It’s already 2023 (7 years since my semester abroad in China) and not a day goes by where I am not missing my food adventures in China. Or rather, my friends whom I shared many warm meals with during the winter.
In those moments, everything felt just the way it should be. Like a routine, a daily life thing. I wake up, get ready, meet my friends, search for the next restaurant to try. But I never really thought of them being more until I start looking back and realising all the memories we were creating in our simple daily life routines.
So..
Here’s another tribute to exploring Chinese cuisine with my friends and I in China. Here’s Part 1 of ‘From Streets to Restaurants’ if you haven’t read it yet. 😛
1st stop, allow me to whisk you away to our food finds in Chengdu, Sichuan.
- 铺盖面 pūgài miàn, also known as Bedspread noodles.
I was googling for background information of pugaimian and came across this page. If you are interested to know more about pugaimian, do check the link out! They feature other Chinese street food finds too and ngl, I was lowkey drooling looking at them. For the name, I think it is called bedspread probably because it resembles a bedsheet cover?
We had our pugaimian, bedspread noodles as our first meal the moment we landed in Chengdu. I couldn’t recall how but I vaguely remember being handed a list of Must eat restaurants in Chengdu by the hostel we were staying in? It was truly a meal worth savouring and slowing down life for.
Pugaimian is sort of a specialty to Sichuan province and any of you who plans to visit that region or is visiting, you must not miss this bowl of bedspread noodles. I mean it. For Malaysian friends, this somewhat resembles Pan Mee but the uncut version of the ‘pinched’ noodles. Although I don’t think they are the same, but yeah, you get me.
As you can see, the noodles are thick and fluffy. And uncut. So it just folds into the soup, absorbing the different layers of soup-y essence.
2nd Stop, I simply can’t miss seeing the pandas in person when I’m at Chengdu, can I?
This was actually Wendy’s bucket list and we’re so glad we got to fulfil it for her.
We woke up early for our Giant Panda Breeding and Research Base visit and obviously, what better way to start the day than grabbing Chinese breakfast by the roadside like an absolute local.
My favourite is the bread with meat fillings on the inside. It’s crispy on the outside from the deep-frying, warm and soft in the inside from the nicely seasoned minced meat fillings. They also had spicy fries, sausages on a stick and egg wrapped sandwich. I think they’re egg wrapped sandwich?
Street food to me is the best no-fuss, quick fix bite in the morning that satisfies your hunger and also gives you enough fuel to start the day. Especially Chinese street food. Om noms noms.
So, this was outside the panda base.
For lunch, we ate inside the panda research base. (paying touristy price because why not :’)).
Honestly, taking this photo was quite funny. I was trying to get my friends to pose like a food ad. You know the ones where they hold up the food and then aromatic smoke will appear. Not sure if this made it but it was pretty good! I felt like we only ordered 2 dishes to share because the price was not justified. Hahaha. I mean, we were travelling students on a budget so however much penny we can save, we will save.
If my memory did not fail me, we ordered minced pork rice on the left and I lowkey think that is a laksa or curry noodles on the right. So minced pork with rice is pretty much a staple Chinese food that you can find almost anywhere with a Chinese community. Though the seasoning and taste will be adjusted to local preferences but it should taste roughly the same.
As for the noodles, that is actually a Malaysian dish. I think? To my Malaysian friends, help me on this, does that look like a laksa or curry noodle? Pretty sure we ordered that to remind us of home because it has been months since we were home and trust me, no matter how close the authentic Chinese food in China is to the Chinese food we have in Malaysia, it just doesn’t quite taste the same. I can’t say what the difference is specifically but it just tastes different. It could be the water used and I’m sure it’s the seasoning and spices too. Hmm, maybe this is a good inspiration to write a post about Malaysian spices used in our Malaysian dishes.
3rd stop, Endless street food sampling at Jinli Ancient Street, 锦里古街
After our visit to Wuhou Temple, or also known as Temple of Marquis Wu, we headed to Jinli Ancient Street for that authentic Chengdu style street food experience.
A little history time, Jinli Ancient Street is a famous street in Chengdu for its snacks but what makes this a place that you must visit is, Jinli is Shu Kingdom’s First Street. Anyone who knows romance of the three kingdom or anyone who knows The Three Kingdom era, you cannot miss this place when you are in Chengdu. Even for those who don’t know about The Three Kingdom, you NEED to come and then you will learn about it. Ahh, just thinking about all the novels, cdramas and movies inspired by The Three Kingdom era is giving me goosebumps.
