Pancakes

This afternoon, I went to Tampines to get my package which was brought to me by a student who studied in Temasek Polytechnic and came from the same city with me. The package was small and contained two pairs of trousers and some pancakes original from Shandong Province.

This kind of pancake is quite different from the common ones. It’s unique in Shandong Province of China. It’s made of corn paste. It’s flat like newspaper and as thin as paper when it is heated on the special pan as large as a tire of a car. After the paste get solid, we take it off from the pan and fold it three time to shape the round the pancake into a rectangle. It is the common food in Shandong. Especially in the countryside, people eat more pancakes than noodles and steamed bread, and they seldom eat rice. We usually roll pancakes to wrap dishes like vegetable and meat. However, the most famous manner of eating pancakes is to use pancakes to wrap raw spring onions with sweet fermented flour paste.

Although pancakes are very cheap in China, I did think the pack of pancakes were pretty valuable. When I got back to Eton Hall, I could not wait to tell my friends from Shandong that I got a pack of pancakes! They were excited more than I expected them to be. We ate the pancakes without spring onions, without sweet fermented flour paste. In fact, there is no much taste. However, we savord the process as if we were eating the most delicious food in the world. I could see the gleam in their eyes. Yes, it is what we used to eat back in Shandong. I felt I was at home. I think this is what we call culture identity.
I still have some pancakes. If you’d like to have a try, please let me know.