Absolutely! Should we plan a trip.

First, thanks for recommending this book. I enjoyed it a lot and it was a great read for a LHR-SFO flight.

I've always been intrigued by the meanings attached to most everything in China. It seems nothing is obvious or what it first appears to be. Amy Tan's books have always appealed to me in this way. There is so much there that westerners so seldom get a glimpse at and probably only very rarely come to fully understand. The food world was entirely new to me when presented in this way and very fascinating.

One thing that I found interesting was that today in the US and Europe we have a trend toward molecular cooking ...making food look like something it's not by using science techniques. I read this book and thought, goodness they were doing that in China years ago.

I'm now also very eager to try some of the restaurants she lists in the back of the book as still having this old, traditional-style of cooking. Despite my many Chinese meals in Western countries, I have a feeling I have no clue what Chinese food is really supposed to taste like.