A Qingdao breakfast

ONE of the things we're really enjoying is that in China there's specific breakfast foods. You don't eat rice and noodles three times a day as they do in Korea.

In Qingdao (pronounced "Ching-dow") we sussed out this great little breakfast haunt that was always packed to the gills.
Out the front sat a rickety wooden table laden with fried bread goods to pick and choose from, as well as a stack of steamed buns puffing away in their trays.

A quick look around revealed the most popular choice of locals - long fried bread sticks accompanied usually by a gelatinous soup. (Boiled eggs steeped in a salty pot of soy sauce are also everywhere. Pictured below.)
For our first breakfast we had a small basket tray of steamed buns, a fried bread stick and a glutinous rice ball with two bowls of gelatinous soup.

The bread stick was almost like a doughnut but not sweet - crisp on the outside but a little oily and chewy on the inside. A challenge to manouvre with chopsticks, but fun to dip in your soup.
The rice ball I liked - it was like a chewy roasted sesame snap on the outside giving way to dense sticky processed rice with a dollop of sweet red bean paste in the centre.

Someone else's breakfast soup: looks to me like soft tofu garnished with coriander.

To finish, a bowl of gloopy soup with floating unidentifiable bits of meal (maybe cornmeal, we thought). Anything thick and soupy sure holds its heat and is incredibly filling. It was flavourless but I enjoyed the texture; balancing nicely with the fried bread.

The next morning we returned and after downing some steamed buns and a sesame ball, we got a bag of warm soy milk to go. So savoury and hot and soothing.

Aaah, we love breakfast.