Guangzhou paradise of Canton fare(1)
THERE'S no shortage of things to do in Guangzhou, but one time-honored pastimes is eating the marvelous variety of Cantonese food morning, noon and night. Liu Qi readies her chopsticks.
Grandpa Wu raises his head from the newspaper and carefully checks his number card every time the receptionist shouts out the next seating number.
"Only 10 ahead of me," the 70-year-old murmurs. "I came 30 minutes early today to beat the queue but it didn't help much."
Still several dozen people wait behind him.
"It's a very common scene - every day is busy, weekday or weekend," says the receptionist at Nanyuan Restaurant, a popular destination for zao cha or morning tea in Guangzhou, capital city of southern China's Guangdong Province. "For locals, there's never trouble finding a place to eat."
Very true. Just as Chengdu residents are known as "professional" tea drinkers and card players, people in Guangzhou are portrayed as "sophisticated eaters," because they're always either eating or on the way to a meal.
"I come (to the Nanyuan Restaurant) almost every morning; it's part of my life," says Grandpa Wu. "Sometimes I even stay here for wu cha (noon tea)."
Wu is typical of millions of locals who indulge themselves in the colorful ages-old culinary culture, part of making the city "a paradise for gourmets."
More than 2,000 years of development has created a Cantonese cuisine celebrated for light natural flavor, delicate texture and 21 precise cooking techniques. The best-known are zao cha, soup, porridges, double-skin milk (dessert) and chang fen or steamed vermicelli rolls.
Although Cantonese zao cha has a shorter history (it originated from Emperor Xianfeng's reign, 1831-1861, of the Qing Dynasty, 1644-1911) than its Yangzhou counterpart in Jiangsu Province, it's more famous globally for its rich variety, says Anthony Dong, a Yangzhou-native chef working in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province.
Shrimp dumplings, shao mai or shumai (steamed dumplings with rice and minced pork), feng zhua or phoenix's claws (steamed chicken feet) and steamed spareribs are the four must-orders, while Yangzhou breakfast features mainly steamed buns with different fillings, according to Dong.
"For Cantonese people, zao cha is a way of life. Family and friends enjoy chatting and gossiping over dim sum and a glass of Pu'er or Iron Guanyin tea," says Deng Guoxiong, a local gourmet, food critic and a member of the Guangdong Restaurant Association. "If they finish late, they may stay on for wu cha, and then afternoon tea."
Ordering Cantonese zao cha is art in itself, with many unwritten rules and customs, such as rinsing the bowl, plate and chopsticks with hot tea before beginning.
And there are interesting stories. One tale goes that dressed in ordinary clothes, Qing Dynasty Emperor Qianlong arrived in Guangzhou on a southern inspection tour. When he went to a restaurant for breakfast, he wanted to remain unobtrusive and hide his royal identity, so he quietly knocked twice on the table to signal a servant from his entourage to serve the tea. That way no one called him "Your Majesty," and disrupted the restaurant. Today it's still common to knock on the table to ask the waiter to serve tea.
Folk tale
Another story from the Republic of China Period (1912-1949) has it that the Dongshan (East Hill) young lords tried to play a prank by putting a live bird in the teapot and then saying the tea was finished and calling for water.
Without awareness, the waiter scalded the bird to death. The dudes repeated the cruelty until one smart waiter caught on. He then came up with an idea that to ask for boiling water, customers were supposed to open the teapot and place the lid upside down on the holder so waiters could ensure there's no bird inside before adding hot water.
Today the custom remains and diners are still used to reversing the lid to call for hot water.
