Breakfast is different here.
No coffee. Not sure, if this is a general habit. Maybe some of my Chinese readers can comment on this? For the fact, no beverage but flavoured (blueberry, strawberry …) milk was served. But this I knew already and got used to it, when I packed my Nespresso 2 weeks before the flight already (!) – I was having 2 or 3 Coffees since with the neighbours when I longed for the smell of it in the morning! I was too lazy to go to the backer next door to get one every morning! So, no, I don’t mind not having coffee every morning.
So… what is “served”???
a) Hard boiled egg and pickled cabbage
These two are always there, always the same – at least I did not notice any difference, but the packaging (red, green, blue, yellow – any meaning in it??) of the pickled cabbage, which may include some other veggies as well, I believe.
It is something between pickled cabbage (Sauerkraut) as we know it in Europe and Korean kimchi – spicy and smelly :-).
b) Buns
There are always 2 buns in the breakfast package. And you do not know which one will it be today – which makes it interesting to cut them in half: some are filled with sweet, some with savoury stuffings (spinach was very good, and meat as well), some are empty.
I always got steamed buns, not baked. So, not the consistency of what we know under ‘Brötchen’ in Germany. More sticky and moist.
At least one of them was always white. Sometimes yellowish (corn??) or brownish (wholegrain).
I liked the savoury ones better – I ate them with egg and cabbage.
c) Pancake
mmmm – very delicious!
Never sweet (the way I typically eat pancakes).
Sometimes they look like American pancake (you get 1 think piece). The first time I was surprised, as there is always some type of stuffing in it! Vegetables mostly – I do not remember until now to get a meaty one.
The others were more like french crepes, always with some herbs, once the dough was more fluffy (like pastry).
d) Porridge or congee
I am not really sure if this two words are synonyms – I could not find the “real difference” description yet…
Porridge is actually not really my preferred dish. I met it first time in Singapore already and was not convinced.
I prefer the rise to be cooked in milk, not sweet (I am the one who adds tons of sweetened cacao on the plate, when it’s served!) and it needs to have some consistency – the porridge is just too liquid and overcooked for my taste.
BUT: I must admit, I really liked one version: it seems it was some kind of whole grained rise with red beans (dark looking one on the pic). Num-num!
Oh, I nearly forgot: once I got the White fungus thick soup! I could not detect what I am eating, so my Chinese friend Mengyuan explained what it could be. So cool 🙂
e) Packed sweet biscuit
Well, not to my taste. Maybe with coffee…. and if you have nothing else on the table…. OK, when there was a munch-mallow kind of one – I ate it 🙂 it was goooood 🙂 I needed no coffee!
f) Drink
In my case there was always a pack of flavoured milk. A bit too sweet most of the times. Sometimes the fruit (flavour) was a bit weird combination: I never before had the milk with the taste of an apple… But. New is NEW!
That’s it until today…. If anything will be served even more interesting then what I described here – you’ll find out! Don’t worry!