The first thing we saw in front of Shiqi Lao were two cooks frying what appeared to be big balloons of dough. They repeatedly turned the giant puffs in their woks so that they would be evenly fried and crispy. In front of the cooks were finished fried puffs, waiting to be brought to expectant diners.

The fried puffs are one of the many local dishes served at Shiqi Lao, which specializes in food from Zhongshan's surrounding villages. The restaurant's rather gaudy exterior, with a 10-foot cartoon pigeon, disguises the fact that it is a foodie haven. Hong Kongers flood the dining room on weekends, taking a 3-hour bus ride just for great inexpensive eating. My family and friends in Zhongshan know to go on weekdays, when they can eat with slightly smaller crowds.

As eyesore-ish the outside was, I was impressed by what the restaurant did with the interior. From the tin panels on the ceiling, I guessed the space used to be a factory or warehouse. Overhead lights were woven like elaborate wicker baskets. You could choose between regular tables or booths in boat-like structures.

*On how this lunch relates to the environment and Blog Action Day, scroll to the last 2 paragraphs.

I had never tried emu before and would never have expected to eat it in China, until my great-aunt invited us to a "Cantonese-style western" restaurant. Located in the old part of Zhongshan, it was curiously named Grace Conqueror Restaurant. There was a pretty courtyard with tables, a fountain, carambola trees, and aloe vera plants. From the courtyard you can hear the occasion bell of the biking recycling collector, who rides through once a week.

If the restaurant had served straight-up Cantonese food, or well-made food of any type, I would have been happy. Instead we ate a bad "fusion" meal. To be fair, my great-aunt and other family members had dined there many times before, and later said the poor food quality this time was very uncharacteristic.

Ever since I was young, whenever my mother asked me what vegetable I'd like for dinner, my answer 99% of the time was "chao ong choy", the idiomatic Cantonese term for stir-fried water spinach. (In non-idiomatic Mandarin it's 炒空心菜 cǎo kòng xīn cài.) I don't know what made me love it from an early age on, but it always tasted meatier than other stir-fried greens. Maybe because the hollowness of the stalks - hence the "kòng xīn", which means "empty center" - cradled whatever seasonings or sauce it was cooked with. Many many years later I still love water spinach, although I now dabble in other greens from time to time.

Chinese water spinach is usually in season during the summer, but here in Zhongshan, where warm whether stretches well into October, I can enjoy my leafy green for a bit longer.

My mother's recipe for stir-fried water spinach is simple and hasn't changed much since my days of single-veggie-fanaticism. Most Cantonese restaurants and other people's mothers will make a very similar version of this dish, which is why, apart from using old stalks or over-cooking, it's hard to make a bad plate of water spinach.

Recipe after the jump.

Last night Jacob and I escaped our work desks and had a quintessential night out for being young in a small Chinese city: dinner at a sushi-go-round, an hour of games at a local arcades, and drinks at a boba tea café.

Boba tea , also known as pearl milk tea or bubble tea, is a Taiwanese creation that gained popularity in East Asia in the 1990s, and later spread to US, Canadian, and European cities with large Asian communities. In China's coastal cities, it seems that every other block boasts a café serving boba tea. Not a bad thing considering other places to sit down and have drinks can be either too raucus (tea parlors) or overpriced (Starbucks and imitation Starbucks chains.)

In Beijing we had gone to an rbt for not only boba tea but because some tables had dangling bench-like swings as seats. Zhongshan's rbt also had swings, which was why we chose it over the 20 or so other cafés in the vicinity. Now, the swings may be novelty, even a bit childish, but tell me the idea of sitting on a swing sipping a drink with bubble-like pearls doesn't put a smile on your face.

Zhongshan is over 2,000 kilometers from Beijing, farther than Miami is from New York City. Twenty years ago, it was hard to find northern-style foods in this Cantonese-speaking and Cantonese-food-eating city. How times have changed. At our local hypermarket Da Run Fa 大润发, the prepared foods section is dominated by northern style foods, including every type of noodle and dumpling and pancake you can hope to find in Beijing.

