Kooky cuisine

By Huang Lanlan Source:Global Times Published: 2014-12-10 17:48:01

Cooks on campus offer a taste of the weird


Though China has long enjoyed a reputation as a land of delicious food, university students often complain that the dishes on offer in their canteens are unpleasant and lack variety.

In November, 177 cooks from more than 30 local universities took part in the city's first campus cuisine competition at Shanghai University's Baoshan campus. It was organized by Shanghai Schools Logistics Association, an NGO whose remit includes making suggestions to universities about the food they provide in order to encourage campus cooks to make more creative dishes and offer students more choice at meal times.

Many of the dishes, such as fried spareribs with peaches, looked so odd that they were dubbed "qipa cuisine." The Chinese word qipa (means "rare and beautiful flowers") was originally used to describe something excellent and extraordinary. But nowadays, it is used as a pejorative term online to refer to things and people that are odd, inexplicable, or even disgusting. Some Weibo users commented that they would prefer to starve to death rather than taste the strange dishes featured in the competition.

While some of the competition entries were created especially for the contest, others  feature on the regular menus of many campus dining halls.

The Global Times has picked some qipa dishes at universities that have been heatedly discussed online.

Some of the bizarre dishes on offer at Chinese university canteens Photos: Courtesy of Chen Xingxiu



 

 



 


 





Fried strawberries with celery

When the strawberry season arrived in summer this year, fried strawberries with celery appeared in the dining halls of East China Normal University (ECNU).

This strange mix of fruit and vegetable failed to attract many students, despite its low price of 2.5 yuan ($0.40) per dish. "It tasted bad," said Chen Xingxiu, a second-year student at the university. "The strawberries were sweet, and the celery was salty. The dish tasted strange, especially as the strawberries were cooked and became very fluffy."

At present, the dish is not available at the school as strawberries are out of season. "It was cheap, but it seemed that few people liked it," Chen added.

 

 



 



Fried grapes with corn

One strange dish still available at ECNU is fried grapes with corn, which was first created by the kitchen staff last autumn.

According to second-year student Tao Zidong, to attract more customers, cooks at the school created many odd dishes last year, such as fried beef with apples and fried pork with Hami melons, but these later disappeared from ECNU's dining halls. "At that time, many of us thought that the school was wasting fruit," she said.

Similar to the fried strawberries with celery dish, it is an odd mix of sweet and salty food. "Grapes will become sweeter after being cooked," Tao said, adding that she herself could accept the creation, although she doesn't normally like sweet food.



 

 





Deep-fried mango strips

Fudan University's deep-fried mango strips dish costs 3.3 yuan. Mangoes are cut into small strips and covered in sauce before being fried in hot oil.

Usually, each portion contains six or seven mango strips. At first, few people recognized the fruit. Student Shao Jianan recalled that she once mistook it for fried chicken strips. "It didn't look like mangoes at all."

Shao said she doesn't like the dish, nor can she describe its taste. "Anyway, it had no mango flavor," she said.

Some qipa cuisines at non-local universities

Fujian Normal University: Fried moon cakes with cayenne pepper

Sichuan Agricultural University: Fried tofu with apple

Xiamen University of Technology: Fried taro with oranges

Xiamen University: Fried pork with pitaya fruit

Beijing Sport University: Fried bananas with watermelon

Renmin University of China: Fried oranges with vegetables

Hohai University: Fried spareribs with sugar cane

Wuhan University: Fried fish balls with strawberries, tofu and cabbage



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