Canting

Food at the Canting (Cantina, Canteen, Cafeteria).  Our apartment is on a campus that is part of the Nanjing Tech University.  We will be teaching at another campus across the river.  They have canteens on campus to feed the students, and so we can eat there for very little money.   This is our 1st experience there - of me eating lotus root - doesn't taste like chicken, maybe jicama?

This part I'm writing several week later.  So far we've found some pretty good things to eat.  We like the stir-fry best, we get to pick what they put in it.  They cook it up and add their sauce.  It's very good.  We get rice with it too.  There are lots of rice and noodle dishes.  Many dishes have little chunks of chicken with skin and mostly bones.  We're learning to ask for boneless chicken (gong bao ji ding - we say kungpao) and finding food more suited to our taste. 

The canteen is more of a food court and has about 8 small kitchens with different dishes at each one. When we go to the canteen now, we look around and find students who have something that looks good.  We ask them which booth they bought it from.  Many times they will go over with us and order for us rather than try to communicate in English.  It's getting easier to find what we like.