The Traveling Duo

Shaanxi Cuisine and the Dangers of Internet Cafes

Though most Westerners have never heard of Xi’an, its actually a city of great historical importance. For the majority of China’s dynasties, Xi’an was the seat of the government. Situated in the heart of the Middle Kingdom, all Chinese roads seem to lead to Xi’an.

One great benefit of being a cultural epicenter is the choicest dishes from the surrounding provinces and best cooking techniques find a home here. In Seattle, I’m something of a fiend for Pho. For Sarah and I, there’s no better comfort food for those cold, wet Northwest days - until we discovered Pao Mo.

Mo is a thick, flat bread similar to pita, but much denser. Its traditionally prepared with a lamb stew, but Sarah had a version made from tofu along with a selection of veggies. The server brings out your bowl with one or two mo’s, and waits for you to slowly (almost ritualistically) break the bread down into tiny, bite-sized chunks. The locals take incredible care while doing this. Too small, and when the stew is mixed in the bread turns into mush. Too large, and the bread doesn’t soak in enough soup.

When the resulting mixture is served back to you, there’s cilantro and hot sauce that can be layered on top. Finally, you’re given pickled garlic to nibble on as you chow down. When you’re done eating, all of that goodness sticks to your ribs, keeping you warm from the inside out.

On a completely separate note, the information superhighway has been reduced to a small one-lane dirt road by over-zealous Chinese bureaucrats (10% of websites are censored). I’ve had a hell of a time trying to access Flickr. At times its been either completely blocked, or its jumped through so many proxies that cookies don’t register properly, to random photos not loading. I also made the devastating mistake of loading all of my photos off of my camera to the PC at an internet cafe. Thinking I would easily be able to upload them to the web, I proceeded to clear out the memory on my camera (much to Sarah’s chagrin). Lo and behold:

• Flickr was completely blocked.
• Copying back onto my device wasn’t permitted.
• Uploads to my web server were insanely slow.
• The PC automatically shut off after my card ran out of Yuen.
• The PC automatically wipes the HD after the PC has been shut down.

The ensuing shouting match between Sarah and myself (mostly Sarah commenting on my ineptitude), caused severe rubber-necking from every Chinese person within a 100m radius. Since the terra cotta soldier pictures and others were lost, we had to do a little creative photography to compensate. If I ever figure out a way to access Flickr, you’ll get to enjoy them.