Naitong Li
1, April, 2012
My
memory of food in Wuhan
China
has the greatest food culture in the world. The food there can be divided into
two kinds; the first one is often related to the special festivals. People have
particular food to eat in every festival, such as dumplings for Spring Festive,
moon cake for Mid-Autumn, and Glutinous rice ball for Lantern Festive. The other
kind is related to particular region. Different areas in China have different
food, which is very distinctive compared with others. For example, spicy food
is the main food in Sichuan province, the areas around Shanghai usually prefer
to eat sweet and light food, Shanxi province has the greatest variety of noodles,
and Guanzhou province is famous for its soup. For me, the most significance of
food is that exploring food in one place can help me know the climate and
people’s character here. It is a very interesting and direct method. Furthermore,
food helps me to keep memory of one city, and a period of life, especially my
experience in Wuhan.
Before
I went to Denver, I was studying at Wuhan University of Technology. Wuhan is
the biggest city in the center of China, Hubei province. I had lived there for
two years. Those two years were the most relaxed and exciting period in my life.
Getting rid of the high pressure of the college entrance exam, moving to a totally
new place, and meeting a lot of new friends from many different places all made
my life very colorful. Today, most of my classmates at that time transferred to
American University for further studying, and when we got together to recall
the time we spent together in Wuhan this spring break, food is a very important
topic in our conversation. At first Wuhan is famous for its snake; there are
many special and delicious food here. And the food there also carries too much
common memory of us. Hot Dry Noodles, Wuchan fish and a kind of soup were three
kinds of food that we were most missing.
Hot Dry Noodles, is one of the five
famous noodles in China. It is the most popular food for Wuhan, and enjoys a
high reputation for its low price and good taste. When you mention Wuhan to an
outsider, the first thing he or she thinks of is it. It is an essential part of
the Wuhan diet, eaten by almost everyone daily at breakfast time. Unlike other
kinds of noodles, it doesn’t a lot of soup, so people can bring it easily. Because
Wuhan is a very big city, and the traffic there is not very good, people
usually choose some food they can eat when they on the road so that they can
sleep more in the morning. At this time, the Hot Dry Noodles becomes the best
choice. I can still remember the picture
that I was eating it on my way to classroom in a hurry with my friends. It is
always the starting of my daily life.
Wuchang
fish is another representative food in Wuhan. It is famous because it mentioned
in many verses. For example, China's Chairman Mao Zedong in his poem
"Swimming" writes: "I have just drunk the waters of Changsha.
And come to eat the fish of Wuchang." In my memory, I ate Wuchang fish with
my classmates when we went to East Lake for spring outing. We tasted the terrific
fish, drinking and laughing, meanwhile, enjoying the marvelous view around the
lake and reciting those romantic verses. The breeze from the lake with the
intoxicating odor of flowers made us feel really great. This fish help me to record
a happy experience.
The soup made by spareribs and the
root of lotus is the most common of soup in Wuhan. My roommate, whose family is
in Wuhan, always brought this soup from her home to us. Her mother cooked it
for us, and we shared together. Because the other three people, including me,
are all come from far away from Wuhan. So we could only go back home twice a
year in summer and winter holiday. Tasting the soup let us think of the flavor
of our mother, it helped us experience the warmth of home. The time in every
week that we enjoying the soup together was the sweetest time in our dormitory.
Beside
these three kinds of food, there are still many kinds of food in Wuhan take an important
position in my memory. Like Zhou Black
Duck, which I often mailed for my old friends who didn’t have a chance to
Wuhan to taste it by themselves. Yuba,
the first and last thing I ate at Wuhan. ShuangpiNai,
a dessert likes pudding, which we often ate when we studied in the night to
prepare the exams. Miba, a light
sweet pie made by rice, is my favorite staple food. I can hardly to stop
listing. These foods were all important for me, not just because they were
delicious, but also because they were a significant part of my life in Wuhan. It
helped me record my life in Wuhan, which was full of my sweet, warmth, and exciting
memory. It is the food helped me to keep
my memory in Wuhan vivid.
Wuchang fish
The soup made by spareribs and the root of lotus
Zhou black Duck
Miba
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