quail eggs and cash

In China you can buy lots of stuff off the backs of bikes. Like sweet potatoes. And mops. And even the labor of the guy sitting on the bike.

But the motorbike marketplace doesn't stop there.

Chinese entrepreneurs don't succumb to the tunnel vision that sees motorbikes and bicycles only as portable shops. Instead they go much further, envisioning them as ride-able versions of traditionally large-scale operations, like restaurants. 

As a result, you get a lot of people riding around on vehicles that look as if they’ve been driven straight out of the most fantastically illustrated children’s books. Except that in China these magical jalopies are very real and they can perform miracles. Or at least miracles that are contingent on large tanks of propane being driven around on two wheels, or maybe three.

Crossing streets in China is hard, and threading a Chinese traffic circle could make a big city American cry, but you will never truly appreciate Chinese traffic until you’ve played chicken with an oncoming propane tank that knows this country has no traffic cops. On the spectrum of Chengdu traffic challenges, these tanks even trump the pardon-me-but-it-seems-that-a-hog-carcass-just-fell-off-the-back-of-your-bike-in-the-middle-of-rush-hour sort of hiccups you sometimes run into here.

The truth is, despite the more risky elements of the portable kitchen system, we need these guys. They make some of the tastiest fast food in the city. Our favorite stir-fry guy has a finely tuned wok, prep space, and pantry that he likes to park by a convenience store in our neighborhood. There’s also the young guy who sells breakfast tofu with all the fixings from what looks like an oil drum on the back of his bike. And there's a lady who roasts sweet potatoes in a large earthen oven directly behind her bicycle seat during evening rush.

But before you start thinking the sidewalk is your food court, I’d recommend you not eat from every food scooter fit to hit the road. Some people are pretty carefree about what/where they'll eat, but for me there’s a litmus test these little operations have to pass. Although, to be fair, it’s more like a gut check or a ring of truth because I don't have any hard and fast rules. It's basically one of those exasperating “I know it when I see it” kind of standards.

My system admittedly leaves the should-you/shouldn’t-you up for interpretation. And that’s where Shi-wen and I diverge. One of us is fairly conservative, believing that the best moveable restaurants are those we’ve seen in the same location over and over. This person believes that a semi-regular location ensures a certain level of quality or at least a measure of find-ability should something go wrong. They also think the whole operation should be in the neighborhood of “clean.”

The other of us believes you should eat things that look good.

Take these quail egg omelet orbs. One of us ate them and the other did not. I’ll let you guess who’s who, but what we could both agree on was that this guy's set-up is awesome, as is the idea of making egg ball kabobs.

But that’s China, walk down almost any street and you’ll have an opportunity to eat something for the very first time. You’ll also have the chance to see things you’d never imagined – or more likely never wanted to imagine but now can’t get out of your head. And the smells… there are lots of smells too.

The great news is that food scooters usually smell pretty good. So even if I’m not always buying what they’re selling, I’m still a big fan of the folks who bungee cord a tank of propane to the back of their bikes and ride around town making snacks.

Without them, the sidewalks here would have no hope of smelling good.