Re Gan Mian

If you go to Wuhan, the one must-try dish is the Re Gan Mian (热干面). This dish is a staple for residents of Wuhan, typically eaten for breakfast (but available any time of the day). The Chinese name translates literally to "hot dry noodles." It's worth noting that that "hot" refers to the temperature and not the spiciness. Re gan mian is simple, but quite tasty. The noodles are made a special way so that they do not stick to your teeth. They are long, round noodles, akin to spaghetti. They are pre-cooked the night before so that when you order them, they only need to be flash-boiled for about 30 seconds. After the boiling, the cook drops them in a bowl, tops them with sesame paste (sometimes peanut paste, but sesame is more authentic), and your choice of pickled vegetables, radishes, scallions, sour vegetables, and spicy sauce (la jiao). All that remains is to mix it up and eat.

This stuff is delicious. Most noodles in China are served in a soup of sorts, which is why re gan mian (which is not served in a soup) is called "dry." The sesame paste adds a nice grainy texture to the noodles, which are just the right amount of sticky. Re gan mian will only set you back about 3 - 5 yuan, which is a great price for a filling breakfast. Highly recommended.

The Life of a Street Food Vendor

Tricia Wang, a self-described "ethnographer, sociologist, and researcher" currently living, working, and studying in China, spent three days this past summer living and working with a migrant family in Wuhan as they pursued a street food vending opportunity. The results of her visit, engagingly written up on her website, were eye-opening. Tourists passing through a city eating the street food don't often have the opportunity to learn about the lives of the vendors they frequent. In this case, the vendors were unlicensed and new to the city. Their main customers were the workers at a construction site. All in all, this means their situation is likely to be different from the established vendors that you're more likely to come across as a tourist. Nonetheless, their experiences are worth knowing. They work a grueling schedule, make barely enough to live on (if they even make that much), live in squalid conditions, and work in constant fear of the police. Because they don't have a lot of seed money, they make do with broken-down equipment (see the picture below of the author pushing the battery-powered bicycle that didn't always work) and a non-ideal system of transporting the food to the selling site, which causes much of the food to be spilled or ruined before they even get to the construction site.

The author pushing one of the family's two electric bicycles

It's sobering to be reminded of the living and working conditions of the people who serve the food we enjoy so much (as well as the sanitary conditions of the food preparation itself). As I said above, this is not the story of all street food vendors, but the migrant culture is absolutely a part of modern China, for better or worse. The more we know about their stories, the better chance there is to improve their situations. I'd encourage anybody interested in modern China, in street food, or just in humanity in general to read Ms. Wang's account of her experiences with this family.