五色令人目盲；
五音令人耳聾；
五味令人口爽 ；
馳騁 田獵 ，令人心發狂；
難得之貨 ，令人行妨。
老子《道德經》"Too much color blinds the eye,
Too much music deafens the ear,
Too much taste dulls the palate,
Too much play maddens the mind,
Too much desire tears the heart."
~Taote Ching, Lao Tzu
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As I flicked through my menu in purportedly the best pasta joint Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi Province has to offer, with my waitress patiently lobbing over to me a lowdown of the pasta collection, an oddity that I never consider exist stroke me: Whew, I was struck by the curse of choice.
Reeling off pages of this stocky menu that contains nothing, nothing but noodles was fun -- up to the minute I have to make up my mind and decide what to order, out of the hundred-squillion choices. It was just too waka waka for my then overly stuffy brain -- it was overloaded with information, with images of all kinds of pasta, plus a gigabit of typical foodies' indecisiveness. Pasta varies in shapes, sizes, thicknesses, ingredients, colors and, drumrolls please, in ways of making. One tells you it is scissors-cut, one screams hand sliced, while another plea finger-rolled.
In most places of this world (in fact, even in the southern half of China), pastas are often taken as sauce or soup vehicles or as a mere stomach-filling commodity.That's hardly the case for Shanxian. With such a devotion to their noodles, Shanxians have never taken pasta as side show. In the area that once known as "Qing (晉)," noodles, pancakes, dough sticks and any flour-based food for this matter are always cooked to lead. The main of their main dishes.
Ask anyone in Shanxi what is the now catching on idea of artisanal pasta in the West and they'd return you a quizzical look. Artisanal pasta for Shanxian is everyday pasta. In this blessed land of noodles, you won't see any packaged factory noodles selling, all pastas are made to order. This goes from street stalls to restaurants with a capital R. It has always been this case, noodles, Shanxian's cheap luxury food glory, handcrafted with simple and fresh ingredients in the most traditional tried-and-true way.
All these said, it comes no wonder there's a saying that describes Shanxi's appealing pasta art like this: "One pasta in one hundred styles, one pasta in one hundred tastes (一麵百樣，一麵百味)." They've taken their pasta-sia to such an extreme that they even drink the pasta water. Yeap, you read me right. Once you sit down, your server will place a bowl of steaming pasta water right in front of you. This is known as "source water for the source food (原湯化原食)," a culinary wisdom all northern Chinese known for centuries, (but never with this multitude!). "What if I'm not in the mood for pasta water, but would like to have some tea first? Can I pour it myself?" Ha! You don't choose the pasta, the pasta choose you: take a hard and long look at the teapot before you pour the "tea," it has the "vinegar" Chinese character printed on it. Vinegar, another favorite noodles' vehicle here; is solely used to lift up the flavor of the noodles.
Pictured above are the signature noodle set from Taiyuan Noodles Restaurant. At 20RMB (tips excluding, show some mercy please), you can choose any six kinds of noodles from the menu, the six saucers of side dishes (radish silvers, preserved cabbage silvers, spring onions with minced bean curd, diced green peppers, scallions and coriander) and six bowls of soup/sauce (fried pork's, za jiang sauce, pork with tomatoes, stewed bean curd with cabbages, mutton soup and vinaigrette) are all complimentary.
That's true. All is complimentary in Shanxi, as long as it can make the pasta tastes better. Dunk it, toss it, squelch it, in whatever descriptness, it's all up to you. The only headache then is: how...
