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Potty about porridge!
By Ye Jun ( Beijing Weekend)
Updated: 2004-03-05 14:50

A business like the Hongzhuangyuan Porridge Restaurant would have been impossible 10 years ago in Beijing.

To many northerners, porridge was, and still is, something that goes with baozi, steamed bread or cakes and dishes at breakfast or dinner.

Often it's just made of rice and water.

Occasionally other ingredients, like sweet potatoes, lotus seed, jujubes and peanut, are put in for variety and nutrition. But for most people, not very often.

Southern Chinese people, though, have a long tradition of eating nutritious porridge, with a lot of different ingredients added.

Yet it took 15 minutes to wait for an empty table last Friday at the restaurant's Asian Games Village branch, its 10th in Beijing. Ten parties were still waiting for a table when I got a seat.

Brightly lit and decorated with cream-coloured marble on the floors and walls, the restaurant is tolerably noisy, and the layout of tables is such that you don't feel crowded.

The toilet, though, is a horror. The problem is not hygiene but privacy. There are only two stalls for both men and women and they are placed in the same small room, side by side.

The first page of the menu - which is in Chinese - lists more than 20 options for porridge. According to a member of staff, these include three types: one slightly salty, another slightly sweet and the other unflavoured.

The South China style is represented by lotus leaf porridge, fruit leaf porridge and preserved egg and lean pork porridge.

But many others are those popular in North China, such as corn grit porridge, millet congee with chestnut and sweet potato and black rice porridge.

The Chinese traditionally drink certain porridges in different seasons, believing them to be healthy and nutritious at various times of the year.

Northerners, for example, favour vegetable porridge in the spring, green bean in summer, lotus root in autumn and lamb porridge in winter.

Porridge is warming, moistening and easy to digest. When people are tired of rich, oily and meaty food, the light taste is a welcome alternative.

The menu at Hongzhuanyuan gives a brief introduction to the claimed health benefits of some of the porridges. For example, barley jujubes and yam porridge is introduced as  "strengthening the tendon and bone and supporting the inner organs."

Another one, millet congee with chestnut and sweet potato, is  "warming and replenishing."

Most of the porridges are priced at 5 yuan (US60 cents) and come in a medium-sized bowl.

One speciality at the restaurant is its Master Zhuangyuan (number one scholar) porridge. This comes in a traditional Chinese pottery jar with enough for two people.

Tasting slightly salty, this rice porridge contains a hodgepodge of ingredients.

These include vegetable, gouqi (medlar fruit), walnut, chestnut, longan, jujubes, shrimp and sea cucumber. One helping costs 18 yuan (US$2.2).

Usually a simple bowl of porridge is not filling enough. The restaurant also has a variety of Chinese-style cakes, baozi, spring rolls and cold and hot dishes.

It costs 20-30 yuan (US$2.4-3.6) per person.

Hongzhuangyuan Shi Porridge Restaurant
Location: Opposite the north gate of Sunshine Plaza, Asian Games Village
Tel: 6492-5659