I lock my bike amid a tangle of other pedal and battery-powered two-wheelers and walk across the concrete plaza. At a turnstile, security guards wearing facemasks check the Sichuan Health Ministry QR code on my phone and wave me through to the grey brick streets beyond. I’ve just entered 宽窄巷子Kuānzhǎi Xiàngzi, Wide and Narrow Alleys, home to the Manchurian Eight Banners regiment in ancient times, but now a commercialized tourist trap.
The imitation Qīng Dynasty shop fronts emit heady smells of spicy hotpot and cured yak meat, but I weave through the crowd and continue on my way. With the meat industry responsible for 60% of greenhouses gases from food, I’ve come here to explore what I believe isn’t only an ethical question, but also an existential one: is the widespread shift to a plant-based food system possible in the world’s most populous country? And if so, what would such a change look like?
In the hope of answering this question, I’m heading to三川九味Sānchuān Jiǔwèi, Three Rivers Nine Flavours, a Sichuanese restaurant where the head chef is offering crash-courses in ‘Traditional Plant-Based Sicuanese Cuisine.’
“In China, we have a saying,” says中瑮 Zhōnglì, or Johnny, standing at his kitchen island surrounded by a small cluster of curious foreigners like myself. “一把菜刀打天下Yī bǎ càidāo dǎ tiānxià. One kitchen knife can conquer the world! When I worked overseas in Singapore, I used a different knife for every task, but we won’t be doing that today. You go first!”
Johnny hands me the universal Chinese cleaver and I chop pickled chillies, spring onions, garlic and ginger the way he’s just shown us, before dropping them into sizzling oil.
We’re making鱼香 yúxiāng, ‘fish fragrance–’ a totally plant-based sauce, the name of which originated, according to the story, when a family ran out of fish and threw together the last ingredients in their house, accidentally creating a Chinese mainstay.
“I grew up with these flavours,” says Johnny as I add soy sauce and black vinegar. “I can learn the dishes of other regions, or even other countries, but only authentic Sichuan flavours give me the memories of childhood. That’s why I want to share them with foreigners, it’s part of my culture.” When we stir corn starch, water and sugar into the mix, it becomes the iconic red sauce that lifts everything it touches.
Reducing it to a simmer, I use the flat edge of the cleaver to squash tofu into a paste, and watch as another volunteer wrings out the excess water with gauze. She then mixes the tofu in a bowl with crushed water chestnuts and inserts this stuffing into cylindrical slices of aubergine, which we batter and deep fry, twice. These crispy, golden patties are called茄饼qiébǐng, ‘aubergine cakes,’ and we toss them into the yúxiāng sauce before plating them up.
“Not bad,” says Johnny, holding the dish up for inspection. “The qiébǐng are the right size, and the yúxiāngsauce has the right amount of shine from the corn starch… people would pay RMB45 for that, easy.”
It tastes damn good. The qiébǐng are crispy on the outside and creamy yet fibrous within, like a schnitzel, and the yúxiāng sauce has achieved that balance of spicy, smoky and sweet I’ve always found elusive while cooking at home. Between mouthfuls, I ask Johnny what inspired him to concentrate on cooking plant-based meals.
“To attract foreigners,” he says bluntly. “They often look for plant-based dishes at my restaurant, so I do a vegan menu each Monday, and run these classes. But the locals… they will always choose meat dishes when they go out, because they think it’s more special.”
I’m not surprised by this remark. In recent years it’s been estimated that China consumes 28% of the world’s meat, with consumption rates rising in line with living standards. Perhaps in part because it was unaffordable to many until recently, meat grants those who consume it a sense of affluence and indulgence. Impacts of these dietary changes include increased risk of pandemics as well as higher rates of obesity. Nonetheless, it was interesting to experience vegan cuisine that retained an authentic Sichuanese identity
To get a better idea of the potential of plant-based food in China though, I need to go to a place where vegan cuisine is more than just a gimmick on Mondays.
In the dusty morning sunshine, I ride along the wide, empty streets of a suburban district 20km southeast of our apartment. Hugging the pavement to my right are the bamboo forests and farm smallholdings of Chengdu Eco Zone: a 133-square kilometre green belt, which it is intended will encircle the entire city over the coming years. I’m heading for 馔道小院 Zhuàndào Xiǎoyuàn, Food Street Courtyard, an organic vegan restaurant run by the Taiwanese Tsou family since 2013. Cycling up a driveway into the ecological area I find their restaurant with a quaint vegetable garden out front, opposite a field of yellow canola flowers.
