I had always heard that in southern China, rice was king, while wheat was the preferred grain of the North. It's true that rice abounds here, but the carbohydrate of choice in Yunnan is actually not steamed rice, but rice noodles (mi xian). This is definitely the most common breakfast, and we see plenty of people eating it for lunch or dinner as well. For breakfast, it is usually served in a broth with scallions, cilantro, a little ground meat, some pickled vegetables, and hot chili peppers. Lunch and dinner tend to feature less broth and more meat. When we travel, John and I eat mi xian (without meat) for breakfast, but at home we have yogurt, fruit, muffins or rolls (baked in our very small oven), peanut butter, crackers, or oatmeal.

Wheat noodles, both fresh and dried, are available in the Bailongsi market. Most cities, even just county capitals, have a few bakeries selling western-style birthday cakes and Wonderbread-style loaves. I have become pals with the Bailongsi baker from whom I buy yeast. At first, I felt bad about this transaction since I never buy his baked goods. However, after he asked for samples of my baking (since, as he said, it's well known that foreigners are good at making bread), I was so tickled by his praise that I didn't mind translating my oatmeal bread recipe into Chinese and metric.

In many parts of China, corn is strictly for the pigs, but in Yunnan, it is enthusiastically consumed by people as well. I would say that it is no rival of the best American corn, but heaven knows we eat plenty of it. Just recently, along the Burmese border, we saw red corn, but in Kunming mostly it's just plain yellow. No Silver Queen in Red China.

Another unique feature of Yunnan cuisine is cheese, which the rest of China finds unbearably repulsive. Kunming's goat cheese (rubing) is about the consistency of cheddar, but very white. It is always served sliced and fried, then dipped in a mixture of salt and mala (something like black pepper but with a slight numbing quality to it). Dali's cheese (rushan) is made from cow's milk, but bears no resemblance to any western cheese I've ever encountered. It is thin and leathery. After it is sliced into strips and fried, it puffs and curls into bizarre shapes. You eat it hot, with a sprinkling of salt or sugar. The existence of these two kinds of cheese has kept me from completely succumbing to sick-to-death-of-tofu boredom.

I shouldn't complain. Our market boasts more kinds of tofu than even Boston's Super 88 Chinese superstore, but I'm tired of it. Surely there is no food that inspires monotony as quickly as tofu does. (A cultural side note: many Chinese tell me they couldn't live in the west because eating so much bread would be unbearably boring. I can tell they don't believe me when I assure them that there are more kinds of bread than rice.)

Zhou Xueying taught me how to make fresh soy milk and even gave me her juicer on extended loan so I can make it myself. Fresh milk is available; we just happen not to drink it. In Kunming, Dali, and Lijiang, we can buy vanilla yogurt and fruit-flavored yogurt drinks.

Rounding out the protein options for vegetarians are eggs and beans. Eggs are sold by the kilo, rather than by the dozen. You pick out the ones you want--all different sizes are mixed together and lightly streaked with chicken shit--and gingerly place them in a plastic bag which you *carefully* carry home. For a slightly higher price we can buy eggs directly from peasants who carry them in baskets slung from shoulder poles. The yolks of these eggs are a vivid orange. Of course, I've been talking about chicken eggs, but it's equally easy to buy duck eggs or small spotted eggs from who knows what kind of bird.

I had not expected to find so many different kinds of beans, and that too has enabled to make quasi-western food such as chili, pseudo-humus, and veggie burgers. For the later two dishes, I mash the beans with a fork. Right in our own market, we can buy dried or freshly cooked kidney beans, small white beans, or large white beans. There are also several kinds of fresh beans, all green, but in a wide range of sizes.

The real pride of the Bailongsi market, however, is its vegetables, about half of which I have never seen in America, even in Chinatown. Pretty much any vegetable we eat in Cambridge, except kale and fennel, shows up here, albeit sometimes in slightly different form. Eggplant is always long and skinny; cucumbers are thin, bumpy, and sort of curly at the end; radishes are big; winter squash is a different shape. It's the long root of romaine lettuce that people eat, not those insignificant leaves on top. I've been trying to sample unfamiliar vegetables. We've had purple amaranth, the insides of aloe leaves, and dozens of different greens. But some things stump me: what exactly does one do with a bundle of what seem to be twigs?

