Food and meals have been the main highlights of otherwise monotone days which leave us dreary and drained. In the beginning, kebabs are ubiquitous and on one long highway detour we choose a cafe (in a manner of speaking) where a haunch of lamb is hanging up, from which slivers are cut into small bits, to be speared for the grill with pieces of lamb liver, onion and fat.
That the chopping block has only rarely known the sweet caress of a clean sponge is something I ignore. In the kitchen, flames leap and roar out of a blackened stove pit. Atop it, the equally grizzled wok with oil sizzling in it doesn’t begin to quench the flames.
In a backroom, two men are busy rolling out yard-long fat noodles by hand. By some judicious pointing at the variety of tureens nearby, I manage to concoct an eminently edible stir-fry of eggplant, onions, green leafy things and cabbage, which is brought to our table with large plates of cold noodles, just after the kebabs arrive. A Parisian restaurant couldn’t have timed it any better.
Since we have been staying in provincial cities these past (it seems like forever) nights, I will hazard some sweeping generalizations. First, the Chinese love neon. Every city I’ve been in is transformed into a Crayola box of colors after dark. In one,all the trees on the main boulevard sport glowing blue, green, yell and red globes, floating like enormous bubbles, while the streets are strung across with white streamers of pinpoint yellow lights and stars.
In another, a large park paved in black granite appears to have been purposely left without lights, so that the neon from the surrounding buildings would reflect more vividly in the glossy tiles. They seem to drip with chaotic overlapping puddles of red, pink, violet, turquoise, yellow and lime across which hop, wave and kick the silhouettes of group dancers; there are strolling couples, romping little dogs, delighted toddlers and even a man jumping rope….without a jump rope.
Second, Chinese toll takers have been put to shame by their Iranian counterparts. There are lots of toll booths here and not one toll taker has taken note of our foreignness and therefore waved us through without paying, as they did in Iran.
Third, compared to the ‘stans, Chinese markets are packed with foodstuffs and fresh produce in great variety. Melons and gourds are plentiful . Sacks of various dried mushrooms lounge next to bins of gelatinous brown wood ear mushrooms, while enormous oyster mushroom clusters rest nearby. There are prickly cucumbers, long beans, 3-foot long leeks, all sorts of greens, pale purple eggplants the size of a baby’s foot and many roots that I can’t identify. Plus plentiful ginger and ropes of garlic. Of course there are also melons, apples, bananas and clementines, and piles of green and purple grapes, which are large and sweet and make excellent road food.
Around the back of most markets are the crates holding ducks, chickens and pigeons, necks wrung to order. In an alley will be troughs of fish, with water burbling into them from hoses. The moving water makes it look as though the fish are swimming, but if they’re alive they have an odd facility of swimming belly up! On demand, the fishmonger will slice open a fish and wrench out something translucent and oblong from its belly, which must be a delicacy as it’s sold separately, as are the fish heads which rest on a platter, mouths gaping, as if no one told them they no longer need gasp for air
In the front are the meat vendors, ever-willing to use a practiced cleaver to hack off a chunk of mutton or pork on a wood block turned purple and shiny with blood and fat. At the corners will be village folk in kerchiefs, long dresses and embroidered caps. I imagine they have moved to the city from the country, because they are selling bowls of home-made curdled milk, which might or might not be yogurt. Around the edges will be the bread ovens, from which golden pizza-like crusts emerge every few minutes. People walk away with 8-10 at a time. Somewhere in the middle of all this are carts mounded with 5-6 varieties of black, brown and golden raisins, almonds, sunflower seeds and walnuts. And there are dates now, fresh dates, which are yellow-green and the size of miniature pears. They taste like an unripe pear, too. It’s hard to believe that they will eventually dry and turn into the pasty, honey-sweet brown dates I am used to. Stalls offer a host of spices and ground chilies; those ubiquitous spicy red peppers that have been hiding slyly in all my food are everywhere, filling the air with that pungent, warm, peppery smell that gets you in the back of your throat.
Inevitably there are stalls will meat parts that have already been cooked. I am on the lookout for one thing in particular, which is specific to this area: CAMEL PAD Finally, in the Dunhuang market, I spy it. I see several, in fact: two bones sticking straight up from a fat-encased, pad-shaped unit. The whole thing has been fried or roasted till the fat is a crackling golden-brown. With Doctor Pippa, our eminent and willing trip physician at my side, I point to the pad. The obliging vendor takes it out and slices us each a thin sliver of pale brown meat. I’m very excited, again ignoring the fact that neither the cleaver nor the block have been cleaned in eons. I pop the sliver in my mouth and chew. The taste reminds me of something. I look at Pippa, who also is chewing. We swallow and think. Then we say, “That was pork, wasn’t it?” Quizzically we turn to the vendor and shrug, miming that we want to write something. He scrounges a bit of paper and a pen. Pippa, who has had little doctoring to do so far, but has become an accomplished artist, able to sketch useful things like toilets, now draws a Bactrian camel, with an arrow pointing at its feet. Looking at it, the vendor starts to heave with laughter, as does his partner when he glances at the drawing. They oink a Chinese oink at us. We oink back in English. Then we’re all hlaughing, as I realize what I thought was a camel’s pad was actually the front shoulder of a pig, placed upside down so the muscly part looked like a broad round foot.
Now the vendor picks out a chunk of meat which is so dark red as to be almost black. He points to Pippa’s drawing and hefts the blob as if it were a baseball. Obviously, this is what we’ve come for. He slices off a taste for each of us. I prepare myself mentally for my first taste of camel pad, reminding myself that there are no longer any wild camels in the Taklamakan, that the Bactrians I’ve seen are merely a food crop, like sheep and chickens, those admittedly a very large crop. In goes the sliver. I chew. Pippa chews. “Yum,” we say. “That’s really good!” I buy a half pound, which the vendor obligingly slices into thin shavings, after which I realize that was probably the stupidest idea I’ve had, because now every sliver of meat will be tainted with whatever has been germinating on that wood block.
No matter. We return to our hotel triumphant,. Everyone brave enough samples the meat and all declare it delicious, even Bernard.
-Dina
