The first time I came to China, I was shocked by what I ate. Not because it was monkey brains, cockroaches or snakes, but because it was completely different from what I had first expected.
I was used to eating American Chinese dishes such as Mongolian beef, sweet and sour pork and General Tso’s chicken. But try to order that in China, and all you get is a blank stare.
It took me awhile (two months) to get used to authentic Chinese food, but once I got used to it, I really enjoyed it. I also was fortunate to live in Sichuan province, which is well known for its food. Then I moved to Xinjiang.
Xinjiang cuisine is interesting because it is has influences from many different ethnic groups. A mixture of Han, Mongolians, Uighurs and other Central Asians all call Xinjiang home.
From the Han, there are many restaurants offering food from around China. The Mongolians have their traditional meaty dishes and their bitter hard cheese made from sheep milk. Then there are the Uighurs, who have their own specialty dishes that are very different from the rest of Chinese.
One big difference is that in the rest of China, people love pork. Breakfast lunch and dinner, they eat it by the kilo. In Xinjiang, while pork still is popular, it does have a close rival: mutton. Uighurs don’t eat pork because of religious reasons, so mutton is their meat of choice.
In many of the Han restaurants, they even have variations of traditional pork dishes that use mutton instead. Even the word for pork in Xinjiang is different. In other provinces, it’s called “jiurou” (pig meat), but here, it’s called darou (big meat) to not offend the Muslim population.
The most popular mutton dish probably is zhuafan (rice pilaf), and it is served for lunch. Zhuafan is similar to fried rice but combines cumin, carrots, peppers, onions and raisins cooked together in a large bowl over a fire. Then a large grilled mutton leg is put on top, bone and all, and it’s ready to eat.
The runner-up for most popular mutton dish would have to be the mutton kebobs cooked on Uighur grills. During the summer, you can find them everywhere, and at night, the smell of barbecued meat fills the air until 2 a.m. or later.
Some of the other excellent dishes include banmian (basic noodles), dapanji (big plate of chicken) and yangrou jiaozi (mutton dumplings).
Then there are some more adventurous dishes. Zasui basically is the innards of a sheep – lungs, heart and stomach – covered with a special sauce. It’s served with a type of rice sausage made from sheep intestines. Flour is added to the lungs to give them an interesting texture as well as taste.
Before moving to Xinjiang, I never would have imagined ordering mutton on a daily basis, nor would I have thought trying sheep intestines sounded like a good idea. But after living here and adjusting, I have grown to enjoy the food, and that will be one thing I miss most when I leave ... except maybe zasui.
David Scott, a 2008 Durango High School graduate, is teaching English in China’s far western province of Xinjiang (New Frontier) in the city of Korla. He can be reached at darysc24@gmail.com.