There are many kinds of mushrooms, including some wild ones toted in by peasants. Right now, there's a growing interest in eating "wild foods." I don't even know the names of these things, but we've eaten fiddle heads (unfurled baby ferns) and some tender shoots that emerge at the snow line on mountain tops. Our favorite local restaurant makes spring rolls using some wild leaf as the wrapper.

Fresh cilantro, mint, and something that is in the fennel-dill family (though tastes like neither one) represent the fresh herb spectrum, at least as far as I can tell. I'm growing basil in pots.

All the fruit you would expect--apples, oranges, watermelon, grapes, strawberries--are available. We have a wider choice of bananas than in the U.S. and Asian pears are crisper and more delicate in flavor. In lieu of grapefruit, we have basketball-sized pomelos. Small red and green plums are eaten at what we in the west would consider a totally unripe stage. When small, pointy peaches, notably lacking the yellow color one associates with ripeness appeared in the market, I concluded that these too were eaten at an unpalatable stage. However, when a student insisted on giving me a sample, I learned that despite the greenish skin, the pale white flesh inside is soft and sweet!

In addition, we have seasonal tropical fruit : excellent pineapples, mangoes, locally-grown kiwis, mangosteens, kumquats, lychees, and coconuts. I'm waiting for papayas to show up. The availability of these kinds of fruit is fleeting. For a few months, I swore that one-quarter of Kunming's population was involved in selling peeled pineapples on a stick, and then suddenly, all in a week, it became nearly impossible to buy pineapple.

Finally, there is a fabulously bizarre fruit called the fire dragon fruit (see birthday photos on the web site for a glimpse of this beauty), mini-melons, and teeny cherries. What we do not have are lemons or limes, so when we spotted limes at the Burmese border, we brought home a bag.

Yunnan's food is considered China's third spiciest, right behind Sichuan's and Hunan's, so there are lots of different kinds of hot peppers. It amuses the market vendors no end that I still inquire if a pepper is sweet or hot. We can handle hot--that's not a problem--I just want to know before I buy a whole kilo.

Right in our market we can buy freshly ground peanut butter, sesame butter, and sesame oil. Olive oil, or olives for that matter, are sacred substances available at exorbitant prices at only one or two specialty stores in Kunming.

Although I'd agree that Chinese food is among the world's greatest cuisines, maybe second to Italian, what the Chinese do not understand at all is chocolate and coffee. It is better just to pretend that those things do not exist because the Chinese versions bear so little resemblance to anything that might satisfy a westerner.

On the caffeine front, there are about 80 zillion kinds of green tea, much of which is grown in our own province. I willingly drink what is placed before me, but have done little investigation into this realm. That's because Yunnan is one of the few places with a tradition of black tea (called red tea by the Chinese). I have come to love a certain lychee-scented black tea no less than the Earl Grey I drink in Cambridge.

There are several locally produced beers which we proudly prefer to Tsingdao, the one Chinese beer that's easy to buy in the U.S. Yunnan also has a fledgling red wine industry. Legend has it that the French brought over decent enough vines (in pre-Liberation days, of course). More recently, the locals have been trying to figure out what to do with them. Maybe wine making requires a certain "je ne sais quoi" that's passed through bloodlines, because so far, all but the one most expensive brand leave a lot to be desired. Interestingly, except for that one brand, there is little correlation between price and quality. We have had 25 yuan bottles that were worse than Manischewitz, and yet the Goodman house wine, a sort of grapey sherry, sells for less than 6 yuan a bottle.

Having just bragged about all the things we can eat here, I must admit that when we get together with you back in the U.S., we would really rather not go to a Chinese restaurant. At least, not for the first few months. And don't even think about serving me tofu!