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Welcome to Takeaway Chinese.
I'm Yuho Lin and joining me today, still our very good friend, Steve Hatherly.
I'm back, thank you.
In the previous episode, we talked about the China Impression Campaign.
We shared a lot of fun Chinese expressions that you can use to describe the country and also took a look into the China Impression in the eyes of AI, Artificial Intelligence.
It was a fun journey and make sure you listen back to the previous episode.
Now, let's take a look at some of the replies that we have already collected from our followers online, sharing with their, well actually we've got different themes, we've got the favorite Chinese dish, something very important to everybody.
Chinese people say, people build food as a necessity.
That's one of the priorities.
I'm pretty sure Steve agrees with that.
I certainly do. I'm living that expression right now.
Yes, so, and then we have the experience of people using transportation, public transportation here in China and the other one is their stories of making Chinese friends, I think these are lovely themes so let's start with the food one, actually when it comes to food one lovely comment we received was from Ross Savage and he said, Lanzhou Lamian a Chinese classic and available everywhere very good price and always clean restaurants have you ever tried the Lanzhou Lamian?
I've actually had that on numerous occasions so far and that Ramyun you have to be careful when you are ordering it because there are varying degrees of spiciness with it.
I've had it where it's you know that first sip is always the sip where you feel it's the test you go okay my face isn't melting off just yet but I've also had it where it hits your tongue and your face lights on fire but overall really really delicious and you can find this I mean this is almost everywhere.
I think this is one of the first dishes that I tried after arriving in Beijing.
Yeah this is actually also a very common like you said it's everywhere it's a very common staple food for Chinese people.
Especially for those living in the northern part of the country and there are different types like you said there you can find the kind of lamb yam in different.
They're very thin ones there there are also relatively thicker ones.
And mostly when it comes to lamb yu I think we're talking about the kind of dish with soap in it.
And yes, different level of spice.
Yeah, the noodles they vary in thickness as well, right.
But this ramen you mentioned, more commonly eaten in the northern part of the country - Relatively speaking, yes.
Really, okay, interesting, I didn't know that.
And the thing is, for example, for me myself, I get drunk with food quite so much even having that huge and Delicious bowl of lami and right there.
I will pass out for the entire afternoon Okay, so you have it for lunch.
I have it for lunch mainly okay, this is not a nighttime snack You think it's not a nighttime snack for anybody This were main dish it's fine, but yeah, but it's really really delicious I agree with you I would think it's very good price and it's available everywhere one to ten level of spicy do you enjoy what?
really Story when I was in the consideration phase about moving to China I came here and I visited with Honglin and a couple of other co -workers and we went out to eat and do you remember this?
Yes, and And what was that spicy dish that I ordered?
We went out to dinner and I looked at the menu and I said oh, I want to have this one, and you said to me, you sure?
That's gonna be pretty hot.
Yes, mulch it, well.
And I said, come on, I can handle, I can handle spicy, no problem.
Dish came, one bite, I think my face went like this.
Second bite and you said to me, I thought you could handle the spiciness.
I was not very nice.
I am not going to fight with you anymore.
You are, I bow down, I lose.
You are the definite winner for that competition.
You enjoy it. Spicy food.
When we talk about Chinese food, actually there are really different types of food we're talking about.
Chinese food is a huge umbrella word.
Yeah. For example, our next comment is talking about something.
I'm pretty sure it's something quite common but I'm not sure if you have tried it.
The comment is from B .B.
Tong and the comment says, the best prawns fried dumplings and the best prawns wonton only in soo ju...
Soo Jo. Soo Jo. Yes.
Have you ever tried these?
Of course. Ah, good.
Of course I have. These are amazing.
Actually, I say that, I'm repeating that sentence so many times with each Chinese dish that i try over and over again i'm constantly saying oh this is really good oh that's really good too yeah now with the dumplings.
Dumplings is quite a broad umbrella term in in China because you can have them filled with almost anything i think right?
My favorite ones that i've had so far i think are the prawn and pork in the same dumpling together.
Actually there There are really different feelings.
Shù zhō yǎng zhō, shàn xiàn, and nowadays, we talked about China being a country with a huge history, with a long history.
Actually, food is with that same concept.
It has a long history, jiào shí, dumpling has a long history.
But at the same time, now we're inventing, we're putting a lot of different new things into the dumpling to try it out.
Just it. Ah, chefs are getting a little creative.
Yeah, they're very creative.
Which is why if you go to a jiào shiào guǎr, gua is kind of like the venue or the place for the first keyword see also the dumpling place it's a for example restaurant focusing on dumplings and for that kind of restaurant actually you can order different fillings different types gosh I could stay there all day and it's so cheap too, yes it is quite so cheap and then we have tino's comment saying sometimes the easiest things are the best.
