'Last week I drove 43 miles to a restaurant I heard had good marinara sauce.'
'How was it?'
'Pleeease!'
—My Blue Heaven
One of the key features of international travel is eating the tasty local foods in each place you go. That’s true for non-diabetics as well as those of us who travel with diabetes.
In China, one of the greatest places to sample some local food in an exhilaratingly idiosyncratic setting is Kaifeng and its famous night market.
On Day 7 of our China trip my travel partner Masayo and I took a 9-hour train from Xi’an to the city of Kaifeng (开封) in Henan Province. From our first night there, we realized we were in a very special place.
The train trip from Xi’an to Kaifeng
Chinese trains are reliable and always packed with interesting passengers. China is a big, big place, and although we will be here 90 days, we are still going to miss large sections of it as we move around.
Final visit to Starbucks on the morning we left Xi’an. Yecch.
Our time on the train to Kaifeng passed slowly but amiably, and we caught some glimpses of the things we were missing as we moved from station to station – some scenic, like rivers and snow-dusted mountains in the afternoon sunlight, and some rather fearsome, like gigantic smoking cooling towers.
Lovely view from the Xi’an to Kaifeng train.
It’s a reality of travel in China that you can’t see everything. So you have to temper the impulse to suddenly stop and spend time in an area you’re passing through with the belief that the place you actually end up will be different but just as inviting.
Not so lovely view from the train.
The food in Kaifeng
We arrived late in the evening in Keifeng, and took a ride in a battered and mildly chaotic tuk-tuk to a hotel I’d seen in my Lonely Planet called Da Jin Tai Hotel. They had a room, and we checked in. I spotted a McDonald’s and a KFC nearby – not promising, from a culinary point of view, but I wasn’t worried.
I’d heard that dining was in fact the notable thing about Kaifeng.
Kaifeng’s main intersection, before the vendors set up.
Kaifeng (pronounced more like “kai foong” than “kai feng”) is famous for its big street food stall market that sprouts every evening at the big intersection in the center of town. On weekends, the market is much bigger, but even on weeknights it’s quite a sight to watch: people appear from nowhere and start pushing carts into the square about 6:00 pm, dodging cars, tuk-tuks and buses with a kind of reckless precision that’s terrifying. In ten minutes, everything is set up and nobody has been run over.
It’s jaw-droppingly impressive to outsiders, but just a regular evening to the locals.
Vendors selling all kinds of delicious things offer great food for cheap. We stayed in Kaifeng several days longer than planned, just to get a chance to sample more foods from Kaifeng’s street dining extravaganza.
Diabetes report – Insulin for the Night Market
Choosing an insulin dose for a place like the Kaifeng Night Market doesn’t necessarily have to be a difficult thing. Many of the dishes are heavy on meat and vegetables and contain few carbohydrates. Then again, one of my favorites was the round toasted bread with lamb skewers; the bread could be thicker than I imagined it would be.
Still, after ordering, finding a table, and shooting NovoLog up into my stomach (discreetly), I’d eat and often go back for seconds, and usually have a large-sized beer. I managed to avoid any serious blood sugar spikes or dips in Kaifeng.
Fried sesame and bean paste balls. Great for dessert, heavy for insulin.
And anyway, if you go to all the trouble to travel halfway around the world and end up in a place like Kaifeng in the center of China, the market food will certainly be fun and delicious enough to withstand a couple hours of bad blood sugar. It’s worth it!
My favorite, overall, was probably the skewers of meat and vegetables: a stall would have two or three dozen different types of food laid out, raw, in various containers. Hunks of bell pepper, shrimp, meatballs, and various unidentifiable but tasty looking morsels were all impaled on small wooden sticks; you point at the ones you want, indicate how many of each, and they grill them all right there for you. If you want (or if you don’t stop them in time) they’ll brush a spicy sauce on each skewer.
The prices were cheap and the taste was unbelievable. Not just for the little skewers I loved, but the round spicy bread with lamb, the dumpling soup, and the cheap watery beer (of course). It all seemed not only filling but pretty healthy too. The food seemed fresh, and always made with thorough care.
The market takes on a big party atmosphere each night, as row upon row of plastic tables are set up and shared under a come-one-come-all, sit-wherever-you-like system (rather than each stall having its own seating). So it’s necessarily sociable, and the experience is very addicting; I looked forward to dinner each night.
If you are in China, make it to Kaifeng at least one night – three or four or more if you’re really into trying different foods. And food in Kaifeng is not only the night market; around town and all day long there are temporary and permanent stalls cooking up a variety of unidentified but filling snacks, often portable ones so you can walk around and check out the place while munching. There are the usual fruit sellers too; each morning we would get a stick of pineapple and an egg-pouch thing from a couple vendors who hung around near the hotel.
Masayo tearing through some of Kaifeng’s best one afternoon.
Chinese food isn’t really like “Chinese food” in the U.S., which is distantly related to a few Chinese dishes but really a separate kind of meal. China is in fact a huge place and the food in each area is distinct.
Kaifeng attracts vendors from several different areas and is a great way to sample an addictive variety of Chinese cuisine.
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