Ni Chi le ma? 你吃了吗？Did you eat already?
I have to say that during the weekdays I’m not really a breakfast person. I love a big brunch during the weekends (as you probably know from my last blogs) or making myself Nutella pancakes 🙂 on special occasion. But during the weekdays, I have a coffee with a biscuit or a small muffin and I’m good until lunch time.
For Chinese people breakfast is very important! When they see you in the morning they don’t ask you “Hey, how are you?” the first thing they asked is: “Hey, did you already had your breakfast?” and of course I always answer no, because I don’t eat breakfast so often… After a while in China I started getting used to the idea and I started eating breakfast too, so next time someone asks me I will answer “Yes and you?”
Well, the typical Chinese breakfast is very simple, usually you will see people in the morning on the street, on the bus or in the subway having their breakfast from a small bag (like a supermarket bag). Most of them buy their breakfast at the closest street corner on their way to work, for not more than 2-5 Yuan (about 30 to 90 cents). Here are some popular examples of the street breakfast in Beijing:
First a drink yogurt, this is actually really good, not too sweet and kind of the same taste as the natural yogurt in the west. It comes in really cute bottles, but you need to drink at the place you buy it and then return the bottle to reuse it for the day after..
Before
After
My favorite street breakfast is this:
Jian bing guo zi 煎饼果子
I warn you it is very oily and super heavy for the morning, but it’s good and will make your stomach full for almost all day. In Israel we have something familiar to this that called “Malawach” and I really like it as well. It’s basically a filo dough ban, on which they fry a sunny side up egg, put some sauce on top and some cabbage. You can also add some sausages or other meat to it if you like, or even different kinds of tofu.
In the winter, you will see more big pots of different soups, xifan (稀饭) and zhou (稀粥) which are kind of a tasteless soggy wet rice that make you warm on the inside. This also consider it very healthy and good for your body.
Don’t forget what they say: “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day!”
Winter booth corner in the street
