices – meaning, prices that ripped us off the least. This constant quest resulted in more walking, more sweating, and more uneven tan lines, probably, than if we had just paid whatever we were asked. It did also, however, lead us to streets and alleyways of amazing foods.
What I really loved about eating in Sanya was the atmosphere. All the restaurants placed their tables and chairs outside, with trees and their luscious leaves as ceilings, and the buzz of conversations. It was lively and relaxed all at once… I mean, what could you do but relax in 33 degree weather?
The First Market Place (Di Yi Shi Chang) in Sanya was the place to buy seafood. For tourists who have no idea what to do with feisty little blue crabs and giant, leaf shaped shellfish, there are dozens of “processing shops” which were more than willing to cook the seafood for us, for lovely prices, of course.
(A shellfish I can’t name, stir-fried with potato noodles and green onions)While waiting for our processed seafood, we also found a place that made fresh juices from an array of tropical fruits, and also Chao Bing, which literally translates to stir-fried ice.
Tropical fruits like papayas, mangoes, coconut are puréed together in various combinations. Then the fruit purée is “stir-fried” with great speed and expertise on a cold surface and made, with a dash of condensed milk, into Chao Bing. These little cups of iced fruit goodness definitely made me forget my 6-week (and counting) depravation of Vancouver summer favorites like Qoola and slushy bubble teas.
Sanya had the best papayas and dragon fruits. It helps, of course, that these fruits are picked probably ripe from trees, instead of left to ripen in some truck crossing bridges and highways.
And of course, a trip to Hainan just isn’t complete without Hainanese Chicken. One day when we gave up looking for a semi-deserted beach, we found a restaurant that specialized in duck. When we especially requested chicken, the young girl (she looked maybe 14) gladly ran down the street to get us some, since it was a holiday and they had run out. The restaurant also had really delicious Cha Siu.
All that Food looks DELICIOUS! The Chao Bing looks like it’d be excellent for the upcoming 30+ degree weather in Vancouver!
Food52 