FOOD AND ACCOMMODATION GUIDE by David

Just outside Kaili in southern China is Xi Jiang, a Miao (local ethnic minority) town comprising perhaps a hundred or so mediaeval looking rustic timber houses tumbling down a hillside. It is night-time and the hillside is now alive with hundreds of pin pricks of light from the houses. While our surrounds are quiet, low down some coloured lights flash and almost western music wafts up to our ears and provide reassurance that there is still life on the street. Inside our guesthouse (perched over the valley and reached from a central car park by a labyrinth of uncertain steps and narrow paths winding this way and that up the steep hillside), bare, very basic, and cheap (AUD7 per room)), Will and I sit on low stools at a low table with members of the Miao family guesthouse owners, Michelle (our constant guide) and four labourers working nearby who seem to fit oddly in our group (or perhaps we are the oddities?). We are to eat together. Our meal, prepared by the women family members, comprises seven dishes, unexpected rice wine (which is made in the guesthouse, is milky in colour and poured from a metal kettle (!)) and of course a wooden barrel of hot, sticky rice set to one side as it is too large to fit easily on the table. For the sake of completeness and to provide a flavour (sorry) of the style of the wonderful food we are eating more broadly in China, I list the main ingredients of each dish:
Tofu, finely cut spring onion, fried pork cut small, tomato and scrambled eggs, mixed well
Beans & pork, cut small, garlic, all in its own juice
Cauliflower and tomato pieces in its own juice
Straws of smoked pork and dry tofu (unusual compared with the normal soft and damp variety)
Spinach, lightly steamed with small pieces of fried garlic
Straws of curling fried potato, with small pieces of tomato and larger cut leak leaves, and
A watery soup with large pieces of lettuce and tomato, cubed (normal) tofu, and finely cut spring onion.

While the meal (which is delicious), is the main focus, Will and I ceremoniously share cups of the wine with the head of the family, 71 year old Li Fuzhong. Later his daughter in law Zhang Xiu sings a Miao welcome song, for Will, me and Michelle (sung three times!). We are touched by this totally unexpected expression of welcome, sung to complete strangers. It is generous and genuine.
On the seemingly never ending road, Michelle continues to navigate for us, check and arrange hotel accommodation, select restaurants and order food. The restaurants range from very cheap street-side cafés with a couple of laminex topped tables and benches or small stools (costing very little at times - for instance last night’s meal of delicious white noodles in a steaming and spicy broth with quail eggs and greens, together with a couple of bottles of local Chero beer, drunk from flimsy plastic cups, cost AUD2.60 for three people), to more formal restaurants in larger cities, and with correspondingly larger prices.

Eating on the street, as we did this night here in Xi’an brings a strange (for us) reaction from locals (apart from those in the occasional tourist city, we see no other westerners) passing or eating as we were: in a small number they simply stand and stare at us as we sit and eat at our little table! They appear fascinated, particularly by Will, and we are told foreigners rarely eat as we try to do (“normal” foreigners, at least in their experience or expectation, eat in expensive restaurants or hotels, not with the locals!). On our part, we were fascinated to see the cook’s assistant standing next to a very large wok set over a fierce open flame, strip off individual noodles from a slab of dough like noodle base - the noodles quickly fly off his knife and land in the rapidly boiling wok adjacent. His arm action is not dissimilar from that of a musician very rapidly playing a violin! I stood and stared at him…

Occasionally getting a hotel to accept Will and I (we are called foreigners) is a problem and we need to try another, as all hotels in China are required to register us with the local police and on six occasions to date accommodation has been refused as the police have not given permission for us to stay at particular hotels, or the hotel staff know that they are not permitted to accept foreigner guests. The reasons for this refusal are unclear but there appears to be an element of foreigner safety being of concern. We are mystified…

Slowly and carefully, given the traffic volume in cities, road conditions (which range from excellent toll roads to the very rough and, not unusually, under repair or construction) and erratic local driving patterns we face every day, we head north. Mongolia is now four driving days from Xi’an.…