{"id":11871,"date":"2015-12-28T10:30:45","date_gmt":"2015-12-28T14:30:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/?p=11871"},"modified":"2017-05-17T13:14:39","modified_gmt":"2017-05-17T17:14:39","slug":"real-chinese-food-breakfast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/real-chinese-food-breakfast\/","title":{"rendered":"Real Chinese Food – Breakfast"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you’ve only ever eaten Chinese food at restaurants in Western countries, you might think of it\u00a0as General Tso’s chicken, egg rolls, and fortune cookies. Not surprisingly, the Chinese food in China looks a bit different. In fact, there are only really a handful of dishes that I’ve seen on menus in the US and China – Kung Pao chicken<\/strong> (\u5bab\u4fdd\u9e21\u4e01- g\u014dng b\u01ceo j\u012b d\u012bng), chow mein<\/strong><\/em> (\u7092\u9762 – ch\u01ceo mi\u00e0n), and fried rice<\/strong> (\u7092\u996d – ch\u01ceo f\u00e0n). When I first got to China, I definitely had a bit of culture shock<\/a> when it came to eating out – “Where are the fortune cookies?!” – but I soon got over it and fell in love with real<\/em> Chinese food. As a matter of fact, I haven’t eaten Americanized Chinese food since I made the big move way back in 2008 – it’s just disappointing compared to the real thing. For those of you who haven’t made it to the Middle Kingdom yet, I’ll be introducing real Chinese food in a new series here. First up, we’ll take a look at Chinese breakfast.<\/p>\n

A Small and Simple Meal<\/h2>\n
\"Image<\/a>

Image by Sam Sherratt from flickr.com<\/p><\/div>\n

I absolutely adore\u00a0Chinese food. When I’m out of China, I miss the food there much more than I miss good Western food when I’m in China. That being said, I’m not the biggest fan of Chinese breakfast. Whereas some Westerners\u00a0like to say “breakfast is the most important meal of the day,” that isn’t the case in China. People in China generally have a small and simple breakfast and then have big meals at lunch and dinner. That being said, the things they do eat for breakfast tend to be quite filling, so it’s usually enough to hold you over until that big lunch. In the big cities, where you’re sitting in traffic or fighting the crowds on the way to work, breakfast is often grabbed from a street vendor and eaten quickly. They usually set up shop around 5-6 in the morning and are finished by 10 when most people have already started their work day.<\/p>\n