We had a lot of great dishes this summer in China, but the very best had been this Baozi from a small street restaurant in the west street of Yangzhou.
Baozi is the steam bond with filling it.
You can understand it as a different type of dumpling as well.
You have the wrap, you have the filling.
Baozi. But remember it as Baozi.
Baozi, it feels like a little bit more of a meal to me than a typical dumpling does because the baozi buns are about oh I don't know about yay big right and the filling inside is quite thick and the bread itself is quite thick so yeah you're only talking about one type of baozi we also have other types of baozi.
How many are there?
Several for example the wrap does not always have to be quite so thick it can be just really this one skin of wrap and it can be steamed but it can also be fried a little bit so there are again you come to China you will be surprised.
I've only had the thick one so far.
In fact I didn't even know that there were variations on that so I have more to try and for the Baozi the word itself Bao meaning wrap and here is a character transforming the verb into a noun.
So if you are rapping, then the wrapped thing is about it.
Ah. Got it! So quite easy.
Alright, Toril, you're gonna have to help me out with Toril's comment.
What does Toril say?
Well he, actually he or she, said that Oh my gosh.
You're using that word really a lot!
I know! but it's true my reactions are genuine dim sum I think is one of the foods we talked about it there's so many foods here in China that you'll probably never have you could live your whole life and probably never have the opportunity to try all of them but dim sum is one of the ones that people know internationally right everybody knows about it people eat this and other countries overseas and again variations on the fillings too right so chefs can get a little bit creative and again, with dim sum I love the pork and the shrimp filler, but my favorite is…do you know what I'm gonna say?
Shao long bao. Ah, see that's a different types of baozi.
With the soup inside.
Yes. Oh my goodness.
Do you know how they make that by the way?
How they make the, how they get the soup in, inside the little.
I think with the one that's steamed actually the filling would almost like yeah almost like melt a little bit.
Yeah they make like a jelly out of it and then when they heated that jelly melts.
My mind was blown when I saw the video of how they make that.
I love that. That's my favorite one.
I can eat that every day.
Ah that is a very nice dish you can try.
And the other comment actually goes to one of my favorite dish that's talking about hot pot is the most delicious food that I have tasted.
Yeah that comment is from Russell.
Thank you Russell for the comment and talking about foods that you can get everywhere.
Hot pot, you can get everywhere as well.
You can get everywhere.
And actually we have Ben saying hot pot, all arguments after this post are invalid.
Being very strong and aggressive.
Hot pot, yeah. Hot pot is another one of those dishes where you have to be careful about the level of the spice because you have the spicy, and then you have the not spicy.
Then, you can kind of tell, I think, judging just by looking at how red the sauce is on one particular side.
What I never tried outside of China, I've had hot pot outside of China before, and I just had the red spicy sauce on one side, and then the white not spicy sauce on the other side.
What I never tried before, before coming, was the tomato sauce.
Oh, there are so many different.
That's the, oh, there are even more.
There are even more.
See those are the ones that I've tried so far and I'm loving it.
But yeah, really affordable as well Well, here's my question with hotpot though.
The restaurants that I've seen around seem to be quite affordable Lunchtime spots where office workers will eat they want to eat quickly, right?
But I wonder is there like upscale versions of hot pot as well?
Or is this of course?
In China you can find upscale everything.
You can find upscale and also relatively or skill of everything so there are the very affordable type, but you can definitely find Kind of expensive hot pot as long as you put in all the in very expensive ingredient Yeah, that's the key.
That's the key. And also there are for example hot pot for especially seafood there can be hot pot for different types of mushrooms within the broth and then the Soup can be really, really tasty.
In Chinese, we would say, sian, sian mei, it's fresh.
It's refreshing with the essence of the ingredient.
You cannot really, well, I mean spice, when I'm talking about the seasoning, can be really important.
But if you are able to extract the essence of the ingredient that is the best in Chinese cuisine culture, in my opinion.
Oh my goodness, is this a food show?
Or are we learning Chinese?
Let's not make it a food show, Let's move on to transportation.
Actually, when it comes to transportation, one interesting comment we got is from Konrad, Konrad Rozi Ki saying Shanghai subway was impeccable and they even had a phone charger station in the car.
Oh, that's convenient.
That is convenient.
Yeah, I've been on the Beijing subway plenty of times now.
I wasn't looking for a charger.
Look for one, maybe you can find one!
I don't know if it's there or not.
Yeah. That's not something that you'll typically find in a Canadian or American subway.
I don't think a phone charger, I could be wrong.
I haven't been on all of them.
But yeah, that's an amazing little amenity that isn't often available.
Thank you, Konrad, for the comment.
And then we finally got that Aling comment.
Would you like to do the warner?
This is from Lase Stenborg, hi Lase.
