It Sure Ain't Montana Beef

The Chinese diet is based - unsurprisingly - on rice. Rice, rice porridge, rice-noodles... lots and lots of simple-carbohydrates, which has served these people well for millennia. Meat and vegetables are also staple foods, but unlike in America, they are often served almost as side-dishes to the primarily carb-based main course.

This is not to say that meats are not central to the Chinese diet. On the contrary, the character for the word for "home" - 家 - actually comes from an ideogram of a pig with a roof over it. Home is literally where the pig is... Brings a whole new level of meaning to "bringing home the bacon."

One thing's for sure, it would suck to be a Jew, Muslim, or Vegetarian here... I hear they don't dig on swine... and vegetarianism is about as foreign to the Chinese as... um... apple pie. Yeah, I'll go with that. Even though they're the ones who invented tofu (doufu), the idea of eschewing a vital protein source is really a first-world concept for people with too much time on their hands and options regarding what they eat. Though more and more of China no longer falls into the category of third-world country on starvation-diets, we're talking maybe slightly more than a decade or two since near all of the country was there. McDonald's, Pizza Hut, and KFC are still considered delecacies here.

Anyway, I got a hankering for a nice steak the other day. Instead of going to the nearby beefsteak restaurant, which would run me somewhere over 35RMB (~$5) for a meal, I decided to go to the Century Mart and buy the ingredients for myself. So I picked up a cut of beef (right next to the whole-hearts, livers, and roast duck heads), soy sauce, a thing of ground black pepper, and some soda... the grand total brought me to 32RMB. Price-wise, it came out in a wash, but I now have pepper and soy sauce so I won't need to get them again for a while.

After cooking back home, I cut in (with my resident butter knife and fork) and took a bite. Granted, I had cooked it fairly thoroughly - which for me is medium to medium-well - but even so, I was clearly dealing with a cow that had seen a rough life... I can't remember the last time I had such a tough piece of meat. Nevertheless, it was still a little taste of home. I think next time I'll get some potatoes to go with it, whenever that "next time" is :)