Julia Sun, a law student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who spent the first 10 years of her life in Shanghai, was shopping at an Asian grocery store half a mile from campus last year when a package in the snack aisle made her do a double take.
“They had this waffle-biscuit thing that I ate in second grade,” Ms. Sun said. It had been so long since she had seen the waffle-biscuit thing that she was sure it was extinct.
“I thought I was dreaming,” she said.
For the more than 6,000 students from China in Urbana and Champaign, the wealth of products and dishes from back home can make the two cities seem like a mirage rising from the plains of central Illinois.
Surrounded by miles of flat, green fields of soy and grain corn, the cities have a combined population of about 127,000 people and a skyline that rarely pokes above 15 stories. The area isn’t anybody’s idea of a major metropolitan center. It certainly isn’t the first place you’d think to look when you are in the mood for serious Chinese food.
After a quick walk from the university’s main quad, though, you can sit down to a faithful rendition of spicy bullfrog hot pot in a Sichuanese broth studded with green peppercorns. A nearby restaurant serves yangrou paomo, a Shaanxi lamb soup with floating scraps of flatbread that is a favorite in Xi’an. If you are struck by a late-night craving for stinky tofu in the style of Changsha, you can get it after 8:30 p.m. from a chef who dresses fried black cubes of fermented bean curd in a glistening orange chile oil, the way vendors do on the streets of Hunan’s capital city.
