Eating Vegetarian in China

As you may or may not know, I recently completed a trip to China and Japan with my now-fiance Michael.  When I travel, I do my absolute best to eat as a vegetarian, although I do usually forgo being vegan for the duration of the trip.  The three places I've traveled since becoming vegetarian (France, China, and Japan) can usually accommodate vegetarians reasonably well, but have usually not heard of vegan.  Combine this with living off the hospitality of other, language barriers, and (usually) having a different system for raising animals, I feel that this personal concession is reasonable for myself when traveling. 

Vegetarianism is actually much more prevalent in China than I initially imagined.  This is mainly due to a sizable population of Buddhists.  Not all Buddhists are vegetarians, but many follow a "principle of non-harm".  Some may even be considered vegan.  This means that most restaurants are at least aware of vegetarianism, and there are many restaurants specifically for vegetarians (I think most ended up being vegan as well).

We first arrived in Shanghai, where we had few problems in maintaining our dietary choices.  The friend I was visiting speaks Chinese, so she could tell people that we were looking for food without meat, and then in turn tell us what they had to offer.  The hostel we were at had a delicious breakfast spread, with Tang, soymilk, cereal, vegetable buns (with tofu), toast, and fried donuts (which weren't sweet like we have in the States).  The vegetable buns, called Baotzu, were common and most restaurants, shops, or street vendors had some vegetarian form.  They usually had Chinese cabbage (Bok choy).  Soup is also very common.  The only problems we ran into is that we usually couldn't tell if the soup broth was animal or vegetable.  It was one of those things where we usually just hoped for the best, but fortunately I never got sick.  They had some great vegetable noodle soups, with this awesome kind of porous, sponge-like tofu.  It was chewy and delicious.  I've never seen it before.  Mushrooms were prevalent in dishes also.

On our second day, we found a vegetarian restaurant that had some delicious dishes.  With over 2,000 years of practice in vegetarian cooking, China has some very authentic fake meat dishes that were unlike anything we had ever had in the US.  In a great restaurant in Hong Kong that I was really impressed with, they had this fake fish in a sauce that was quite similar to the real thing.  It had the qualities most American seafood alternatives lack; it was flaky and it tasted like seafood.  Michael and I couldn't figure out why these recipes haven't been imported to America yet.  I had a great sweet and sour "pork" there too.

In Beijing there were street vendors everywhere.  I had some delicious vegetable tempura in a Japanese chain restaurant there.  We stayed pretty close to Tienanmen square.  There were places selling fried sweet buns (a little more like the cinnamon and sugar ones found here) with sesame.  We had lots of baotzu.  One of the days, we climbed the Great Wall of China on a "secret" tour.  We went to an unrestored part of the wall and the members of our group were the only people in sight.  We hiked along the wall for a few miles, feeling on top of the world (literally on top of a small mountain), and then our spry guide lead us down into his villeage.  They had a banquet for us, and it all seemed to be Vegetarian.  Sometimes it was hard to tell if it was meat or expertly prepared tofu (always the mark of a good vegetarian dish).  A fair amount of the food was spicy, some was with noodles, some with cabbage or other vegetables, some with rice. 

Next we went to Wuhan, which is known for its spicy food.  This is where my friend (Jess) lived.  She was great, she translated to find us food we could eat and never complained about finding vegetarian restaurants and options.  The only time we ever really had trouble eating out was when her friends had previously picked the restaurant, and it ended up having really nothing vegetarian (I think we ended up finding a dish though). She took us to a Buddhist temple and we ate at their vegetarian restaurant (most temples have a vegetarian restaurant attached, so you can always try that option).  They had another great fake fish, which was a glazed breading in the shape of a fish filled with rice and small veggies (like peas and carrots).  Their "beef" dish tasted like the real thing, but was way too spicy.  Jess was sweating from it.  They had fried, glazed "pork" balls that were delicious.  Another place was a hot pot restaurant, where basically you get a pot of broth (we had water) on a mini individual boiler, and you go around buffet style and pick what you want to put in it.  It was delicious.  One thing that I wouldn't reccommend is the red bean paste baotzu, but thats because you get something sweet when you're expecting something salty.  I didn't like it very much. 

We went to a tea shop too, and I found some really delicious "flower fruit tea" which is tea mixed with dried fruit and is really delicious.  It almost tastes like juice.

All and all, we had a surprisingly easy (and delicious) time being vegetarian.  It probably would have been a lot harder without Jess, and we got laughed at by several shop keepers, but we had a great time.  Michael really wants to find out how we can make some of those dishes ourselves!