There are many different types of fillings for chinese dumplings, some vegetarian and some with meat, we decided to go down the healthy path and made Fennel and Fried Egg dumplings (茴香鸡蛋饺子）. Whilst at first glance dumplings may look quite simple, it does actually take a while to get the nack of wrapping up the filling into the neat little parcels – Ayi (it’w what we call our landlord and actually means Aunty) made it all look so simple, but then again she has probably been making these since she was about 8 years old and so has plenty of experience.

Finally, after producing the dough, rolling it out and making up the little bundles of fun, it was time to rock and roll. Not rocket science here – dump all the dumplings in a pan of boiling water and boil for about five minutes before draining in a colander. As for the rest of the story, I think it had something to do with a bowl of dipping sauce (vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil) and shortly afterwards a rather empty looking plate… yum!!

Siqi + Ayi

Rolling out the dumpling wrapping

Expert Advice

Filling Dumplings

Filling Dumplings

Learning from the expert

Here's one I made earlier

Boiling Dumplings

Bowl of Steaming Dumplings

On my regular market shop a couple of days ago, I managed to buy all the following for just £2.08

That includes Chinese Spinach, Garland chrysanthemum, Broad Beans, a dozen eggs, Spinach, Ginger Root, Garlic, Courgette, Chinese Onion, Tofu and Vermicelli. In fact, without the vermicelli, all of that would have cost just £1.28. So yes… the prices have gone up, even in China. However, there is nothing for me to worry about for a while yet!

In the UK, as far as I know (and unless things have changed since I left about 8 months ago) recycling is on a completely voluntary basis. Furthermore, recycling is actually quite a hassle. Our house (back in Kendal) is full of tubs of empty cans, empty bottles, cardboard and plastics ready to be taken to the local council waste disposal site for recycling – a trip that we have to make ourselves in the car every week. OK, admittedly, the council introduced a new recycling scheme where all households now get a couple of small crates for cans and bottles which are emptied every week. However, this is completely unrealistic for a number of reasons:

• Most households get through quite a few glass bottles, jars and tin cans in a week. A small crate is hardly going to be big enough.
• Plastics and organic waste form the largest part of household waste and yet neither of these are catered for in the scheme.
• There is no incentive for you to go to the trouble of scrubbing out your glass jars and tin cans and putting them in the crate. You are not penalised in the slightest if you are lazy and just chuck them in the general waste bin.

China on the other hand – lets remind ourselves, a developing nation – has got things completely sorted. Recycling here is on a freelance basis. All over the place there are people riding three-wheeled bikes with trailers who collect rubbish for recycling. Likewise there are a number of fixed recycling stations (you are never more than a 5 minute walk away from one) where you can take your recyclable waste. Instead of wasting some petrol driving halfway accross town every fortnight on a voluntary basis, here you are remunerated for the waste you hand in – you actually sell it to the recyclers!

Recycling is no big money maker but to put things in perspective a couple of months worth of waste hoarded up in a cupboard in my kitchen made me 11 yuan when I took it along to the recycling lady last week. If we put that into context, its enough to buy you a Cheeseburger and Chips in any of Beijing’s McDonalds chains (not that I like McDonalds but its pretty good price reference). In the UK a Cheeseburger and Chips would set you back about £2.00-£2.20 so I guess you would make about that much money in the UK. Furthermore, in Beijing I actually don’t really use anything tinned (Chinese people aren’t really into tinned food) and I hardly stock any jars either. For a family of 5 in the UK who get though considerably more tins, jars and bottles than I do here in Beijing you could be making pounds a week by recycling rather than throwing away your household waste.

I know things aren’t perfect here in China and there is a lot to be done. However, I think that the UK government could learn a thing or two from China and other countries who run similar schemes (Canada, Germany etc). Its all well telling everybody to save the planet but few people will actually go and do anything about it unless there is some incentive there for them to take action.

Normal Chinese supermarkets are a bit of a letdown in this domain – occasionally Carrefour has a dedicated aisle or two which sells ‘Frosties’ breakfast cereal or ‘Nutella’ chocolate spread, all of which are pricey, but in general its pretty hard to get your hands on what you’re after. Bit of a no-go.

Another option is Wudaokou or Chaoyang – two areas of Beijing where foreigners are particularly numerous. Here you may find small specialist dealers that will sell you Mcvities digestive biscuits, HP sauce and all those other necessities that us foreigners need (or think we need). All these things come at extortionate prices but the shops rely on the fact that these things can’t be bought elsewhere and so I’m sure they still make a fair amount of money out of us.

The king of foreign produce in Beijing has to be a German Cash and Carry chain called ‘Metro’ which is absolutely gigantic. Luckily Siqi uses her mum’s membership card that lets us get in. Here you can get all of the essentials required to whip up an Italian pasta dish (pasta, ‘Sacla’ sauces, and mozzarella cheese) and you can also stock up on your biscuits, chocolates, wine and spirits. However, like everywhere else, all this might risk putting a hole in your pocket if you fail to restrain yourself!

The final option for buying in international produce is to log onto the Chinese equivalent of eBay, Taobao. Unlike eBay which doesn’t allow the selling of food products online, Taobao probably has more international produce available than all the other places I’ve mentioned above put together. So far I’ve used it to buy a massive tub of Thai Red Curry paste, Thai Fish sauce, Kaffir Lime Leaves and some other bits and pieces necessary for putting together a Thai Red Curry. The amazing thing is that all this arrived the day after I ordered it and not too pricey either. I think that of all the options available in Beijing, this is probably the best choice and also the most convenient.

