I'm not a big fan of McDonald's. I might even go so far to say that I despise McDonald's. As a person who believes whole heartedly that the distribution of processed food ranks up there on the immoral meter with toxic waste dumping or puppy kicking, I see these guys as the enemy. They lure people all over the world into their restaurants, convincing folks to pay too much for overly processed, sodium packed, garbage that they blasphemously call "food". To accomplish this dubious goal they use flashy ad campaigns that I strongly believe are making us all stupider by the minute. Plus, their "food" is rank.
Despite all of this, there was a 2 month period while Scott and I were living in Beijing, that we became hopelessly addicted to the stuff. Living in a foreign country with no comforts of home leaves you awfully vulnerable. At first, you might find the communication challenges a little exciting, maybe even fun. But there are days when the isolation sets in, days when leaving your apartment just makes you feel lonelier. There are days when you simply don't have the energy to hail four or five cabs until one finally understands where you want to go. Some days you can't face the stern faced waitress at the dumpling shop down the street, because you know no matter how many times you practice saying "gung bao gi ding" you are likely to end up with a very different part of the chicken than you expected. Sometimes you imagine the loud, crowded grocery store, and try to picture yourself marching blindly through the hoarde of pushy salespeople shoving fabric softener under your nose, but you just can't. Days like these make eating dinner very, very difficult. Unfortunately, they don't make you less hungry. Or at least they don't make ME less hungry.
These are the days you pick up the phone and dial the English speaking McDonald's hotline so that you can pay obscene prices for food you wouldn't eat for free back home. Hungry and emotionally wrecked, you wait patiently for the little red motorbike to pull into your apartment complex. You buzz in the delivery man, and do your best to make paying the bill a quick and painless exchange, then smile and say "Xie xie," as he leaves. You reach into the warm, greasy paper bag and pull out a couple of hot, salty french fries before unwrapping your Double Cheeseburger. The bun is moist with condensation and the waxy American Cheese has already cooled into a semi-firm, almost plastic perfect sludge. There are two piping hot dill pickles wading in a perfectly balanced portion of ketchup and yellow mustard under the bun. You take your first bite of those soft, mealy beef patties, close your eyes, and you feel like you could be sitting in your home town. While savoring every morsel of your fast food meal you remember the little things from home, like clean tap water, house salads, and pillow top mattresses. It's perfect. And you know that it will be just as perfect every time you dial that magic phone number.
McDonald's Double Cheeseburgers, and Starbucks Vanilla Lattes were the only things, and I do mean the ONLY things in Beijing that tasted remotely like I expected they should when I ordered them. The weird versions of American foods that you occassionally found in western restaurants (all three that even existed within the sprawling metropolis) only made us more homesick when we ate them. Imagine a cheeseburger seasoned with five spice powder and topped with a melted cheese single, or Bolognase Sauce made from greasy ground pork and tomato paste served over cold , 1/4 inch thick noodles. Even Chinese food was a gamble. Between communication problems, and the fact that dishes constantly varied based on ingredient availability, who was cooking that day, and what mood they happened to be in, there was absolutely no guarantee of ever receiving the same dish twice. What you were guaranteed, however, was a 1/10 chance of mild to moderate food poisoning. At least that was the situation in the restaurants that we could afford to eat. We were forever chasing down phantom dishes, that no Chinese person could offer a name for.
One such dish turned out to be our favorite throughout the entire trip. The closest name we were able to construct (with the help of Chinese friends) was Xiang Ci Yang Rou, Cilantro Mutton, in English. I have used the flavors in this dish again and again, but I'll never be able to capture the magic that we encountered one Autumn afternoon in a random, back alley cafe in Shuanging. The mutton was sliced paper thin with a chinese cleaver, caked with whole cumin, cayenne pepper, and salt, then blackened with diced onions in a searing hot wok. Fresh cilantro was roughly chopped, stem and all, in Chinese fashion, and smothered over the sizzling dish. We shared it with a friend along with bowls of plain, white rice, slightly sticky and over cooked. It was one of the greatest meals of my life, and though we repeated the same order, in the same place, even with the same friend to help, we never got it again.
Our experiences while eating in China can be summed up by these two meals. We were constantly bombarded with flavors, textures, and cooking styles that couldn't have been more foreign. Though tasting new things every day was an unforgettable experience, it wasn't long before we found ourselves longing for something familiar. After all, eating was only one of the many frustrations we dealt with every day while trying to construct a long term life there. We knew we needed to locate some basics. We quickly found the best french fries in town (at a dutch placed called The Hidden Tree) but wasted ages on a long, fruitless search for anything remotely resembling pizza. Pasta in general was a hopeless pipe dream, and you can just forget sandwiches, or bread for that matter, altogether. For the sake of making the most of our experience, and for economic reasons, we endeavored to eat only Chinese food, but homesickness can be scary as hell. So scary, in fact, that it can drive you to do crazy things, like give McDonald's more business in two months than you've given them in your whole life.
The funniest thing is that if you told me, who has an almost religious attachment to both rice and noodles, that I would waste even one meal while I was in China on something American, let alone McDonald's, the freaking Godzilla of all food monsters as far as I am concerned, I would have laughed. I would have laughed in your face.
We think we know ourselves, and our stomachs so well, but your tastes can change with your situation. For example, my threshold for spiciness was almost olympic by the time we came home from China. Just three months prior, I'd found Buffalo Wings to be the most I could handle. Sometime last year, when Scott and I were feeling depressed, we decided to give our old stand-by meal in China a chance to cheer us up. No dice. Just as quickly as it had come, the magic dissapeared from good old Mickey D's, and we found the crappy fast food to taste exactly as bad as it should. So I guess being really homesick is like being really hungry. Even the worst thing tastes great when it's all that you've got.
Scott's band-mate sporting the McDonald's delivery helmet