Looking for China: Reflections on a Silk Road

The French admit to just one rival when it comes to cuisine,and that rival is China. Thus when a food writer travels toChina, it's not surprising that food becomes the main course inher account of the journey. Judy Schultz, food and travel editor of the Edmonton Journal,sets out to look for China, but what she finds is food - in allstages of preparation. From bird's nest soup served in hollowedmelons at the snooty Eagle's Nest in Hong Kong to live snakesdumped on her table at a snake restaurant in Guilin, Schultzprovides vigorous descriptions of what and how (and with whatconsequences) she and her Chinese acquaintances eat. Besides thesnakes, which leave her screaming - especially when a waiterskins one alive before her averted eyes - she also encountersfresh rat, cat and dog at the market in Guilin. "The rat saleswoman is rosy- cheeked," she writes in her bookLooking For China: Reflections On A Silk Road, "with thick blackbraids dangling over her blue smock, and when she smiles, twoshiny aluminum teeth gleam at me. I can see she is an organizedperson: rat tails in one pile, rat teeth in another, fat littlerat bodies all in a row and still other rats skinned, split andskewered, ready to pop on the barbecue." Schultz is refreshingly non- squeamish about all this, despitethe usual Western discomfort over seeing dripping dog carcassesin a meat market. "Along with the revulsion," she says, "there'san edge of curiosity, a fascination with the bizarre, and Iraise my camera and shoot." Given this focus on food, it is fitting that Schultz'sfascination with China began with the Chinese restaurant in thesmall Saskatchewan town where she grew up in the mid- 1950s. Ofcourse, it wasn't really a Chinese restaurant, but a restaurantowned by a Chinese family, with a menu that leaned heavily toliver and onions, hamburgers and hot beef sandwiches. As Schultzwrites, "the home cooking of China, with its delicatefive-thousand-year balance of yin and yang, wouldn't play in ruralSaskatchewan." The young Judy is fascinated by the silk pictures that hanghigh over the booths, particularly one of "a tiny faraway figurestruggling up a blue-gray mountain criss-crossed by delicatelyarched bridges and rushing waterfalls." In this she is notunlike many Westerners who develop a dreamy (and completelyerroneous) notion of the mysterious east from such kitsch. Andit's amazing how far some of us will go to satisfy a longing tofind that ideal China, travelling mile after uncomfortable milein search of the original of that blue-gray mountain, itsdelicately arched bridges, its rushing waterfalls. Schultz didn't get the opportunity until she was almost 40,but then made the series of trips that form the basis of herbook. These are framed by an account of her childhood and areturn visit to Saskatchewan to inquire after the family thathad owned the restaurant. Every once in a while she feels close to the ideal she seeks,especially during a lavish meal at a farm outside Guilin withth