Ian Bennett I Thought Bubbles
Art and Videos and Travel and Fun from Ian Bennett
About five years ago when I went to China for the first time for four days, I had some chicken. And something about it tasted…different. It wasn’t bad. Just something I wasn’t used to, and my mouth couldn’t form the words to describe that difference.
It took five years and a return to China until I understand the difference.
While eating some pork wontons at a local noodleshop in the cold, two things happened: 1) The food was so warm in the cold air that after I ate it I could breathe steam like a dragon, and 2) There was that taste again. I asked my friend eating with me and discovered, yeah it tastes different than all the meat I’m used to because this pork didn’t taste like pork, it tasted like how pig smells.
Not my favorite meal. But I kept thinking about it and realized sure enough these wontons had a particular earthiness that doesn’t exist in the antibiotic injected slab of boneless meat I pick up at my local grocery store. The smell of dirt. The presence of bones. The skin still attached. These were just parts of the taste. Possibly this taste is most visibly differentiated by seeing the chicken head and all.
This is more present than ever in a local delicacy: stinky tofu. It smells, literally, like shit. I’m pretty sure it might be bathed in manure. But all the locals agree: it smells horrible, but they can’t stop eating it.
It’s possible to tell if there’s a stinky tofu vendor blocks away because it is so fragrant. Other businesses have tried to force stinky tofu vendors away from their own storefronts because it constantly stinks up the place. But the people love it. Certainly an unexplainable craving for that bizarre taste could grow, it just didn’t happen the first and possibly last time I tried it.
Tags: china, chinese, food, photos, travel
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