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A pharmacy in Kweilin dispenses a range of panaceas that includes ginseng cigarettes (for smoker's cough) and Male Silkworm Tonic (for impotence). At clinics in Shanghai, Wusih and Foshan, tour-weary Foreign Friends seek massage and acupuncture treatment for whatever ails them. Frances Aldridge of Key Biscayne, Fla., gets needles in her neck to assuage a pinched nerve. She swears it works. Her husband Frank takes acupuncture for an arthritic foot and thereafter climbs mountains without a cane. Their joint bill: $2.
Chinese gastronomy is among the world's most elegant and diverse.
There are more than a dozen different and distinct regional cuisines, and in each city the cooks vie to outdo their competitors elsewhere. A banquet consists of several dozen delicacies, orchestrated with regard for flavor, texture and color. Each begins like an opera, with an enticing overture leading ineluctably on toward the major arias. Because they lack space for pasturage, the central Chinese south of the Yellow River do not eat much beef or lamb. Most specialties are based on chicken, duck, pork, bountiful vegetables and a huge variety of fresh-and saltwater fish and shellfish. It is basically a cuisine of survival, in which every last conceivably usable ingredient goes into the pot. How about smoked ducks' tongues? Fish eyes and spiced chicken feet? Wine-braised camel's hump, a delicacy of the Manchu emperors, is not, alas, generally available.
In Canton, the epicurean epicenter, a banquet mounts to such glories as Phoenix Meets Dragon hi Brilliant Courtyard — a spicy consummation of chicken breasts (symbol of femininity) and ham (for masculinity) — and a casserole of clear-simmered Lions' Heads; lacking lionburger, they consist of leonine pork meatballs in a gingery sauce. Some dishes, such as egg fu yung and fried rice, are familiar to Americans, since at least 90% of all Chinese food served in the U.S. is based on Cantonese recipes. But the real meal in China — Peking duck, for example — could not be mistaken for one in Chinatown, U.S.A. Almost all Cantonese dishes are steamed or stir-fried. Texture and flavor are not masked by heavy sauces that elsewhere can disguise unfresh ingredients. In Canton, they say, the shrimp come wiggling to the table.
At the Soochow Hotel, the masterpiece of the meal is Beggar's Chicken, fit for a millionaire. The bird is wrapped in lotus leaves, encased in clay and baked for four hours. The very special guest is allowed to break open the potterized poultry with a golden hammer. In Kweilin's Li River Hotel, the aesthetic highlight is a bowl of bouillon on which float three yellow-eyed ducklings made of egg white. The culinary triumph is a sweet-and-sour fresh-water mandarin fish, confected with ham, onion, potato, sausage, mushroom and ginger. It is sculptured to resemble a squirrel, hence the dish is announced in advance by one interpreter as "tree rat," provoking preprandial nausea among several F.F.s.