It has been a long time since I went out China last time (it seems that I haven’t gone abroad since COVID-19, and I have been traveling in China for all the time). Even though, I can still remember those delicious😋 and unpleasant🤐 foods.

A long time ago, I went to Thailand once, and the food there was very different from what we ate, it tasted very LOCAL (I mean…unique😃). Of course, I can’t remember every dish, but there is one dish that even if I see it now, it reminds me of Thailand. Which is water spinach, it looks like this before you cook it:

It looks nothing special compare to other vegetables we eat everyday, but… it’s actually true, it’s nothing different with vegetables we eat everyday.😓 Because eventually, Chinese people ate water spinach too, people live in China and Thailand even cook the same way. It looks like this after you cook it:

Then why I felt it was an exotic food that’s because, almost every restaurant I went in Thailand has this dish, and they cook the same way! They cook it with salt and garlics（well, I HATE garlic 😫), some restaurants might add chili pepper, but it’s not spicy at all (I can even ate it as a person that can’t eat much spicy foods).  When I was in Thailand, I ate water spinach almost everyday (it actually taste pretty delicious), and then it became my memory for Thailand. Every time I saw it, I think about Thailand.

( Another reason for why I‘m eating water spinach everyday in Thailand, was because I felt that the other dishes were not so tasty, I don’t want to ate it🥲)

There is also another cooking style that is very different from my diet, even though it is in China. Chongqing is my favorite city in China (don’t ask me why, I don’t know either), but the food they eat is sooo ooooooo different to Suzhou. Chongqing is famous for eating spicy foods, but Suzhou people don’t really eat spicy stuffs. And that connect with geographical factors, Chongqing’ weather is hot and wet, so people have to eat spicy foods to help them sweat, get rid of extract moisture in their body. But Suzhou’ weather is just perfect for people to live in, so they don’t have to eat so much spicy for their health, instead of they were chili- enthusiast.

As I said, I’m not a person who ate chili a lot, here it comes the problem: I like Chongqing, but I don’t eat spicy foods.🙁Of course, the restaurant owners knew that there are many people like just me, so there are many restaurants that also offer non spicy dishes or a-bit spicy foods. When it comes to Chongqing, the most famous one should be hotpot, right？Well, I agree with it, especially hotpot with Sooooo many chilies.( spicy is not a kind of taste but a sense of pain, I’m wondering why people like to “make them self hurt”? Just wondering why they prefer to eat those spicy foods)🤓

Like this one:

Because I can’t eat it, so I ordered tomato pot. It was… a little embarrassing to eat tomato pot in Chongqing, but…. I don’t really care😎, and it tasted actually very nice. Maybe in the future, when I can eat a lot spicy food, I might try it again（ I did try it once, it made my tongue so hurt and I almost cried😭).

As a conclusion, Food culture is a very important part in their local culture. Those different food are not ONLY  food, but also my memories of different places, I remember these places through those tastes.

 

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