“China has five seasons,” says Ellen Tsou, a bright woman in her twenties who comes across as earnestly passionate about her work. “Winter, spring, summer, ‘long summer’ and autumn.” On the stainless steel countertop, an array of organic vegetables are laid out, all freshly picked from the surrounding urban farms. “We have recently entered spring,” Ellen continues, “A time of change in which it’s important to maintain balance in the body, and protect the lungs. Lotus root is good for the lungs, so we’ll be eating that today.”
I find the modern restaurant – with its composting facilities and attached health food shop – an interesting setting for this old-school folk wisdom. Ellen goes on to say that the philosophy of Daoism, China’s indigenous religion that emerged from Shamanism and nature worship, provides the philosophical basis for the restaurant’s approach. “We aim for a state of balance and harmony with nature, both inside our bodies and with the natural world.”
Today we’re going to cook a feast of Xīnjiāng style vegetable curry, tomato and lettuce soup, spinach and tofu salad, multigrain rice and pickled seasonal vegetables. Mr高Gāo, an experienced local chef with a gruff Chengdu dialect, begins arranging all the visitors into ‘stations,’ assigning roles so the operation may run smoothly. I’m on veg-cutting duty, while some other visitors are making glutinous rice balls and blanching batches of spinach.
Work begins, and unlike the previous cooking experience it’s a group effort, with Mr Gāo at the helm. After an hour of frenzied activity, dishes begin getting passed through the chef window and we all file outside, to sit around a table amid the herbs and citrus trees in beautiful sunshine.
The the food definitely tastes balanced. The Xīnjiāng curry is rich, sweetened with pineapple, while the blanched spinach and tofu salad is lean and fresh. I’m curious to know whether Mr Gāo eats vegan himself, or if he just cooks this food for work, like Johnny.
“I haven’t eaten meat in ten years,” he says flatly. “It happened purely by accident: I was a regular chef for many years, but then I got a job cooking at Wénshū Buddhist Monastery. I’m a lifelong Buddhist, so it seemed natural to give up meat.”
Mr Gāo’s answer reminds me that in China, Buddhist monks and nuns are almost all vegans or vegetarians, a fact unique to the country stemming back to the 5th Century. While it is fairly common for lay Buddhists such as Mr Gāo to adopt a similar diet, I’m curious about his individual reasoning, so with Ellen’s help I ask him what his motivations for staying vegetarian are. After thinking for a few seconds, he says simply, “I no longer have any desire to eat meat.”
This strikes me as a very Buddhist response. Buddhism is about mastery of one’s own desires, and while it’s often assumed that Buddhist schools promote vegetarianism to reduce the suffering of animals, this is a very modern take on an ancient philosophy.
As John Kieschnic explains in Buddhist Vegetarianism in China (2005), abstinence from meat is “a practice of personal cultivation … encouraged not for concerns for animal welfare but to avoid karmic retribution for the individual (and to prevent) hindrance to the ability for an individual to cultivate compassion.” He goes on to add: “For the ancient Chinese, butchering animals was in general considered entirely natural and unproblematic.” This has actually caused some modern vegans to reject traditional Buddhist meat-abstinence as ‘non-vegan.’
After the meal, Ellen insists on picking handfuls of fresh mint and rosemary from the garden for me: herbs that are hard to come by in Chinese megacities. While doing so, she explains that for her family, the personal cultivation taught in Buddhism and the respect for nature in Daoism both inform their worldview, “But it’s also influenced by modern awareness of animal welfare, environment and health.”
Riding home slowly with my stomach full, I have plenty of time to reflect on these two very different experiences of vegan culture in China and feel both hopeful and impressed. With such delicious ingredients, along with mastery of long-established meat substitutes like tofu and deep cultural traditions of plant-based cuisine, I feel that the people of China are at the very least, as Charlie Campbell writes, ‘better placed to embrace (veganism) than Americans indoctrinated by a powerful meat lobby and a founding myth built around cowboys and beef ranches.’
While the challenges inherent in restructuring the world’s food systems are immense, the Chinese state has huge influence over the population’s consumer choices. If they choose to leverage this power, tapping in to the population’s established proclivity for vegan eating, a vegan China might be closer than we think.
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Vegan Futures