Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
EXPAT PROFILE: THE LOCAL FOOD SCENE
American-born Lillian Chou first visited the mainland's capital in 2008, and today,
when the topic turns to food in Beijing, there are few people more qualified to lead
the conversation. In her pre-Beijing life she worked as a cook, pastry chef, food show
presenter, recipe developer, and food writer. Once installed in Beijing, she went on
to explore the local food scene and reported her findings as food editor for
Time Out
Beijing.
These days she continues to travel throughout China researching the cuisine,
gives private food tours and cooking classes in Beijing, and is working on her first
book.
WHAT FIRST BROUGHT YOU TO BEIJING?
I was working as a food editor for
Gourmet
magazine during the 2008 Beijing
Olympics, and was working on recipes for food stories from provinces I knew little
about. I'd traveled and lived in Asia for nearly eight years but had never been to
mainland China. That's when I realized I needed to go, and a six-month sabbatical
turned into a full-fledged move. I had no job and knew my Chinese wasn't very good
and realized I needed to learn the language first. For me, Beijing offered the standard
accent and was a part of China I knew very little about, so I went to study Chinese at
university in Beijing.
WHAT WERE YOUR INITIAL THOUGHTS ABOUT THE FOOD SCENE WHEN YOU
ARRIVED HERE, AND HOW DO YOU THINK IT HAS CHANGED SINCE?
I was so disappointed by what I saw. I thought Beijing would be a haven for excellent
food and that tradition would have carried through. Instead I found the food horrible,
oily, salty, and made without care. I felt Queens, New York, offered a similar range of
provincial food but had nothing to compare it to. What traveling and my job as food
editor for
Time Out Beijing
taught me was that my palate was very southern and very
narrowed in its experience. The food of the north and imperial food overall are not
written about in great detail in the West. And most of all I noticed the Chinese food
in the U.S. was that of a certain genre in which good chefs were still allowed visas
in the U.S., so the evolution of dishes seemed to stand still. This being Beijing, the
roast duck was best reputed, but my first taste was dry and awful. Subsequent meals