Me on the train from Badaling to Beijing.
many, many, many years the challenge of learning Mandarin, as well as the existence of various dialects, is intriguing to many language enthusiasts.
Right. Yeah. This is actually very, very interesting.
And in the same time, when it comes to the bad ailing story, actually, we have Leis saying me on the train from bad ailing to Beijing many years ago a father tried to get a picture of his son, together with the exotic man from Sweden.
After long talking to the son, the father finally got his photo.
My experience from travel in China is 100 % positive and always perfect with flight, train, bus or taxi, however, I never dare to drive my car, myself.
It's easy to take the subway and the train, and driving is a whole different animal though, right?
Because every city around the world has its own driving culture and that can be a little bit harrowing for people who are new to it.
I don't know, I'd be interested to try to drive in Beijing though, it doesn't, am I wrong?
It doesn't look that bad.
It doesn't look that.
It doesn't look that bad.
It's not as bad? It's not that bad.
That's good to know, I'm gonna give it a try.
Yes, so you can give it a try.
I think when it comes to experiences, We hear say, that's like the clothing, the food, how you stay or where you stay and how you go to different places, transportation.
These are vital aspects of people's living here.
I mean, for our great China impression campaign.
We talked about your impression about the country and we don't want to raise the bar too high for those who have only been, for example, staying here for longer than half a year or so.
but for those of you who are visiting, actually transportation, is already a part that you would neglect if the experience is ordinary, yet if it's extraordinary it will definitely leave an impression in your heart.
Yeah, and I think the easier it is to get around for people when they're coming to a country for the first time, or even a second or third time, the easier it is to get around, the more it encourages people to come back and enjoy it again.
And I mentioned before that I went down to Xi 'an to see the Terracotta warriors and one of the reasons that I chose to do that trip is because of how easy it was to get there from Beijing.
Using the high -speed trains in China when you don't speak Chinese sounds like it's going to be an impossible experience doesn't it.
It's not at all. Even the app was in English so it was easy to book tickets, once getting to the train station it was easy to find which platform you were intended to go to, and it was a really lovely experience.
The train itself really clean, on time, exactly down to the one second on time, so you don't have to worry about it being late.
That's the train, but the subway itself clean, safe, again efficient in terms of time.
It's never late either, and there's plenty of them too.
One of the cool things that stood out to me, and this is on line one in particular, and I'm not sure if the lines are different.
Oh, by the way, if you wanna have a little bit of a chuckle, go onto the internet and search Beijing Subway Map, and look at the size of that.
That's what I mean by chuckle, because if you compare it to, I'm Canadian, remember, so if you compare it to other Canadian cities that have subway systems, it's huge, it's enormous, but my experience.
And it's expanding, it's growing as well.
Yeah, and it's getting bigger and bigger, figure, but my experience being on the subway itself, all the things I said it's stress free actually and it's English friendly if English is a language that you're comfortable with if you don't speak Chinese, it's easy to get around.
But if you get to speak Chinese, you can also interact with people during your journey and you can talk to people besides you and if they figure you speak Chinese, they would be very happy to talk to you and they will be giving you advice and you can even make friends with these people, and that actually leads us to the next theme of our little China Impression Campaign, that is friendship, because essentially, when we communicate with people from another country, when we go to another culture, go into deep into another civilization, the most important thing is to have people to people exchange.
I'm talking about real people talking to someone who's actually been already in the civilization, in the society, for long enough so they understand, or they have their first -hand experience and be friends with them.
This person will be a door open for you into the culture you're looking at.
Absolutely. 100%. I mean if you're going to come to any country around the world, what would be the point of just staying in your apartment?
the whole time and never talking to anyone when you get out and you try the foods and you get on the public transportation to your stranger next to you.
Why not? And here's my experience of being in China for a relatively short time.
Chinese people are very friendly.
Beijing people are quite friendly, as a matter of fact, particularly to expats I would say.
But people will generally not come up and talk to you, right?
We're very nice. Introvert in a way.
That's not a criticism at all because that doesn't happen in Toronto or Montreal or Vancouver or New York or Paris or anywhere.
So it's not a criticism.
But here's my point, people will generally not approach you.
They won't pay any attention to you.
Why would they? But if you do ask for help, ask for directions, or if you do happen to say something to someone, If you look really lost.
Yeah. Yeah, you will be helped for sure, people are really helpful and friendly here.
And if you're lucky enough to spend a little longer time in the country and make some real friends, then beautiful stories will come up.
For example, actually we've got a very fun story shared by Carla Canala is an internationally renowned opera singer.
She has an unforgettable photo taken in Xiamen, East China's Fujian province, and she has a very lovely story behind that picture.
Hi I'm Carla Canales and I just wanted to tell you about this photo.
