Malatang

Recently as I look for new stuff to eat on campus, I can only eat noodles with red sauce so many times in a week, I've started to eat at one of the Malatang places on campus. Malatang doesn't really translate into English as far as I can tell, though some people have translated it simply as "hot, hot, hot." Malatang is a sort of soup like dish that is made up of whatever you want. When I go into the Malatang place there are little baskets sitting by the side of the wall. I take one of the baskets and then fill it with whatever I want from a section of vegetables, tofu, and meat, that they have sitting in a refrigerator. They have a pretty wide selection of stuff including a bunch of different types of vegetables, I think they have four different types of lettuce alone, and other things like eggs and even some small pieces of bread. I can then add noddles of different varieties to what I have picked out. After I'm done I give the basket to the cashier who checks what's in it and assigns the whole thing a price. Malatang is cooked using a big boiling pot in which everyone's food goes separated by its own little basket. After boiling for a while they take my food out put it in a disposable bowl and add broth from the big pot.

I never used to go to Malatang because I find the meat there a little questionable, but I recently found that it's actually really good if I just add about twelve types of vegetables and some noodles. I usually get a really full bowl, but a lot of the students take the other route realizing that the broth is essentially free and putting in almost as little as possible. When I've told some of the students that I eat there they are concerned that it's not very healthy since they cook everything in one big pot. Actually I think the pot is probably the most sanitary part since it's always kept at a high boil. What does worry me a little is that the people put the food into the pot with their bare hands whether it be meat of noodles, and China isn't a big hand washing country. But the food is pretty good, healthy, and frankly if you're afraid of germs China is already not the country for you.