Spend the morning in Wuhan

Breakfast is Wuhan’s perennial pride. Just a look into their way of calling eating breakfast manifests Wuhan’s unique passion in it – “guo zao”, which can be literally translated as “spend the morning”, indicating that breakfast having is the one and only ceremony to perform in the morning.

The crown jewel of Wuhan breakfast is probably “reganmian”, or hot dry noodles in literal translation. Its dryness is the element to separate it from all other noodles – it is not in any broth, but instead, it is dressed with sesame paste, along with other seasonings, that invites soul to this dryness.

This specificity is one of the reasons that make reganmian ubiquitous in the city by Yangtze River. It is dry so that everyone can carry it in a small paper bowl even while walking. And to avoid the noodles swelling in sesame paste, grab-and-goer must start stirring the noodle the second he or she get their hands on the bowl. Therefore, and by a quirk of fate, small paper bowls provide enough proficiency to stirring noodles on the go.

In where I come from, a bowl of rice noodles with a bountiful selection of broth to choose from is enjoyed at table while comfortably seated. It is impossible to perform the art of eating rice noodles while walking – the boiling hot broth makes paper bowls hard to hold, and noodles in broth are slippery and splashy. But for reganmian, it is born to serve for the white collars, or, more accurately, “dagongren”, a viral word roughly equivalent to hired hands or laborers, on their way to work, just as the first generation of reganmian eaters did on their way to wharf, bazaar and plant.

-TBC-