Now this is a big subject. We ate well, and copiously. One or two mediocre meals, surprisingly in Beijing; but out in the boonies, meals ranged from good to wow. Starting, actually, before the trip started, in Hong Kong, where I swear you can't get a bad meal no matter what you're willing to pay. Even the bowl of cold noodles with shredded duck and mango at the Y, where I stayed, was wonderful. And in Shanghai, my friend Nancy's ayi -- cook/housekeeper -- made a couple of fabulous meals involving chicken, noodles, green beans, and hot peppers. In Lanzhou there was an exceptional steamed whole fish, which I ate and loved even though the river that flows through Lanzhou is no cleaner than the air that hangs over it. Twice we had dishes -- once chicken, and once beef -- made with Sichuan peppers, a complex, metallic hot taste I would kill for. (WL, a genuine foodie, tells me their import into the US was for a long time illegal, and even now they have to be irradiated or heat-treated before they can be sold here. This is because they can carry a disease that affects citrus trees. And it explains why I've only tasted them in China.) In Jiayuguan we ate sauteed alfalfa, which we all loved. As we moved west, Chinese dishes gave way to Uighur ones. More on the Uighurs themselves in another post, but they're Turkic people whose cuisine is light on the rice -- although they make a buttery pilaf with mutton, carrots and raisins that's killer -- and heavier on bread and noodles, plus lamb. A lot of out-of-this-world shishkabob, sheep-milk yogurt, and noodle soups. Once, we were offered camel's milk, which I didn't try; the people who did allowed as how I might have made the right choice. (We were also told camel's hoof was a great delicacy, but no one offered us that, so they might have been pulling our legs.) Various hot breads, flat and otherwise, right out of the coal-fired oven, and round rolls with a hole in the middle: proto-bagels. The last night in Beijing we had a Peking Duck banquet in which every course included some form of duck. (Don't tell the guys in Central Park...)

At the end of every meal we were served watermelon, which they grow in great profusion out there in the west; and occasionally other melons, yellow or orange, sometimes denser than watermelon, sometimes the same consistency. And, unaccountably, on the same plate as the watermelon, cherry tomatoes. Our theory was, the Chinese don't really eat dessert, so the fruit at the end of the meal was a concession to westerners. And tomatoes are a fruit, right? Seemed like a good idea to them. And then there was the sweet Uighur pastry rolled with nuts and raisins into little rolls, boy oh boy. And a similar pastry, not sweet, filled with scallions and potatoes. And, at breakfast, the congee (rice porridge, sometimes with millet) and steamed pumpkin, and red bean buns. And, when all else failed or we'd been hiking on the Great Wall and felt like we deserved a treat, there was ice cream. The Chinese, and the Uighurs, don't get it about dessert, but that doesn't mean they don't get it about sweets. They do, they do.

Though the corn pop -- corn-flavored ice cream, covered in a taste-free kernel-textured wafer crust -- was not wonderful.