In case you don’t know, I am a big fan of Chinese culture and history! Not only because it’s where my ancestors are from, but it’s so rich and diverse, and so much depth in this country that just needs to be told and shared. From their music, poetry, art to philosophy. Uuf, I just can’t get enough.
First things first, let’s fix that sweet tooth of ours with a blown molten sugar. I’m telling you, this is a whole art form on its own. It was really cool to try one of these because I’ve only seen them in cdramas whenever the main leads stroll along the streets for a romantic date night, usually on a festival.
So getting to try it is sort of like a main lead moment for me. HAHA! Dramatic, I know. But this was totally living the dream for me! Being there in China and actually experiencing the things I only read and watch about. *cries in molten sugar*
Here’s the gramps, ye ye, that made our candy. There are other shapes like rooster, fox or dog thing and many more! This is another list of things to do that you need to put on your list to China for that authentic Chinese street food experience. For real.
The inside of Jinli. The street is 550 metres long and to me, that is not too long and not too short. Just enough for my friends and I to have a night out sampling local cuisines while being transported back into the past with the brilliant decorations. Lanterns lit up everywhere!
I actually can’t remember what this was. But yeah, this was one of our street food finds. I don’t think we enjoyed this that well because it was something totally new to our tastebuds haha. Not that it isn’t nice, but I think we were still adjusting to Chengdu food.
Oh, funny story. So being in China, you would expect there to be rice (fried rice, specifically) everywhere right. Oh how ignorant were we (why did we think there will be rice in a snack street). We were actually craving for a proper rice dish after a long day of sightseeing and we thought being in this famous street would definitely mean good restaurants with awesome rice meals. But guess what, we actually couldn’t find any restaurant that had the kind of rice dishes we wanted. We were low-key hangry and deprived of hot bowl of fried rice.
Looking back now, Jinli is a snack street and not really a restaurant street. So for those going, this is a place to try out street food and small local snacks but not where you would dine for a full meal unless you’re up for Sichuan hotpot.
Our hanger obviously went away the further we walked as we indulge ourselves in all the sweet things. We came across this yoghurt and it looked too cute to walk past.
Oh yes! I believe we had a Chinese style tofu pudding, taufufa, 豆腐花. (Also a local favourite in Malaysia, so if you are also visiting Malaysia, then you must try one of our taufufa).
But then, I am not too sure as well if that was tofu pudding because my food memory of Jinli is a blur. Hahaha. It was definitely a sweet snack with brown sugar sauce though.
We also had a panda mochi thing. While the panda looked a little deformed, it was tasty though! Fluffy and creamy. That just goes to say, never judge a book by its cover.
And we had a pot of succulent looking ice cream. Yes, a pot because it was meant to give that potted succulents and flowers with soil but is actually food. That was the trend, making food look not like food.
Another interesting snack that we tried was the golden egg. It is hard-boiled egg wrapped in golden foil and inside the egg is glutinous rice and other sweet fillings. Again, this was something new to our tastebuds and it was an experience to our tongue. What matters though is that it looks cute and Instagrammable at that time hahaha.
Wrapping up the post with a photo of Stella and I on an elevated fighting arena, lei tai – 擂台. Okay, but this is just a prop stage alright. There is no real fighting happening here.
And if you see the four words on the board above us, it says 忠肝义胆, Zhong Gan Yi Dan. Making it bold because it is personally one of my favourite phrases in China. It means a person of loyalty and righteousness, and this was definitely a phrase that symbolises the era of The Three Kingdoms. The friendships forged in battle as well as the betrayals that fell upon the closest friends due to power struggles.
I also think loyalty and being righteous has always been an important Chinese value. I’m not sure if it still holds as much significance in the modern world, but in ancient times, loyalty and righteousness was what it meant to be a worthy person. To be loyal to your friends and to be righteous, never bowing to evil powers.
Side track, I kinda feel like opening a sub category on Chinese culture just sharing some bite-sized history, phrases and interesting culture finds. Hmm…
Alright, thank you so much for reading if you made it to the end! In the next post, I will talk about my first experience eating cow’s stomach.
I'm Zombin 
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