Last Page
Scared of Bird-Flu Chicken or Mad-Cow Beef?
Eat vegetarian during your next China trip
by Paula M. Miller
When I heard there was a restaurant in Shanghai that had a no
smoking, no alcohol, no meat, and no egg policy, I assumed the
restaurant would also have no customers. In fact, although I am
vegetarian and find it challenging to find 100 percent vegetarian food
in China, I wasn't sure that I wanted to visit such a "straight"
(specifically, dry) restaurant. But there are now three Zaozi Shu
restaurants in Shanghai, and business seems to be booming.
Zaozi Shu, known as Jujube Tree or Vegetarian Life Style in English,
was founded in 2000 by a vegetarian couple from Taiwan. The restaurant,
whose slogan is "For earth, for animals, and for your health," prides
itself on serving organic vegan food with no MSG and is known for its
organic tea. The restaurant's Chinese name is a play on words—zaozi shu
sounds similar to zao chi su, which means "become vegetarian soon."
Calligraphy bearing the zao chi su phrase hangs prominently at the front
of the restaurant.
I visited the restaurant's Huaihai branch on Song Shan Road near the
trendy Xintiandi neighborhood. The restaurant had an hour-long waitlist
during Friday's lunch rush, a more-than hour-long waitlist for Friday
dinner, and was even busy on the Wednesday night I visited. The
restaurant's warm lighting, wooden tables, plastic grape vines crawling
up faux brick walls, and stone-tiled floor created a friendly feel.
Small, partitioned dining areas line the back wall. The dining room
lacks acoustic tiles on the ceiling or walls so noise is a problem if
diners want to converse when the restaurant is packed.
Zaozi Shu has separate food and beverage menus—the beverages include
a complete line of teas and juices. Some juice combinations, like apple
and grapefruit juice, seem standard but others are more adventurous,
such as the aloe vera, lemon, and honeydew juice or the lotus root,
apple, and orange juice. According to the beverage menu, the teas
deliver various health benefits: vitality tea is supposed to replenish
one's "primordial" qi (energy), increase one's vigor, and enhance
immunity; the cosmetology tea is supposed to eliminate dampness,
beautify the skin, and nourish one's yin (the Taoist "feminine"
principle in nature).
Foreign diners will be happy to see that the restaurant's food menu
is in Chinese, English, and Japanese and includes color photos of each
dish. Zaozi Shu offers appetizers; soups; stir-fried, deep-fried,
braised, and steamed dishes; Chinese clay pot and hot pot dishes; dim
sum; rice and noodle dishes; and desserts. The menu lists a wide variety
of soups and appetizers including Sichuan-style hot and sour soup,
shredded bean curd (tofu) soup, and coconut soup with agaric (mushroom)
threads, tofu rolls stuffed with dark greens and pinenuts, sesame
vegetarian fish, and orange-flavored vegetarian beef. (Note that any
kind of "vegetarian meat" is usually a soybean product—be it steamed
tofu, pressed tofu, tofu skin, or tofu sheets.)
When I first sat down I was served a fruit plate of watermelon and
apples. Generally in China, fruit is served at the end of the meal. But
Zaozi Shu believes it is healthier to begin a meal with fruit. Among the
dishes my friends and I ordered were vegetarian ham with pickled mustard
greens and broad beans; Sichuan-style diced tofu (gongbao doufu); tofu
skin rolls; Taiwan-style eggplant; spinach greens; vegetarian chicken in
lemon juice; deep fried, Beijing-style vegetarian duck; boiled
dumplings; spring rolls; and Chinese homestyle pancakes. Every dish was
tasty except for the lemon chicken, which reminded me of lemon-scented
Pledge wood polish, and the pancakes, which tasted oddly like beef.
In spite of this good food I had to ask, "Why is this restaurant so
crowded and who is eating here?" Is it the rare vegetarian foreigner,
vegetarian Buddhist, health-conscious consumer, or trendy urbanite that
frequents these restaurants? The majority of customers I saw appeared to
be Chinese. I thought vegetarianism was still quite rare in China. After
all, isn't meat consumption supposed to increase as low incomes rise?
But apparently Shanghai has roughly 15 vegetarian restaurants now, and
the Zaozi Shu branch I visited was always packed. When I asked the
waitstaff if they could estimate the percentage of their customers who
are vegetarian, they told me most people were probably not vegetarian,
but just wanted to eat healthily. And then it dawned on me—China was
still in the midst of a meat scare in early 2004—this time because of
bird flu. Surely vegetarian restaurants benefit when the public fears
tainted meat.
Meat scare or not, it is clear my days of searching in vain for true
vegetarian cuisine in China are over. On my next trip to Shanghai, I
will probably visit Zaozi Shu again—or any of the other vegetarian
restaurants that are sprouting up.
—Paula M. Miller
Paula M. Miller is assistant editor of the CBR.
Top of Page
Table of Contents