To sum things up, most things can be bought over here but it all depends on how much you are willing to pay. A simple pasta dish that might be eaten two or three times a week in the UK cost me 5 or 6 times as much as making any regular chinese dish over here – hence a luxury I can’t enjoy too often.
Chinese people have a popular proverb: 入乡随俗 that applies well for eating in China. If you want to save money – then eat like the locals, don’t try and take Europe to China, otherwise your student loan is going to dry up faster than you can say ‘Topup fees’. When in Rome…

“The last thing I want to do is cause loads of hype or problems, I just want to go in there and get my asparagus or whatever.”

I remember when reading this quote I cracked up into hysterics. I’m not sure about other UK university students but I’m sure that I never ate Asparagus during my time at Leeds last year. Don’t get me wrong, I love the stuff; but with the recent inflation of University fees, it was more than slightly out of my budget.

Well… all that has now changed. You see in China, Asparagus is actually fairly accessible – you can get a nice fat clump of it from the supermarket for about 20p, something that would set you back a couple of pounds in the UK I’m sure. Making the most of this opportunity (Asparagus is seasonable, it’s not going to hang around for long I suspect) I’ve been eating steamed asparagus shoots twice or three times a week now – food fit for a king!

Well… certainly fit for a prince anyway.

Yummy

Lush

Anyway, on our stroll back to his house in the heart of Beijing’s windy hutong labyrinth, we came across a massive crowd of people surrounding a car and a police motorbike and a person sitting on the ground. It is custom in China that if anything (a fight, an argument, an accident) happens on the street, instead of minding your own business, you must head over to find out what happened so you can spread the gossip when you get back home. Hence, me and Louis headed over and decided to put our Chinese listening skills to the test.

Strangely enough, when we joined the crowd, the policeman seemed to be ‘haggling’ with the Chinese man sitting on the ground (by the looks and sounds of things a migrant worker from China’s poorer provinces). The policemen was basically saying – whats the least you are willing to take? At first we were not quite sure what sort of transaction was going on here (a bribe maybe?) so we listened on. Eventually, it became clear that the guy who was sitting on the ground had been shunted by the shiny black Audi which was parked nearby and that the Policemen was trying to settle things on the spot by getting the Audi driver to pay some compensation (no doubt for medical fees) to the unfortunate pedestrian. We couldn’t make out much of what the migrant worker was saying due to his strong dialect (and by the looks of things neither could the policeman for that matter) but it became clear that he wanted at least 800 yuan compensation.

The policeman then turned to the Audi driver who said that he refused to pay anything at all, and that even if he was willing to pay compensation he didn’t have the money (it was a very very shiny black audi and the driver was wearing a clean suit and shiny leather shoes, me and Louis glanced at each other in disbelief). Eventually, after threatening the Audi driver with taking the matter to court, the policeman managed to get him to hand over 200 yuan which was given to the pedestrian who had been knocked down. The Audi driver drove off, the policeman hopped onto his motorbike and rode off and the man on the ground got up and hobbled off down one of the nearby hutongs. That was the end of the matter… fullstop!

No insurance details exchanged, no telephone numbers swapped, no trip to the local police station, no identity checks, no names taken. Me and Louis were astounded about how the matter was dealt with compared with what might have happened in the UK or elsewhere. This is the first time I’ve come across something like this in China – I’m not sure if it’s the standard procedure or whether the policeman was just in a hurry to get off duty and have some kebabs and a few beers – but its certainly something to be concerned about with the Olympic Games just a couple of months around the corner.

Since I have been here in Beijing (7 months maybe now?) the traffic has got worse and worse. To go anywhere in the city during morning and evening rush hours is a real nightmare. The figures are quite frightening too – I remember reading somewhere that 1000 new cars are bought every day here, furthermore, even as far back as 2005 the city had already become the worlds number one motor vehicle exhaust producer- I really am quite puzzled about how the government plans to tackle this growing problem.

Over the last couple of decades the Chinese have been busily building roads here to deal with Beijing’s rapid growth. First there were the first and second ring roads, then came the third ring road, now there is also a fourth and fifth ring road circling the capital – and plenty of cars, buses, lorries and taxis circling around them too. Due to the city’s subway system being very limited (although this is changing with the arrival of the 2008 Olympics) and the city’s bus system being rather crowded and slow, plus the fact that many Beijing residents now have some spare cash lying around thanks to the Country’s rapid economic growth, many people are now buying their own cars to get around the city. I think this also has its roots in Chinese culture – men here love to flaunt their money around and buying a car is a sure-fire way of doing this.

Whilst every day more and more people are able to afford to run a car in the capital, the construction of new roads is on the contrary quite limited. Soon, traffic will be at bursting point; to the extent that going anywhere in your own car will be no quicker than going via taxi or bus – although the journey will be much more comfortable. I can only hope that the roads will get so clogged that the government will be forced to take some proper action – such as improving its bus service, introducing congestion charging fees or toll gates and expanding its subway system to new parts of the city.

Meanwhile, despite some changes to public transport here (reduces in bus and subway charges and two new subway lines) Beijing will continue to be the polluted city it is for some time.

Third Ring Road

Third Ring Road Traffic

300 Bus