March 2003.
Tom burst into the room as I finished my second cup of tea. “I’ve found the market,” he announced. “It’s just around the corner.”
We had arrived in Beijing the afternoon before. After checking into the hotel, eating a Chinese meal in a dining room filled with western tourists, and wandering Tiananmen Square in the falling dusk, we fell into bed, heavy with travel fatigue. But our body clocks were not yet on Beijing time and we were both wide awake while the city still struggled to turn night into morning. My husband, normally an early riser, decided to explore the neighborhood as dawn slowly crept through the alleyways. I opted for a quiet moment with hot tea and a guide book.
When Tom burst into the room an hour later, I grabbed my shoes, my camera, and my shopping bag. Local markets are my favorite way to get to know a new country. Morning mist hovered in the air as we crossed a wide boulevard clogged with bicycles.
Thirty years before we had started our travels together with a two-year trip from California to Panama, to Spain, to Norway and finally to India and back–all in a Volkswagen camper equipped with a stove and a nested set of cookware. Early in that trip we learned to judge a place by its markets. These bustling sites of food and commerce were always a window onto the prosperity, culture, and friendliness of the land. Though we had been to many other places on the Asian continent, this was our first time inside China. We knew the market would offer a glimpse of the everyday people of China, a country famous for its cuisine and love of food.
We headed down a narrow lane that dead-ended at another alley to form a T shaped intersection. This was where the world of food began. On the sidewalk tiered aluminum steamers balanced over steel drums that contained cooking fires fueled by charcoal. The towering steamers emitted vapors redolent of garlic and ginger. Further on, the wide-open door of the market proper beckoned. We worked our way past a clutter of parked bicycles, push-carts, and cages of live chickens and into a market dimly lit by incandescent bulbs hanging from the high ceiling. The aisles teemed with shoppers and sellers. Men pushed wagons of produce down narrow aisles and women lugged heavy bags and boxes into their stalls. Vendors bagged sales, made change, and gestured behind counters heaped with food stuffs of every rainbow hue. Amidst all the activity, the market was clean and the floor was wet from a recent hosing down.
One side of the building was lined with banks of fruit rising almost to the ceiling. It was early spring, yet we saw watermelon, bananas, mangos, papayas, bright red apples, citrus of all kinds, including tangerines wrapped in vivid orange tissue, and huge round Asian pears nested in Styrofoam netting. Across the aisle, mounds of vegetables in all shades of green, white and yellow stood in towering displays–firm cabbages, leafy greens, snowy white giant Daikon radishes, thin Chinese long-beans, drooping Chinese chives, and the knobby green shapes of bitter melon. Nearby stood tubs of bean sprouts and trays of tofu arranged to display great hunks of bean curd from creamy white to golden brown, fresh, smoked, baked, and pressed. Across the bustling center aisle, dried and powdered things of all kinds filled small specialty shops–herbs, spices, dried shrimps and bottles of oyster sauce were stacked to the roof.
If only I had a wok and a single burner! A frustrated cook, I used my camera to capture the essence of the market. Vendors smiled with pride as I focused for a tight shot of bok-choy and snow peas. They tried to talk to us and laughed along with our efforts to communicate our pleasure. Everyone was courteous and friendly, from the sweating men pushing loaded carts through the clogged aisles to the vendors and shoppers. Though we were the only Caucasians in the entire market, there was no pushing, yelling or staring at the foreigners.
At the end of the produce section, the market widened and we entered a second shed, a more spacious area lined with glass fronted shops. In one, live fish swam in tanks and glistening fillets of salmon and white fish lay on a clean marble counter. Nearby sides of lamb and beef hung from hooks and two men in the white caps of the Moslem minority turned them into shank, rib and loin cuts. Across the shed, plucked birds were lined up, pressed wing to wing, waiting to be chopped for stir fry. One narrow breasted and black skinned bird lay surrounded by other lighter chickens and we wondered, “What is he?” (I have since learned that these skinny, dark skinned fowl are prized for their flavor). At another stand two men and a woman were busy making fresh noodles and a kind of round flat bread.
We stood, our stomachs rumbling, and watched the bread being rolled out and cooked on a griddle. Both the bread and noodles were selling as fast as they were made. The yummy looking products were stuffed into bulging plastic bags and handed to shoppers who stood patiently in line.
The aromas and sights made me long to fill my shopping bag, but a prepaid breakfast waited for us at the hotel. Tom and I hesitated only a moment. We could not resist the sight of so much food. We bought a few crisp, seed studded rolls and two Asian pears and stuffed them in my bag. As we headed back toward the hotel, the aroma from the steamers on the lane wafted through the air. We looked at each other and then longingly at the row of dumpling sellers.
Suddenly neither of us had any interest in the breakfast in the hotel dining room. Tom grabbed my hand and we shouldered into the queue near the steamers. We pointed to our choices, nodded and smiled. Soon we stood at the edge of the road and savored each bite of our fluffy white steamed buns. Both were hot and succulent, the dough wrapping thin and light. The fillings–one chopped pork and onions, the other minced leeks and garlic–delighted our tastebuds.
I peeked into the brown paper bag of pastry. “Shall we?” I asked and Tom nodded. The flaky rolls were still warm, sweet and rich with a crust of sesame seeds.
The neighborhood Beijing market had fulfilled its promise and foretold many delectable experiences to come. After our first glimpse of the country at the morning market, we fell in love with China–the people were friendly, the towns and cities seemed on their way toward prosperity, and, best of all, the food was ample and delicious.
Do you share my love of food and markets when you travel?
Leave a Reply