Unfortunately, I’ve struck it in my food, so I probably won’t get rich. But I might get fat.

 

Before I came to Beijing, a friend of mine who had lived here explained the food: “It’s oily,” he said, matter-of-factly. In the pantheon of understatements this is akin to describing the Great Wall as “long”.

 

Almost all of the local food I have had here has been saturated, saturated, with oil. Consider this: My roommate gets pizzas from the Wudaokou Pizza Hut when he’s sick of eating greasy food. On Friday evening, at dinner with Wuning and Guan Rui, we had a beef dish that came in a large bowl with a full half-inch of liquefied, orange grease floating on top. Many dishes come in a broth of oil that leaves a sloshy puddle in the bottom of the plate when you are done. Get a straw. Meat? Vegetables? Noodles? Pastries? Apparently to a Beijing chef, there’s nothing that won’t taste better inundated with fat.

 

It has become fashionable in nutritionally erudite circles, such as those inhabited by my wife, to distinguish between “good fats” and “bad fats”. Good fats (e.g. fish oils, olive oil, nut oils) fly around your body on little angel wings administering tender kisses to your overworked cell membranes and inspiring you to love mankind and recycle. Bad fats (e.g. beef tallow, hog cracklin’) gum up your works, ruin your complexion, shift your political orientation rightward and make you want to buy a Ford Expedition and drive it over a bed of kittens.

 

I’m pretty sure the oil in Beijing food is bad fat. From what I can see, the average Beijing resident’s nutritional health awareness is only slightly behind their awareness of California state ballot initiatives. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to learn that my food is cooked in is a blend of lard, palm oil, and grease recycled from of municipal bus differentials. I haven’t seen anyone driving over a bed of kittens here (kittens are too scarce, I think), but there are clearly some chunky SUVs around.

 

I am not suggesting that food in Beijing is bad, although I don’t get the sense that it is a food infatuated city in the sense that Paris or Singapore (yes, really) is. I’ve had many good, cheap meals here. But they have almost all been as greasy as a teenager’s forehead. The culinary pride and joy of Beijing is kao ya--roast duck. If there is a creature that produces a higher ratio of fat to total body mass than a duck, not counting late-stage Elvis, I have yet to eat it. (And note that, with properly prepared kao ya, every single morsel sliced from the duck must include both fat and skin.)  

 

Now, of course, you can always ask the waitress to ask the hassled, overworked chef to add less oil. Possible dialogue:

 

“Xiao jie, please ask the chef to add less oil.”

“Certainly, sir. Do you mind if he replaces it with mucus?”

 

“Mucus” in Mandarin is “nian yi” in case you ever need to know.

 

I deal with this situation by making my breakfast and dinner at home and trying to limit myself to lunches out. But it’s safe to say that, if I am still here in winter, I’ll have a little extra insulation to get me through.