We visited a North Indian restaurant called “Taj Pavilion” in Chinatown in Beijing for dinner on the first day of our visit. It was comfort food and also my birthday dinner with my family. I normally have spicy lamp or chicken biryani whenever I go to an Indian restaurant anywhere in the world and my family had their usual favorites such as naan, butter chicken, raita, pappadam etc. We are Tamils and we eat Tamil or South Indian or Singapore food most of the time when we were in Singapore. But almost all the Indian restaurants in China were North Indian with the exception of the “Indian Kitchen“. We soon understood that whether you call it North Indian, South Indian, Singapore, Pakistani or Sri Lankan food, they were all classified as foreigner’s food in China. Not commonly available everywhere and always more expensive than local food. Eventually we became more flexible in terms of food and daily living. North Indian or South Indian or Singaporean or Malaysian, it didn’t matter to us anymore. We became more flexible.
