Summer Time! (And The Living Is Easy)

Way back when I first arrived, I asked Wang Dapeng what kind of foods Harbiners liked to eat in winter.

An odd question, you might thing, but I still remembered the stinging embarassment of trying to order dog in Shenzhen in the summer, and being roundly mocked. Imagine! Wanting a heating 'yang' food like dog in this heat!

"Hotpot... dogmeat... washed down with plenty of beer" instantly came the reply.

Now, with the temperature consistently hitting double-digits, I asked Dapeng what was suitable for summer dining. He struggled a bit more with this.

"Cold noodles... and barbecue... washed down with plenty of beer".

In reality, barbecue is pretty popular year round, but the difference in summer is that everyone spills out of the pokey little restaurants and onto plastic picnic tables on the pavement.

From nowhere, barrels of beer appear which, despite sitting out in the sun all day, magically emit chilled (if a little flat) stream after chilled stream of golden nectar.

Chunky half-litre glasses, emblazoned with domestic beer brands are fished out from murky buckets of water sat on the pavement (because glasses are never carefully cleaned, just swilled out) and invariably filled with a completely different rival beer, which is used to wash down the sticks of beef tendon, sheep testicles, silkworm larva and hairy eggs.

It's all very sociable. I've seen big groups chatting away over beer after beer, staying so long that they repeatedly send sticks back to be reheated (and totally violating one of the primary rules of food safety).

As a bonus, the smoke from the nearby barbecue stand cleverly masks the smoke from neighbouring tables' Double Happiness or, if they're really feeling fancy, Panda Brand cigarettes.

And just like a barbecue back in Blighty (but with less rain) sitting so close to the action means I can take a memento home with me - my hair and clothes all have a nice barbecue flavour!