Chinese cuisine: the highs and the... less highs

So my friend Katie is going home to Minnesota tomorrow, having had enough of the programme here and wanting to get her life started in the States. I'm going to miss her a tonne because (among other reasons) her love for Starbucks and for sarcasm at art openings is rivalled only by my own. Anyway, I always think when you want to say something, you should say it with food - so we took her out to eat hotpot. A lot of hotpot. At this particular restaurant, every customer gets her own little pot of broth, which is brought to a boil by a tiny flame underneath. Everyone shares the raw ingredients, which you throw liberally into the pot, fish out a couple minutes later, and devour after dipping into one of your two custom-made sauces. It's pretty much heaven. Lamb! Beef! Green vegetables! For once, a meal with vegetables AND without oil.

Conversely, if you feel like fried carbs with an extra shot of cholesterol, you can always head to one of the bazillions of pancake stands on the streets here. This one by Donghua University is probably my favourite, because the guys crinkle the pancake at the end with such zeal (see blurry hand movements). The process: first, they mush one of those fatter, smaller dough patties flat on the grill, then crack an egg on top and flip the pancake over, rubbing more grease into it than one would think possible. At this point, you can opt to add bacon, but I usually shy away as I never like to overdo it. (Clearly.) When it's all cooked, there is a flurry of pancake crinkling - perhaps to add volume before the hot sauce is added. Finally, the whole greasy mess is swaddled into a little paper bag and you're sent on your way to figure out how to eat the thing and still look at least a little dignified.

So, Katie, look what you're missing in Minnesota. On the other hand... eat a salad for me!