Let me start off by saying this: I like Chinese food. In fact, I have never disliked Chinese food. Over the years I have been asked this question many times by many many Chinese people, and the answer has always been, and will continue to be a resounding yes. Chinese food is great, I have nothing against it. So why is it, my husband often wonders, that I still spend hundreds of RMB on trips to the Western grocery store, occasionally feel the need to have a coffee and a sandwich at a local cafe, and why can’t I be content to, like the billions of Chinese people on the planet, eat Chinese food every single day of my entire life?

I think the answer is simple. Westerners are spoiled by variety and we get bored easily. Back home on any given I can choose between Italian food, Mexican food, Vietnamese food, Chinese food, Indian food, and pretty much any other cuisine on the planet. I can make these international delicacies in my home, or I can go out to eat. If I choose to go out to eat, well, then I can go to the cheap taco stand on the corner, or I can go to a classy authentic Monterrey style eatery. When it comes to food, we have a lot of choices, probably more choices than anyone realistically needs.

China lacks that variety when it comes to food. Which isn’t to say that there isn’t a huge variety of styles and flavors within Chinese food, and regional differences can account for a large range of tastes, but it still isn’t really the same thing. And while the flavors of the dishes change, the basic premise of most Chinese food is usually fairly consistent. You get dishes stir fried meat or vegetables, sweet, spicy, savory. You get dumplings. You get noodles. There’s always the rice. Sometimes there’s tofu, and usually there’s a soup. Of course, there’s more to it than that, and there are exotic sides to Chinese cuisine – Xinjiang food, with its middle-eastern flavors, or Dai food, with its Thai sensibilities – but the pattern usually remains the same. And the Chinese food that most of us eat day in day out, the “homestyle dishes,” do not offer a huge amount of variety. When my husband cooks our meals we have about a 90% chance of eating some combination of either rib or chicken soup, fried egg and tomatoes, fried potatoes, fried pork with ginger, fried cabbage, or cold cucumber. While I know that many Chinese housewives are veritable gourmets, we eat what the majority of simple people living simple lives in this country eat.

My husband does not understand my need for culinary variety. He does not understand why I don’t want to eat pork ribs two nights in a row, or why I’d rather make myself some pasta for lunch than have last night’s leftover chicken soup. He gripes most of all about the expense of Western food. And on this point, at least, he is correct. Western food costs, on average, at least twice what a similar sized Chinese meal would cost. Imported snacks and goodies at the grocery store cost imported prices: 50RMB for a box of cereal, 30RMB for a bag of chips. Part of this is simply a difference in economy. In America our snacks cost more than Chinese snacks in China cost, but food in America is in general more expensive than food in China. When eating Western food in China one must factor in the cost of importing ingredients, not to mention training staff, and on top of that, there’s the exotic factor, where Western places hike up the price simply because they can.

So is it worth it, the added hassle, the extra effort, just to eat something familiar, to get that variety? It all depends, I suppose. My first six months in China I rarely ate Western food. I was a poor student, for one, and couldn’t afford it, and for another, I was still quite taken with the novelty of the local cuisine. Even now, six years in China and counting, I run into foreigners who spurn Western food. Why would I eat that trash when there is so much delicious Chinese food available, and so cheap? There are many foreigners in China who take the quest for authenticity to what I consider an extreme, including many of these Chinese food purists. For the record, I don’t think my life in China is any less authentic because I hit up McDonald’s for a burger now and then or because I made enchiladas instead of jiaozi last night. For me, Western food is like watching downloaded episodes of House MD, or spending 100RMB on imported English language books. At some point most of us expats start to crave a bit of home, and luckily for us, most big cities in China can provide us with some reminders of what we left behind. So don’t feel bad if you’d rather pass on the fried rice and munch on some french fries, or if you just couldn’t resist the temptation of Starbucks on your way into work this morning. While dining on purely Western fare can leave a large dent in your wallet (although if you’re working for Google or Microsoft, maybe you can afford it!), most of us will not suffer for the occasional indulgence. So when my husband frowns at my food choices, I ask him what he would be eating if the tables were turned and we were living in my home country. No doubt we’d be on first name basis with the Golden Panda and Szechwan Palace, and our fridge would be packed with tofu, cabbage, and pork ribs.
 

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