Eating fish in China can be an uneven experience, but it largely depends on where you live. You have to consider where the fish were harvested from. Let's face it, the meat can have a bit of a dirty flavor. Also, you have to consider water pollution in the Middle Kingdom. If the fish lives in bad water, they are going to absorb the toxins around them. Plus, a lot of the fish I have had here have had a lot of bones, and picking them out of your teeth is never a pleasant experience. So, you can say I have always been a little skeptical of seafood in during my four years in this country. However, I recently found something that has changed my mind. 

China has a culinary tradition steaming everything from buns to fish. In Chinese, this would be called 清蒸鱼  Qīngzhēng yú. Let's breakdown the characters of the name...

 清蒸 qīngzhēng -- steamed in a clear soup broth without soysauce

鱼 yú -- fish

The above photo is a particular type dish known as 清蒸鲈鱼 qīngzhēng lúyú. Let's cover the new word in the name....

鲈鱼 lúyú -- Perch, Bass

This particular dish is sheer simplicity. 

The fish fillet has no bones. The clear broth has a ginger base, and the place I at this at had the fillet served on slivers of ginger. There are, however, multiple varieties on this genre of seafood. I live in southern Jiangsu, and flavor profiles here tend to be light and sweet. Not spicy. Which is good. But even within regional cuisines, there are variations. Consider this...

This is 特色藤椒鱼  Tèsè téng jiāo yú. This name is a little harder to translate.  But, since eating and writing about eating is one way I try to learn the language here, let's give this a shot...

特色 Tèsè -- distinguishing characteristic or feature.

藤 téng -- cane, rattan

椒 jiāo -- seems like a general word for "spicy plant" 

鱼 -- we've covered this already. It's the character for "fish."

This dish was a little bit spicier than the other I have pictured here. Only, by just a little, however. The broth used to steam and serve the fish in had a very subtle interplay between sweetness and spiciness.  The other main difference was this ...

This fish itself was served atop a bed of shredded tofu sheets. While it is tofu, it has the firm texture of a wide noodle. It's just wheat or rice wasn't used to make that noodle; soybeans were. Tofu is usually good at soaking up flavors. In this case, it gets some of the broth and some of the fish and mingles it together. 

No matter the subtle variations, steamed fish has now gotten into my standard rotation of lunch and dinner options. I still, however, stand by my skepticism of some of the freshwater fish in China, however.