Last month I had the opportunity to be a volunteer teacher at a Chinese boarding school. Initially, I was a worried about the idea of living on a boarding school campus for a whole month. I had done it before in Korea and found it incredibly isolating and unstimulating. I hated being surrounded by the kids 24/7. (No lie, they actually lived in the same dorm, on the floor below the teachers. ) Since we were living on hill in a small town, getting to the nearest big city was challenging, as the provided shuttle bus left only a few times a day, and a cab ride could be upwards of 30-50 USD.
Then there was the food issue. All the teachers had their own rooms with a small fridge, but there was no kitchenette, so most of our meals were provided for us by a team of “chefs.” There was breakfast, lunch, and dinner but the food was preposterous. Besides the fact they were cheap and working with a small budget, the cooks insisted on cooking their versions of American cuisine, despite not having a clue of what they were doing. At the beginning, I had a hard time controlling my weight, but eventually was able to do so with exercise and some creative meal planning.
A few years later I would work for Fields, a now defunct online health food store in Shanghai. The salaries were paltry so I guess to try and make up for that, they provided a modest breakfast, lunch, and dinner (I can’t quite remember if dinner was provided) for their workers. You would think that if anyone was interested in feeding their workers nutritiously it would be a health food store. You are wrong.
Despite selling 30 dollar bags of chia seeds in China, the company had only allotted 12 yuan ($1.41) per meal per employee. The resulting meals as you might guess were crappy, usually consisting of some sort of mystery meat and boiled to oblivion vegetable with day old white rice.
After those two culinary experiences, you can see why I was a little apprehensive of putting my eating habits and health in hands of my employers. I decided to bite the bullet anyway and geared up for a month of dormitory living in small town China.
Much to my surprise, most of the food was actually of pretty decent standard, and dare I say, tasty. Here’s a breakdown of breakfast, lunch, and dinner at a Chinese boarding school.
Breakfast
Carbs and mystery meat in full effect! So breakfast on the campus seemed to be weakest link of all the meals. As such, I usually ate nuts and yogurt or maybe oatmeal with some fruit, but decided for the purpose of this blog, to take a break from not feeling sluggage first thing in the morning, and ate breakfast with the rest of them. Items on the plate include:
Wontons
Chinese steamed dumplings
Fried Rice
Noodles
Some type of Chinese fermented greens
Corn
Lunch
Lunch was a lot better as there were tons of simple yet flavorful dishes on offer. Despite having dozens of meat, vegetables, and rice sides to choose from, I often got a rotating plate of the same things. Usually it be something like one green veg, one other veg, potato OR rice, and a protein like chicken or tofu.
Dinner
I took this pic during my last week so I took the opportunity to “spluge” on a fancy pork fried rice dish. Looking back I probably could have omitted the sweet and sour pork but dinner was an ungodly 4:50pm (sheesh) so I wanted to be as full as possible for the evening.
All in all, the food they provided for us was…not that bad. The only bone I can pick is with how oily most of the food is. For a more visual experience, check out the video below.
