The culinary colonisation of the globe may now have us all eating the same old margherita pizzas and arrabiata pastas. But there is one last bastion of gastronomic independence: breakfast. The things we can bear to put in our stomachs right after rising are often the most culturally authentic things about us. And nowhere is that truer than in China.
Nobody loves things western more than the Chinese, but when the sun comes up on any Chinese city the east dominates the breakfast trade. Like their ancestors before them, even the most westernised Shanghainese queue up before bamboo towers of steamed buns, spitting woks of crispy bottomed dumplings and steaming vats of rice gruel, to eat food that proudly declares its Chineseness.
They’ve got nothing against a good cornflake here or there, just for variety, or even an Egg McMuffin on the run, but a soup-filled bun made with dollops of pork fat — the much-loved Shanghai shengjian mantou — goes straight to the heart of mainlanders like no cornflake ever could. And of course, all that fat, salt and carbohydrate goes straight to the heart muscle too. But reason not the nutrients: at its best, breakfast is not just food, it is more like love.