You do sound well assimilated. Wife has spicy noodles last night and I opted for egg and tomato roll with butter.

Well, I feel food's important. I know North Chinese love their jaozi and baozi. However, I think the pastry sucks. When my wife cooks jaozi and baozi, I can trust the fillings. As for restaurant dumplings, who knows what they're chopping up when they make them? Only the cooks!

Talking about fillings reminds me of a bad experience my first wife had at a small Muslim restaurant in a satellite city of Taiyuan. She was a dumpling lover, and ordered beef dumplings. One of her jaozi had a hard centre - 'twas a short metal bolt! She complained to the waiter that it could have damaged her fillings. That put her off Chinese dumplings for life!

When my present wife cooks jaozi, I eat the fillings. The pastry is passed to her.

I did like Indian pakora. Can't get it here. It's similar in appearance to Chinese dumplings, but pakora is oven -baked. It's far superior.

Just me, but I dislike rice.

'Bigheaded carp' is from Westlake. It's wild, and very popular in Jiangsu among Chinese middle and upper class people. See photo.