Yangzhou, one of Shanghai’s oldest neighboring cities, is like the elderly couple around the way who, for as long as you can remember, have gone about their business as if nothing – not the brand spanking new community center with refurbished tennis courts, not the rapscallions living next door who dribble (thump thump) their basketball (thump thump) deep into the night – could faze them.

Unfazed. It’s really the best way to describe the people of Yangzhou, who, probably because of – not in spite of – an archaic transportation system and cityscapes straight out of a Monet painting, tend to go about their business of being leisurely and amiable (a not-to-be-overlooked trait in Shanghai). Mostly, though, they just care about their food, which is a bubbling melting pot of some of China’s best street snacks and Yangzhou’s own regional cuisine, the oft-plagiarized yet somehow-still-unheralded food of Huaiyang.

My first night in Yangzhou was spent mostly trying to get to the bottom of Huaiyang food’s mysterious aura. In my three-and-a-half years living in Shanghai, I’ve seen practically every regional cuisine represented and represented well, from Guizhou to Guilin, from Shaanxi to Shandong – every cuisine, that is, except Huaiyang. What’s more curious is that several classic Huaiyang dishes are in ample supply: Yangzhou fried rice is China’s equivalent of General Tso’s chicken (every local Shanghai franchise has it on the menu), and Yangzhou gansi, a stringy, soupy, soy-based vermicelli dish, is a popular appetizer at many banquet-style restaurants in Shanghai. Even shizitou, which translates roughly to lion’s head meatballs, is frequently mistaken as one of the pillars of Shanghainese cuisine, mostly because it’s one of the few dishes nearly every local canteen has fully stocked throughout the day.

Being no small fan of reheating cliches, the last time I visited Yangzhou I stopped by a small, home-styled restaurant advertising authentic Huiyang cuisine and promptly ordered (no drumroll needed) Yangzhou fried rice, Yangzhou gansi and shizitou. My initial misgivings about Yangzhou gansi, which I’ve always found to be too dry in texture and too bland in flavor, quickly dissipated with my first bite, which tasted like soy the way it should be: lightly scented, but with a chewier core that brings out several subtle dimensions at once. The noodles were served in a broth that was both hearty and delightfully airy, like homemade chicken soup that doesn’t need a spoon.

The fried rice, while less of a sensory revelation, tickled a similar fancy. A mélange of seafood and vegetables, it relied on the natural essence of the ingredients, rather than the usual tampering with flavor enhancers that’s become de rigueur in most Chinese restaurants. I can’t say I was as impressed with the shizitou, which sagged in all the wrong places and had an aftertaste which was either the work of an under-finessed, overflavored meatball or simply the fault of bad meat. Probably both. Still, I reached a verdict: Huaiyang food lacks the more pungent, piquant charms of its spicier counterparts (Sichuan, Hunan) and the eat-your-heart-out robustness of Northern comfort food. It thus falls by the wayside, most restaurateurs too enamored with revolutionizing the dining experience to allow the flavors in the food to properly breathe and most family-run businesses too broke to buy fresher ingredients.

But a city’s culinary reputation doesn’t always have to be defined by stodgy, soggy regionalism.  When I stumbled onto a street cart selling what the owner was calling “Chinese pizzas,” I immediately prepared myself to be underwhelmed. After all, I’ve eaten “Chinese pizzas” all my life, and while my enjoyment of Chinese breaded goodness is well-documented, the only thing savory pancakes have in common with what I think of as pizza (thanks a lot, Marco Polo!) is that they’re round and have stuff sprinkled on top.

This pizza was round and had stuff sprinkled on top – mostly cilantro and ginger, along with dabs of a sauce that tasted more like chili powder than tomato – but I’ll be damned if it didn’t taste exactly like pizza. Only, better! Only, better in a Chinese sort of way! Only, if pizza weren’t actually Italian at all, and were made in China, with Chinese ingredients, and by smiling Chinese men pushing carts who would assure you that this is, in fact, a regional specialty of Hubei, which just so happens to be your ancestral home that you’ve never visited and have never, ever known was the home of pizza!

I think what he was actually trying to say is: When in Yangzhou, do as the Yangzhou-nese do: Learn to stop worrying about labels, and love the bomb-ass food.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, September 17th, 2009 at 8:13 am and is filed under Shanghai, travel.