Today for lunch I picked up a few items from the snack section: (from left to right) pumpkin pancakes 南瓜饼, flat bread pockets with Chinese chives 东北大馅饼, and taro cakes 芋头饼. All were good, after a little salt added to the latter two, and were a nice change from the Cantonese fried rice I've been having for lunch almost every day. (Not that fried rice isn't tasty, but change does your tastebuds good.)

I could go to the hypermarket every day and not get bored; it would take me at least a month or two to cover all the meat, baked goods, and prepared foods they have. Maybe I'll post a video next.

Even in a small city like Zhongshan (small by Chinese standards, anyway), there is a huge variety of dim sum restaurants, ranging from tiny mom-and-pop's to large elegant banquet halls. Prince Restaurant, a 10-minute walk from my parent's home, fits the latter description. We forgoed our usual bakery breakfast for dim sum with my parents and a big group of their childhood friends.

Hargao, shaomai,* spring rolls, oh my. Plates and baskets streamed steadily to our table: crispy squid, pork buns, fried dough, lotus leaf rice, coconut pudding. Along with the standard Cantonese dim sum I've had countless times, there was something new, a flaky delicate fan-shaped pastry. The filling? Oysters.

Oysters that are served at dim sum are usually stir-fried or fried, hardly ever in the form of a pastry. The layers here reminded me of phyllo or mille-feuille, though the technique is different. To make this pastry the baker or pastry chef first divides the dough in half, kneeds one part with water, the other part with oil. With the filling in the middle, he then folds the two parts into each other multiple times, then turns the dough inside out before baking so the tiny folds are visible.

High temperatures and little breeze did not stop us from hiking the Dragon's Back trail on eastern Hong Kong island on Sunday. Nevertheless, by the time we finished the 2-hour long hike, we were in need food and ice-cold drinks.

Big Wave Bay (Tai Long Wan), a scenic little beach where the trail ended, had a few restaurants scattered between surf shops. Tong Kee, a noodle shop that also rents surf and boogie boards, had a no-frills outdoor eating area that was filling up with beach-goers. Always a good sign. We struck up a conversation with the family that owns the eatery, who told us that Tong Kee has been opened off-and-on for 40 years, long before the other restaurants on the strip moved from town.

You wouldn't think a hot bowl of noodle soup would be good after a long hike in the scorcing sun. But sitting in the shade under a fan and sipping lemon iced tea has a remarkable cooling effect. (AC, you were not missed.) We ordered a plate of stir-fried choi sum (Chinese flowering cabbage) and big bowls of pork and beef tendon soup. What's in the broth, we asked one of the owners, that makes it so flavorful? She brought out the magic spices: bay leaf, star anise, and nutmeg. Also, she added, we cook the beef - lean cuts, fatty cuts, and offal alike) - in it for at least 4 hours.

After lunch, we were rested enough to endure the 3 minute walk to dip our feet in the ocean.

These yángròuchuàn (lamb kebab) vendors are spicing things up...with a little house dancing. Impromptu advertising sure does draw a crowd.

Video from Youku, via Shanghaiist.

In the US, I make a habit of avoiding fast food chains.* Eating horrible food, wasting mounds of plastic and styrofoam, and sitting somewhere with less charm than a high school cafeteria is not my idea of dining out.

In Hong Kong, fast food is a different story. Famished after an afternoon of shopping on Kowloon island, Jacob and I almost ran to the nearest Café de Coral outlet. Café de Coral has over 100 branches in Hong Kong and dozens more on Mainland China, but still manages to produce consistently good and fresh food. The menu changes regularly and is full of food a person would normally eat, instead of artery-clogging mounds of preservatives. The entrees, both Chinese mainstays like roast duck over rice and Western pasta plates, come with veggie sides. If Morgan Spurlock spent a month eating here, he may even lose weight.

The food does come out fast...nicelhy presented on reusable dishes. As for atmosphere, I've seen a Guangzhou branch packed on a Friday night with young couples and groups dressed for a night out. America may have popularized fast food (some may even say "invent"), but other countries understand that fast food doesn't mean sacrificing the eating experience.

*In 'n Out Burger is the exception.

Café de Coral
Numerous locations around Hong Kong and Mainland China
www.cafedecoral.com