Jinan’s Beloved Affordable Breakfast: One of the ‘Two Wonders,’ But Foreign Tourists Find It Difficult to Accept!

Every place has its own unique culinary culture, such as Xiamen's sha cha mian, Quanzhou's mian xiao hu, and Beijing's dou ji. As for Jinan's representative snacks, it's probably sweet. Sweet is perhaps too mainstream and popular, and foreign tourists often haven't even heard of it, but it is closely related to Jinan people's lives.

Visiting Jinan, besides appreciating the 'wonder' of Jinan's water, don't forget to taste Jinan's specialties – the 'two wonders' of Jinan. The 'two wonders' are must-try snacks in Jinan, and are special foods passed down through Jinan's years: one is tea soup, called tea but not tea. Tea soup is made with millet as the main ingredient, and is cooked by simply adding boiling water, hence its name. The other is sweet, but it's not sweet. Sweet is a salty porridge, and after it's made, the owner will ask, 'Add more?' referring to adding ingredients such as vermicelli, vegetables, and tofu silk. Later, people's homophonic interpretation of 'Add more?' became 'Sweet', so the flavor of sweet is salty, not sweet. Tea soup is not tea, but the aroma of millet is more fragrant than tea. Sweet is not sweet, and after tasting all kinds of flavors, you gain a sense of sweetness.

However, for tourists, many people can't accept this taste. I thought sweet was sweet, but it has an indescribable strange taste. The porridge base itself is salty, but perhaps special seasonings were added, making it taste unlike a salty porridge. Combined with various mixed ingredients such as peanuts, bean curd strips, etc., it truly reflects the saying 'a variety of flavors'.