"Chicken hamburger and chocolate milk tea", says a fashionably
dressed Tibetan girl Digi in a Beijing western fast-food
restaurant.
Just graduated from the Beijing-based Central University for
Nationalities, Digi says that time-saving is the main reason for
her daily patronage of western fast-food outlets.
"Chinese society now has a fast-lane which encourages efficiency.
So time becomes valuable and more people have started to choose
fast-food to save time", says Digi.
The girl, in her twenties, says that she started to favor foods
provided by MacDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) when she
was at university in Beijing.
When asked why she was not eating at home, Digi said that family
food preferences vary so much that they seldom eat together.
Digi's grandfather used to be a serf and his favorite food is ciba
a traditional Tibetan glutinous rice cake, used for every meal
before Tibetan's liberation half a century ago. Since her
grandfather can have as much ciba as he likes, he chooses to eat
ciba and meat only.
Digi's parents, born after the Tibetan liberation, are very much
adapted to foods from various regions in China. Rice is a must in
their daily diet.
Much luckier than their elders, Tibetan young people such as Digi
are exposed to food featuring flavors from all parts of the
world.
Although currently there are no branches of MacDonald's or KFC in
Tibet, many western restaurants selling food like hamburgers and
fried potato chips have opened in the tableland city.
Statistics show that there are now approximately twenty fast-food
restaurants operating in Tibet.
Half of these provide western foods. Meanwhile, traditional Tibetan
food has become popular with foreign visitors.
"Many choices make life beautiful," says Digi.
(Xinhua News
Agency 10/14/2001)