Secret ingredients in your Chinese food

For the readers who are not Chinese, ever wonder how some of the Chinese food gets its flavors from? Well, the Chinese have historically been very analytical when it comes to eating. Some of the techniques are very creative and imparts a great deal of flavor to the food. One of the most popular techniques is drying certain ingredients in order to concentrate the flavor. Then these ingredients are typically used in soups and other dishes.

When I was in Hong Kong this past month, I took the liberty of taking pictures of some of these ingredients. Please be forewarn that if you see these pictures, you may never look at your seafood special the same again!

Some dried shrimp


Some roots


Dried Oysters, very flavorful.


Shark fin. Actually imparts very little flavor, but it is damn expensive.


I am not even sure what these are. Looks like dried lizards



Some squid and shrimp being dried on a street somewhere in Kowloon.

Tobacco Road

Ask anyone who has traveled through China and I think one of the deepest impressions that will emerge is the prevalence of smoking. Smoking is very much a social activity as drinking is here in China. The vast majority of the smokers here in China are men.

There is very much a boys club in Chinese culture where men would gather socially. These gatherings could be among friends or business associates. Sometimes it is very hard to differentiate between friends and business associates. Smoking, like drinking is a bond that ties these social groups together. Offering another man cigarettes is a sign of friendship. It is common etiquette to see packs of zhong hua (中华)cigarettes place at each table of a Chinese wedding banquet. Zhong hua are the most expensive brand of cigarettes in China costing around 50 RMB (6.75USD) per pack compared to the common cigarettes costing between 3 to 7 RMB (.50USD-1.00USD). This is almost akin to men passing out cigars to friends to announce a child is expected in the family back in America.

Of course, once a man starts to smoke to get ahead socially he will carry that into his personal life. The result of that is you will see men smoking almost everywhere.

One of the most annoying thing for us here in China is the second hand smoke in restaurants. With very little laws that deals with smoking, restaurants are filled with smokers puffing away throughout their meal.

For the most part, the workplace is no sanctuary for a smoke free environment. In some offices like where my wife works, smoking is allowed after 5PM. She tells me that when she works overtime (which is often), over half of the office is puffing away.


I took the above picture in a men's room stall in an office building. As we can see China makes it very convenient for smokers to puff away even when they are in the crapper.

Hong Kong

Me and the wife visited Hong Kong last weekend and had a pleasant time. This was the first time that we both visited Hong Kong together.

There is a distinctly different atmosphere between Hong Kong and Shanghai. Even though both have spanking new high rise buildings, fast pace and Chinese people, there was a different feel to Hong Kong. The pace was actually faster than Shanghai, but there is far more civility in Hong Kong. The streets in Hong Kong was perhaps even more congested with humanity than Shanghai in areas like Causeway Bay and Mongkok. The thing that was noticeably missing in Hong Kong are the ubiquitous bicycles and motor scooters present in Shanghai.

We did some shopping for things which are lacking in quality in Shanghai. For me it was a pair of shoes. Chinese branded shoes in China are decidedly inferior. I purchased a pair of Chinese brand sneakers about a year ago and after a month, I had to toss them because the soles of my feet were starting to hurt me. The imported brands are more expensive in Shanghai than Hong Kong due to the high import tax in China. So I made out with a pair of good comfortable shoes during our visit.

The food in Hong Kong is also much better than Shanghai. The best of all is that many restaurants are open late into the night which is really not the case in Shanghai. The kind of night life that I experienced in Hong Kong exceeds even New York and I really missed that during my time in Shanghai.

Needless to say, I think I will be visiting Hong Kong sometime in the future again.