Ode to Street Food

In my final days in Kunming, I feel it is necessary to write a bit of thank you to one of the city's features that I have enjoyed the most: the street food.

In other countries, going for a walk can be considered exercise, a healthy activity. But not here. As I walk down the street, I see the little stands cooking and selling the food I have become rather attatched to and I am rarely able to walk by without grabbing something small to eat. If I have just eaten a spicy meal (as if often the case) there is nothing better than a yogurt (eaten with a straw here instead of a spoon) to cool my mouth. If I'm feeling a bit unhealthy, I can always go for a magnum bar instead. For this addiction, I blame Julia. There are also the various fruits and vegetables that make for a great snack. You can by a sizeable bag of tangerine-type-things for 10 RMB (about $1.25). Even better are the asian pears - not quite as flavorful as the american pear, but crispyer and bigger. There are also bananas and oranges and a lady near Julia's home that will pick out the best orange for you if you ask nicely. And the tamarind. For those who are not familiar with this fruit, I do not know how to describe it except that it is long, brown and skinny. You will have to look it up online and take my word for it - delicious.

But this is only the healthy food. Several mornings a week, when I am walking between the gym and Chinese class, I fall victim to the following: a long piece of fried bread, smothered in a sweet peanut sauce, and wrapped in a thin rice...tortillia thing. It's like a tortillia but a little bit thicker and made from rice instead of flower. It's all cooked until brown and a little crispy before being assembled and the peanut sauce melts and gets everywhere. It is amazing. The french have crepes, the mexicans have wraps, and the Chinese have this.

Other days, I fall victim to something else. It is like a pancake, but much thicker and a tad less caky and the dough is slightly sweetened so that you don't need to put syrup or anything on it. For yi kuai wu, you can watch one of these things be cooked and delivered to your piggy little hands any morning of the week. It is big enough to be the whole breakfast, but since my family never lets me leave the house without eating, I tend to have one as an after breakfast snack.

The last thing I will talk about is fried milk. It sounds a bit strange, I'm aware, but stick with me. A long strip of fried milk (in solid form) is placed over a fire to cook until just barely brown and then as it is wrapped around a pair of chopsticks, it is smothered in a rose and sugar sauce. The equivalent of a corn dog, this milk-on-stick combination is about as tasty as it gets. If it wasn't guaranteed to drip everywhere when you eat it, I would probably have had several more during my days at Kunming. As it was, I had to avoid the fried milk on days when I wore anything white....or anything that I cared about for that matter.

I lied, there is more. On the street, one can also obtain a chinese omelet as well as fried chicken and fried potatoes and even cooked sweet potatoes. And how could I forget, the boiled corn on the cob and the strange over sized melons.

The list goes on and on. I would have happily lived off of nothing but street food as it is amazing. I sincerely hope that every gets a chance to go to China one day and has the guts to try all of it. Aside from the occasional upset stomach and unpleasant bowel movements, you will not be sorry.