The Three Basic Sins and Beijing Food

“Life is not about eat, sleep, pee-pee/poo-poo” was the favorite wisdom my uncle passed down to his two children to warn them from having their life governed by these three basic deeds.

It seems to me that I committed all three in the last three months. Each sin is guided by the nature of my traveling in each specific country.

2 Sleep in Russia

I did more than just sleeping in Russia but since the focus of my travel here was doing the Trans-Siberian railway crossing half of Russia, the largest country in the world, thus I spent a lot of my time on the train. Looking out the train windows, taking notes and cranking out few basic conversation made me bored after a while, so I felt asleep. And if I didn’t sleep, I watched others sleeping. On top of that, I always had the top berth, and those who sat below me filled the shared table with their stuffs, usurped the entire seat with their legs or woke up very late. I was forced to climb up to my private quarter which wasn’t designed for sitting, thus I had to lie down. I lied therefore I slept. That was basically my train routine.

3 … in Mongolia

Ok I did this everywhere and I also did many other things in Mongolia, but somehow I found going to the toilet in Mongolia was much more different and stimulating as an adventure on its own. (I even wrote a post about that.) I spent most of my time in Mongolia traveling in a van, staying in a ger or tent and walking in nature. Well, you can guess where I had my toilet break. It was either everywhere in nature, next to a ger, next to a tent or next to a van. This kind of every-where-is-my-toilet was completely normal and acceptable in Mongolia. It was so convenient that I miss it a lot when I was back into civilization. Every now and then when I feel the nature call, my mind immediately drifts back to once upon a time in Mongolia.

1 Eat in China

I became obsessed with food in Beijing. Either I was eating food, on my way to get food or think about what kind of food I wanted to eat later. Beijing reminded me of the food culture which I left 17 years ago: the street stalls which opened since early dawn until past midnight selling various kinds of noodles and snacks. Yes I could eat Chinese, Vietnamese and Asian food in California, but this required half an hour or some hours of driving to China town or specific Asian restaurants. Yes I ate Vietnamese in Prague but this limited to the weekend when I had time to make an hour bus trip to the Vietnamese market which sold only a handful of Vietnamese dishes. Don’t mention Chinese food in the Czech Republic as it wasn’t Chinese. One Chinese even confirmed with me that out of 50 dishes he sold in the restaurant, only three they ate back home.

I felt like a hungry bird thrown back in familiar territory; I ate with abandon. In my last 36 days in Mongolia, I ate only instant noodles, processed snacks and greasy, unseasoned mutton, fried rice and plenty of dairy products (milk tea, dried sour milk, sweet cheese, fermented horse milk, yak cream). It wasn’t by choice as there wasn’t such thing as food culture in Mongolia; they ate the same greasy, plain food everywhere. Beijing, thus, was a paradise. Off all places I could have stayed in Beijing, I chose Leo Hostel located on Da Zha Lan Xi Jie, the market street. Every building is a shop or a restaurant. They opened as early at six in the morning until the next morning. Everything I found lacking in the Western world and Mongolia, I found it here in Beijing: noodles, noodle soup, hot pot, meat-filled dumpling, sweet bean-filled buns, grilled everything on the sticks (tofu, seafood, meatball, grasshoppers, crickets, chicken, lambs, etc), all parts of the animals (tripe, livers, hearts, guts, head, feet, etc.), salty snacks, fresh fruit (mandarin, orange, banana, grapes), fresh juice, sweet drink, Beijing yogurt and the ever-present Beijing greasy ducks. I could care less about Tianamen square, Forbidden City, Summer Palace and the museums as I was occupied by another part of Chinese culture: food. You will miss a lot of China if you don’t eat.

I don’t care if they put rat, cat, dog, snake in the food or use carton board to make the dumpling.

I don’t care if I’m committing my uncle’s three greatest sins.