This moment actually really meant a lot to me.
I think the photo it shows it expresses the joy that we both felt in this moment.
This was backstage right after the performance that took place in Xiamen, Maestro Zhen Shouying who is 95 years old and founded and leads the Zhen Shouying opera center, of course a very renowned conductor and educator in China.
I was just so, so happy to be backstage with her afterward and enjoy the music that we had made together and the moment of deep friendship.
So this photo really sort of, I think, encapsulates that moment, and her smile just means the world to me.
A smiling conductor after performance means everything to any performer but to have someone who's kind of my hero.
Give me such a big smile.
It was a moment I'll never forget.
A lovely, lovely story, isn't it?
Yeah. What else do we have?
Erwin Gerber. Erwin left us a message on Facebook from Germany.
Lived in China for many years and found love here in China as well.
So it was just so, most emotional picture I have.
Yeah, That was taken in Shashi on a very old Asian bridge.
The sun comes down and it was really, was the right moment in the right time.
It was very nice. I think it was made in 2019.
So we had no kids this time.
So we were only by our own.
It was nice. I'm not sure that I was thinking anything.
It was only at a really deep moment with my wife.
Very happy to be there.
And of course, if we talk about those who are not particularly already very keen to the Chinese culture and everything, who are a little bit intimidated even by the Chinese language, then I have something that you would definitely, well, besides food, find very, very interested in.
That is the very very beautiful sight scene you get to see here in China when we say China is a vast country It's for sure and you can find different types of beautiful scene Beautiful sight in different places and we've received a lot of comments about the places they have visited And they've even sent us the picture they took they shared that kind of beautiful scenery with us And I have to admit I, myself, haven't even been to all of these places.
Sure. The majority of these places, for example, I know for those of you who don't understand Chinese, I'm only listing different places, but actually these are different places in China with different styles, with different types of beauty.
We have the very magnificent ones.
So we have the relatively speaking, delicate but very precious elegant ones.
We have the kind of pictures that is all green if you take a look at it.
The green picture showcases the lake, showcases the huge trees surrounding the lake, and also there are relatively artificial sites.
You've got the modern scene, you've got for example beautiful lights decorating the night time city, so all of these can be found in China and hopefully it's yours to explore.
Yeah I mean I guess it shouldn't be surprising the country is so big that you have so many different types of landscapes.
You have rivers and streams and mountains and, I mean, just have a look online and you can see all of the it's like you're going to different corners of the world when in fact you're still all in the same country.
There's literally everything here.
And talking about transportation before, how convenient it is to get around from place to place, high -speed train and what have you.
Airplanes, of course, as well.
But you don't have to do too much that's uncomfortable for you to get from location to location.
And then one location will be very, very different looking from the one you just came from.
Yeah, so thinking about it is quite amazing country -wise.
We have 75 years of history, of development, of transformation, and we have to admit that for the last 10 years or so, we witnessed the fastest speed of development.
If you take a look at your life 10 years ago, it's completely different from the ones today we have.
We are enjoying. We scan a QR code everywhere.
We do not bring our wallet anywhere.
We use official recognition.
We talk to chatbot online, and all of these changes happen over the course of the past decade or so and if we're talking about the past 75 years of course actually we've in another show we did a little comparison and also nostalgia remembering trying to collect and compare notes kind of thing talking about the development we yeah we actually experience the way it used to be versus the way it is now yes and it has been quite different and actually culture wise well for the Chinese culture it has been there for it has been here for thousands of years and we are very thankful for that thousands of years
because without the past we cannot really have the present.
Yes of course you can't get to where you're going until you've figured out where you came from and also appreciate that as well.
Yeah so even though now it kinda is like a China impression but I always call it my China impression because I feel like experience -wise it's quite personalized.
Yeah. Everyone would have their very unique and precious little story that they cherish for the rest of their life, or the entire of their life.
But yes, for the China Impression Campaign, now, well we'll always be looking for comments, but this is kind of like a grand celebration of that campaign, of that online event, but we'll always keep on looking for more comments, more ideas, more stories that you would like to share with us.
Absolutely. I really enjoyed seeing or hearing those comments from the people who had been to China for either a short time or a long time because I've only been here for a short time, so it's nice to hear other people's impressions as well.
It's kind of like knowing what you're getting into a little bit.
A little bit. But, you know, when you come to a place for the first time, of course you have certain feelings or certain impressions of things.
So, you know, not everyone has the same opinion.
So it was really cool to kind of see how other people see things as well.
So... It's a wonderful opportunity today.
Yes. And that brings us to the end of today's Takeaway Chinese.
I'm Yeoholin with Steve Hatherly in the studio.
For more episodes of the show, you can visit our website at Radio .CQTN .com and go to the Column Podcast.
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Bye -bye!
