Hedonistic Hotpot Happiness

Sad but true, I've been dreaming about having hotpot for months, since getting back from China the last time.

According to the Chinese Zodiac, people born in the Year of the Pig are inclined towards leading contented lives, filled with simple pleasures, particularly deriving happiness from food. Now, I'm no great believer in Astrology in general, but if that's my destiny, then being a pig suits me just fine.

Chinese culture also places a huge emphasis on food. Textbooks here teach students that Westerners will engage in bizarre small-talk involving the weather or sports-related news, rather than (naturally) enquiring if one has eaten yet; and business is as likely to be concluded around a Lazy Susan piled high with food, than around a boardroom table stacked with briefs and contracts.

There are a myriad colourful fixed expressions and idioms that refer to food, often pertaining to completely unrelated issues. Ones that I've heard include "Throwing a dumpling to hit a dog" (to describe the futility of petitioning Government); "Even a talented wife cannot cook without rice" (or "You can't make something out of nothing"); "Don't tie your shoes in a melon field" (advice not to do anything to arouse suspicion); and there are thousands more I'm itching to discover.

All this is to rationalise my (possibly) excessive happiness at going out to eat hotpot. Being new in town, it's been tough finding anyone to eat with, so when Wang Da Peng called to suggest meeting up later that evening for a bite to eat I didn't waste a second in saying "好!"

Hotpot is an inherently communal activity. A huge pot of soup is placed in the middle of the table, and heated with coals, gas, or in less traditional joints, an electric hob. Fresh ingredients, and occasionally partially cooked items such as meat balls, are brought to your table, and you throw them in to boil. While you wait, you can snack on cold appetisers like salted peanuts, pickled vegetables, and pig-skin jelly, or if you have some seniority, you can make elaborate toasts and get everyone to drink lots on an empty stomach.

Here's the pot: As you can see, this actually has two types of soup - a spicy red variety, and a regular soup-coloured type. Seen from above, the S-shaped divider and the two distinct colours gives the whole pot the appearance of the Yin and Yang symbol. Normally, the naming alludes to that symbolism, but this restaurant opted instead to name it something extremely practical, like "Ordinary and Spicy. Two types of soup"!

Underneath you can see the electric hotplate which has fancy buttons and an electronic display. Purists would argue this takes the art out of regulating the temperature and the cooking times, but I reckon this makes it easier to concentrate on stuffing my face.

This is a big pile of raw lamb. It's sliced paper-thin and cooks in seconds, soaking up plenty of flavour in the process.

The restaurant, 鼎鑫火锅 is part of a decent-sized chain. While 'chain-store' might be a dirty-word in the world of good eating back home, here it signals that the produce is fresh. In my experience, and at the risk of making a sweeping generalisation, the Chinese are very discerning eaters, so its popularity itself suggests that the food is good. Case in point? Typically, despite the preponderance of small family-run hotpot restaurants where I live, we walked a good mile or more for the superior dining 鼎鑫火锅 had to offer.

This is a bunch of mushrooms. Nothing special but I liked the presentation - they arrived in a heavy vase.

As a big chain, the restaurant ran a tight ship. The waitress held a clipboard filled with barcodes in one hand and a little scanner in the other, and beeped through orders as quick as Da Peng could read them out. They presumably went straight to the kitchen (or, more accurately I suppose, 'preparation rooms') because food started arriving almost immediately.

This is a big plate of what I thought were intestines. Turns out that it was actually 骨髓 (bone marrow), but I have no idea how it gets extracted so cleanly. The texture is soft and fibre-less, halfway between a marshmallow and Mr. Whippy ice-cream, and it has a juicy, slightly meaty flavour. More importantly, it's great for your immune system!

I should explain. There's an idea in Chinese that eating something will improve the corresponding part on the eater. Thus, eating heart will improve the heart, eating skin might improve complexion, and so on. There's even a succint phrase to describe it, namely 吃什么， 补什么 ("eat what, nourish what"). I suppose there's some scientific basis to it - after all, the nutritional composition of, say, a pig's brain, is going to be pretty similar to a person's.

I've also been told, with a straight face, that eating something that just looks like something else also has a positive effect, so eating walnuts (which look like brains) will boost brainpower. To this day, I don't know if that's a case of mock-the-foreigner, or a genuine case of Chinese medicine gone fantastically awry.

There's a fanatical devotion to freshness in much of Chinese cooking, and many larger restaurants have a collection of large fish tanks at the entrance. Da Peng wanted to order a 黑鱼 (snakeheaded fish), but the smallest they had was two kilograms, so we opted for an eel instead. This place was no exception in its devotion to freshness. The waiter turned up a few minutes after we'd placed the order, clutching a little red bucket in which an eel was flopping about. Da Peng examined it, brow furrowed, like he was tasting a particularly complex wine, then nodded his approval. A few minutes later it came back as pictured. Note that they include the head. The eyes are meant to be the best bit! Once cooked, the fish peeled apart into thick, creamy chunks.

We also had an order of duck's blood. It's partially dried then strained to form a solid block, before being sliced into cubes or thick slices as shown here. The texture's comparable to tofu, and the taste is quite subtle, but with a hint of meatiness. Not as outlandish as it might seem at first sight. Black pudding, after all, is a relatively popular foodstuff back home, and a breakfast one at that. Whatever the case, however you cut it, this dish is never going to look good.

A final quick note about conversation, lest I give the impression I'm neglecting my Chinese practice. Topics ranged more widely than I can hope to recall - the Olympics, Harbin's benzene spill, local wage rates (apparently, a shocking 2.5RMB/hour at KFC), the difference in sporting cultures around the world, learning languages, the best places to live in China, local and government-level bureaucracy, and food, food, and more food. I reckon I kept up quite well, but needed reiteration on the more technical vocabulary. My Chinese definitely improved after a few beers though!

So four gluttonous hours and five beers each later, we stepped into Harbin's winter streets, the icy air cutting through the wooziness of the food and warmth. Da Peng, harking back to an earlier conversation, tried to buy me some unusual, and unidentifiable meat-on-a-stick from a street hawker! This I had to decline, at serious risk of doing permanent damage to my stomach. Ming Yue offered to treat me to dog-meat next time, and with that, we headed our separate ways.