Natalie Amezcua, an English teacher from Los Angeles, was not expecting a lot last August when she arrived in Nanjing looking for a taste of home.
Two years of living in Korea had taught her to temper her expectations. If she wanted to enjoy the Mexican dishes she delighted in eating growing up, she was going to have to make them herself.
“Because I’m not at home”, Amezcua said, laughing. “That’s just part of living out here. If I don’t bring it or have it mailed to me, my options are limited.”
Recently, however, Amezcua has found salvation from an unlikely source: a woman in Suzhou who makes and sells tamales; a Mesoamerican delicacy made with masa (corn dough) and a filling of the tamalera’s (tamale maker’s) choosing.
Steamed and wrapped in a banana leaf or corn husk, tamales are traditionally served during celebratory occasions. For Amezcua, the dish is inextricably linked to her memories of family gatherings at her aunt’s house, surrounded by delicious aromas and the laughter of her cousins.
“Tamales are my Christmas food”, she beamed. “They’re my comfort food. When I eat them, it feels like home.”
Sophia Song is happy to provide the service. The 27-year-old Chinese native belongs to a community of individual food proprietors who cater to foreigners throughout China, delivering mostly around Jiangsu Province and as far as Inner Mongolia, to satisfy their culinary needs.
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“They look how they’re supposed to look, taste how they’re supposed to taste”, Amezcua said. “I think they’re pretty accurate.”
When China opened up to Western markets in 1979, so too did the country’s appetite for exotic dining, expanding into a multibillion-dollar industry. But along the way, an undercurrent of enthusiasts with perhaps a stronger familiarity with the foreign palate have sought to correct the course where larger chain restaurants have failed.
Faced with a middling selection of Western dining options outside of Beijing and Shanghai, entrepreneurs like Song have taken it upon themselves to serve the country’s foreign population with options that better emulate the culinary offerings as they were originally intended.
“Eating at restaurants can be a very hollow experience”, said Emma Jardine, 29, an expat from Northern Ireland. “When you first taste it, you get a reminder of home. But then it stops. You’re waiting for this underlying richness of the food that never comes.”
While chain restaurants like McDonalds, KFC and Starbucks have successfully rebranded in China, they don’t always replicate the tastes foreigners are accustomed to back home.
Even local Western restaurants less concerned with mass appeal struggle to satisfy their foreign clientele. A scarcity of far-flung ingredients, combined with a relative unfamiliarity with the cuisine, results in an underwhelming dining experience for customers with a predisposed expectation as to how a dish should taste.
“The first time I tried making them was terrible”, said Song, who was introduced to tamales through a Mexican-American man she was dating at the time. “I used cornmeal instead of masa. I didn’t understand the difference. Then I found it on Taobao, and I began perfecting my recipe.”
Three years later, Song has yet to taste tamales other than her own. But she has attracted enough interest, advertising in expat groups on Facebook and WeChat, and relying on word of mouth, to turn her business into a viable source of income.
“It’s not a complicated recipe. But it’s a lot of work”, said Song, who enlists the help of an ayi during peak winter months. “She thinks it’s interesting because she had never seen that food before, but I don’t think she likes it that much.”
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The foreign community is inclined to disagree. Viewed within the context of sterilised behemoths such as Blue Frog and Element Fresh, these individuals are easy enough to ignore. But to their customers, they hold outsize significance.
“There’s a guy for everything”, Amezcua said. From English breakfast sausages to pastries to cruelty-free beauty products, the availability of these items offers peace of mind in a country that can be difficult for outsiders to navigate.
“I used to have a list of things I needed from home that if anyone ended up visiting, I’d ask them to bring it for me”, Amezcua continued. “But I can get it all here now. I don’t have that list anymore.”
These individual food proprietors embody the thrilling sense of possibility that defines life as an expat living in China. For many foreigners, the barrier of entry to pursue entrepreneurial endeavours feels lower abroad than back home. With relative ease and without a formal business background, an involved hobby can quickly blossom into a money-making venture.
“In China, business is really kind of fluid”, said Felix Campbell, 31, an expat in Nanjing who prepares and distributes meat products under the WeChat moniker, “Home Cooked Meat Co.” “It feels more open, more possible. You can kind of go with the flow and do what you want, at least to an extent.”
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Campbell’s rise follows a familiar trajectory; frustration over second-rate offerings inspires an enterprising desire to remedy the problem. Friends and coworkers respond positively to the solution; word of mouth builds to the point that other businesses take notice.
In April, Campbell went into business with the restaurant Real Bread Café, a popular lunch spot among Nanjing’s expat community. For Campbell, the partnership is a notable step toward legitimising the viability of his business.
“If they’re reaching out, that’s a good sign”, Campbell said. “It’s great that I have friends who support me and pass my name along.”
While Campbell has established himself as a trusted source for sausages, burgers and meatballs in Nanjing, he was quick to mention that he works at a modest scale. Nonetheless, he acknowledged, the appetite for his business is there.
“Food gets boring here very quickly”, Jardine said. “Anything you know you like, once you realise it’s available to you, you just get on it.”
“You got to snap it up as fast as you can”, Amezcua added.
For Campbell himself, he’s doing his best to take everything in his stride. The rate at which his business has grown is something he’s still processing.
“It’s so weird to think that I’m doing this”, Campbell said. “Even now, after all of these years, just being in China still feels odd. And now I’m a small business owner?”
He smiled.
“But it feels great,” he said. “I’m having a lot of fun with it.”
