A vegetarian in China

Being vegetarians we did not expect China to offer a varied culinary experience; we thought we would end up ‘eating to live’ there. Popular belief in India is that the Chinese eat ‘anything that moves’ and most Indians prefer to carry non-perishable snacks from home while visiting China.
Our first observation was that the Chinese are community eaters and also eat healthy. Most meals include a large central meat item, around which a variety of lightly spiced vegetables tossed with oil rally. Each person gets a bowl of rice and chopsticks, and you can pick off the meat and the vegetables into your own bowl. People who cannot eat with chopsticks, it is an essential skill you should pick up asap! At a restaurant in Xian, when we asked for a spoon, the thoroughly confused servers brought us soup spoons!
An ancient Chinese secret to good health is green tea, which is served everywhere in abundance. Most people carry it around and drink it all day. I was quite frightened when I first saw a bottle of this brownish liquid with our taxi driver, as I mistook it for beer!
A popular street dish is China is baoz, a breakfast dumpling. The vegetarian version has either beans or mushrooms and spinach. There are long lines outside baoz stands early in the morning. While purchasing it at a supermarket, we saw women pick up something slimy from a bucket. Up close, they were snakes! Interesting tip: (veggies and picky eaters beware!) to test freshness, pick up the snake. The more it wriggles, the fresher it is! Elsewhere, we also saw pickled seahorses being sold!
The yummiest food we had in China was at a tiny tribal village Longji rice terraces near the city of Guilin. Not expecting any vegetarian food in a tribal village, we carried bread from Guilin. However, to our delight, they had amazingly spicy chilly and potato stir fry.
Conclusion: yes, the Chinese do eat a lot of things that move. But they also provide an equally interesting and varied culinary experience for vegetarians.