If meat is not available, says one Friday prayer leader, people should make do with traditional egg soup.

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Wednesday's lunch offerings for the Beijing delegation featured the relatively mundane egg drop soup, boiled corn, stir-fried bokchoy and sticky rice with pork.

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Console yourself with dessert: the fermented-rice egg-drop soup tastes, intriguingly, like a bowl of lumpy, cold sake.

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Down another staircase, into another windowless room, where dishes arrived: pork braised in brown sauce, bok choy, egg-drop soup, spicy chicken.

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Hanjeongsik is a banquet of fish, meat, lettuce wraps, tofu soup and steamed egg, served with side dishes of kimchi (spicy pickled cabbage), acorn jelly, dried anchovies and boiled peanuts.

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Fortunately four to five meals per day of char kwey tiaw (fried noodles in soy sauce with egg and various additions), asam laksa (Penang's famous, indescribably good curry noodle soup), rojak (fruit and veggie salad in a sweet dark shrimp paste) and much, much more, goes down a lot easier than heavier Western foods.

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There would also be a soup, usually made of spinach or watercress or bamboo shoots mixed with dried shrimp, tofu, or egg drops, or even rice crust.

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