On Thu, 09 Feb 2006 12:38:18 GMT, "BillReese"
wrote:

food, for example. You mentioned dumplings (jiaozi). Jiaozi exist all
over the place, but Beijing-style jiaozi are a specialty, and are very
good, indeed. There are all sorts of other Beijing-area specialties,
and though I had no trouble passing on the silkworms and scorpions on

I've had dumplings in Beijing, Shenyang, dandong, dalien, haungzhou,
shanghai, wuhan, Chongqing, and a few other places I don't know their name..
Basically they are all the same.. you must have some extra sensitive tongue
that can pick up the differences in water flavor in them or something..

Nope, not water flavor.

basically they are all made the same way, yes you can get some spicy, and
others are not..
[snip]

That's hardly the only variation in dumplings. How about the
ingredients in the fillings? That's kind of like saying "I've had
pasta dishes in Palermo, Naples, Rome, Siena, Perugia, Spoleto,
Florence, and Bologna, and they are all basically the same." Oh yeah?
Forgetting the differences in the shapes and composition of the pasta
(differences in the flour, additions of spinach, tomatoes, squid ink,
etc.), what about the different sauces?

I have to wonder if there are some tourists from China who find
Southern Italian and Northern German food much the same. Do you also
find that you can't distinguish the difference between the sound of
Mandarin and Wu (Shanghainese language or so-called "dialect," which I
understand has about as many spoken words related to Mandarin as
Polish does to English)? I find that they don't sound similar at all.

Michael

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