Eating Out in Tonghua

Me at a  hotpot restaurant in Tonghua, with  English colleague Katharine and a local family. The girl on my left, Helen, was our self-appointed guide to her native town.

The thirteenth century invasion of northeast China by Gengis Khan was reflected in the local dongbei cuisine. Most of the restaurants in Tonghua were of the 'Mongolian hotpot' type. Food items are  cooked in a central metal basin, with heated supplied by gas cylinder  under the table.

Meals were cheap, washed down with bottles of excellent, equally inexpensive, Tonghua beer.

The extract below describes a more formal occasion - a department dinner to welcome me to the publishing company and to farewell  employees about to embark on study courses in  the UK.

'‘This is a superior restaurant, so the meat is genuine lamb; in some cheap places they spray on lamb flavouring,’ Jack confided. Red meat was so unusual in Tonghua that I wondered what could possibly be used as a lamb substitute. Apart from platters of thinly sliced meat, other dishes contained  yellow blocks of defrosted dofu that resembled bath sponges and flat green tiles which Jack told me were seaweed squares. 

It seemed unthinkable they could be food, until I had softened one of the squares for a minute or two in the boiling broth. This made them tender, although quite tasteless, like biting into a bland, thick-leaved cabbage. A bowl of small green peppers, and a pile of flat green leaves  of   lettuce, cabbage and spinach made up the other dishes, as well as a bowl of large white beans mixed with ice cubes, and  packets of instant noodles by 'special  request' of  Jack and Katie.
I recalled why American editor Joseph disliked hotpot feasts -you could get up from the table as hungry as when you sat down, he said.  

The ‘bai jiu’  or white spirit with its distinctive gasoline aroma, played a crucial role in the ritual toasting. The diners took turns around the table. At the end of the toast came the cry ‘Gan bei’, literally ‘dry glass’, or ‘Bottoms Up’. Some employees, including  Jack, declared at the start they didn’t drink, and that seemed to be quite acceptable because of his youth. To my relief, women were exempt. One variation I heard called out by Gwen was ‘Ban bei’ or ‘half glass’, which  gave licence to drink only a portion of the spirit.

 Everyone was supplied with a set of tiny saucers which contained viscous liquids, and  individual metal canisters of boiling broth  The liquids were brown soy, yellow ginger and garlic , red pepper and a bright green one that looked like pureed peas.  These were mixed according to individual taste in a slightly larger saucer. 

The correct procedure was to take up uncooked food in  chopsticks as it passed on the  revolve  and immerse the morsel into the broth. Cooking took no more than a couple of minutes, after which the dripping shred of meat or vegetable was lifted from the broth  and dipped into the sauce before being carried to the mouth. The sauce served to cool the tasty mouthful but  judgement as to cooking time and size of food pieces had to be exercised.  It was enough of a challenge  to catch food with chopsticks as it passed by on the revolve, and then try  to get it to the  broth without dropping it on the table, given the added risk of knocking over  a container of boiling liquid. Some food items were easier than others. If part of a dofu brick dropped suddenly into the sauce it made quite a spatter.
That was why most restaurants provided apron-like bibs to cover the diners’ clothes.'