The View From Your Breakfast

My friend T.W. took this photo in China at a supermarket which he says "puts Whole Foods to shame (pasta made fresh on the premises! Several varities of live turtle on offer!" He also alleges that it's a breakfast food -- "a crepe of sorts." He has a different photo of a similar item which includes "egg, scallions, cilantro, some sort of pickle, hot sauce, sweet brown sauce, and a crispy rice cracker folded into it: it's much better than it sounds." That photo, however, is really fuzzy, so I went with this other one that has "no cilantro, pickles, or crispy thing."

For record, in my opinion horizontally oriented photos really work better with the site's layout, so if you have the option, send one of those.

Comments

I had one of those while in Beijing a few years ago. I ordered it from a guy with a street cart, unsure of what i was ordering, but it was one of the best street vendor experiences of my life.

Posted by tomboy | May 5, 2007 9:37 AM

The best is when in China when people order live fish and other animals in nice supermarkets, so you see these packages wrapped in white paper jumping around in people's carts.

Posted by Reality Man | May 5, 2007 11:20 AM

In re: orientation of photos. If your interface allows you to control two things, you'll improve the look of your vertical images.

1. Can you reduce the overall size or at least the width of your verticals? The way they're running now, you end up with this tiny strip of text that looks cramped and weird.

2. Can you put some padding (in HTML) on the right side of the vertical photos? Ten pixels will do the trick. This will solve your other problem, which is that your text is butting up directly against the photo. If you can't add padding, you might be able to open the picture in an image editing program, add ten pixels of white to the right side, and you're done.

Posted by pdp | May 5, 2007 11:29 AM

The breakfast food described is called a "jian bing", and it is excellent. If I understand the perspective in the picture correctly, the described jian bing is a not nearly so big as the one in the photo.

You can sometimes find it in other parts of China, but it is mostly a Beijing local specialty, sold by street vendors for ~US $0.25. I look forward to having jianbing for breakfast any time I'm in Beijing.

Bonus info: Over the years, fellow expats variously referred to these as either "The People's Burrito" or "Egg McMao".

xyz

Posted by xyz | May 5, 2007 11:52 AM

So, when I typed jianbing in traditional characters into Flickr, I mostly got pictures of moon cakes (which I normally hear called yuebing).

So, I coverted it to simplified characters, did another Flickr search, and got pictures of something that looks like what they call danbing (egg cake or egg cracker) in Taiwan.

Yes, I do have something to to do today, later, but, no, I don't really have a life.

Taiwanese breakfast restaurant with branches in USA: Yungho (you can look it up).

Posted by godoggo | May 5, 2007 12:18 PM

oops, jian bing, trad characters in Flicker.

See? Those mainlanders need to learn to talk right.

Posted by godoggo | May 5, 2007 12:20 PM

Oops, again, I just remembered, jianbing in Taiwan means I think pancake, which is what, sort of, those trad character pictures would be.

Posted by godoggo | May 5, 2007 12:24 PM

But wait! There's more!

Not only does jianbing mean pancake in Taiwan, but pancakes are normally considered a snack pastry there, not a breakfast food. I used to buy little pancake and jelly sandwiches from street vendors in Keelung way back when.

Posted by godoggo | May 5, 2007 12:46 PM

I lived in Shanghai for a few months. The dish is called Tsunyaobing there (I apologize, I do not know the correct pinyin spelling). They are very delicious, very cheap (about 4 RMB, I believe), very oily, and sold by vendors on the street (which is always a good idea for good cheap food). This is not a "breakfast food" per se, but it is sold throughout the day as a snack.

I also love the local markets where the have the live animals. Although, after the bird flu broke out, they don't have any more fowl.

Posted by adlsad | May 5, 2007 2:11 PM

Re: adlsad's mention of the Shanghai "Tsunyaobing"

I think this would be 'cong you bing' - literally onions/scallions + oil + ~pancake.
That's a different member of the 'bing' family, and also really delicious. Generally, it's a bit thicker [more layers], and it includes mostly scallions, not the hot sauce, bean sauce, ^ crunchy fried bread thing of the 'jian bing' -

'bing' [3rd tone] is just a pretty generic word that could be translated as 'pancake', or 'cake' but really pretty much means round-flattish-bready-thing. It can be cooked many different ways.

the 'jian' [1st tone] of 'jian bing' is the verb for 'fry in shallow oil' --

Boy, would a jianbing be good right about now...

xyz

Posted by xyz | May 5, 2007 2:55 PM

xyz,

Thanks for the info and response. Again, I am sorry about my Mandarin. Actually, as I remember, the street vendors can make both the cong you bing and the one you described in an earlier post. I just thought they were all under the cong you bing family.

Anyway, in Shanghai, what I REALLY miss are shin jian, the Shanghainese dumplings, and the lamb skewers that the Muslims make. Mmmmmmmm, shin jian. Mmmmmmm, lamb skewers.

Posted by adlsad | May 5, 2007 4:47 PM

Congyoubing if Flickr (traditional characters)!!!!!!!!!!!!

Congyoubing in Flickr (simplified characters)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And thank you for giving me a way to avoid this crap I'm supposed to be doing.

No idea what shin jian is...

Posted by godoggo | May 5, 2007 6:42 PM

Yet no mention of the fact that due to China's abysmal record on contamination of soil, water, the food supply, that those eggs, grain, vegetables, meat, across the board (whole foods has degenerated into a catch phrase, rather than what it was intended to apply to originally) that breakfast prepared in the market is deplorable.

The ignorance of the blogodon elite, the willing indifference and moral relativism is astounding.

Posted by Jenn | May 6, 2007 10:18 AM