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Published: July 27th 2011
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As you'd expect, one of the most challenging things to get used to when you move to China - aside from the spitting, the urinating and defecating in the street, the language, the noise, the fireworks, the haphazard approach to building, the traffic, the smog and the fact that everywhere is busy all the time - is the food.
This probably applies to most countries, I remember after two months in Costa Rica I was literally dreaming about eating cheese on toast, but China is undoubtedly on the extreme end of that particular spectrum. As you'll know, the staple is either rice or noodles, which are fine and I think I have eaten at least one of these every day since I arrived here five months ago. The slightly peculiar thing is that some restaurants serve the rice at the end (unless you specifically request otherwise) seemingly as some kind of palette cleanser, but being somebody who enjoys watching his food interact with each other - you only have to see me in McDonald's dipping chips into my McFlurry to be aware of that - it is not something I could see myself getting used to.
Another common practice
that goes straight into this column is spitting food out on to the table. I accept it is necessary due to the unique and non-selective way that animals are transformed into food here (i.e. with a big knife and by someone who almost certainly blind or at least visually distracted from the job at hand). I have had more than a few meals which contained a lot more bone than meat. Here it is not seen as a problem because you have a tongue so you just use that and spit out the stuff you don't want, but I struggle. Maybe my delicate Western culinary upbringing spoilt me, but there really must to be something wrong with what you're eating when it's socially acceptable, nay recommended, to spit a fair proportion of it out onto the table. I may not be the best judge as I tend to avoid eating anything that I consider to be more trouble than it's worth (the old 'meat:effort ratio'😉 - which usually rules out things like ribs, chicken wings, and fish, all fish - but I really don't see how it can be an enjoyable experience when you're using your tongue to clean the bone of all meat, like it's a deep sea fish stripping a whale carcass.
Disappointingly, I haven't seen any of the promised fried scorpions on a stick type things - although the moment I do, I assure you, I'll be all over them - nor have I noticed any disgusting sounding egg things which I will not describe in any way lest I damage the trust that is obviously so important between a writer of a half arsed blog and it's increasingly annoyed/bored readers. The most repulsive thing I have eaten is a kind of coagulated piece of roosters blood, closely followed by goose feet - the image of which is still lingering on the inside of my eyelids.
The rooster's blood was not at all like black pudding (which is like nectar to me) which was perhaps why I thought it was as horrible as I did, because my expectations for this were significantly higher than they were for the goose feet which followed about a week later. It was the shape of one of those jelly cubes you buy in the supermarket, the colour of beetroot and the consistency of tofu. The worst thing was that it broke up almost as soon as you put it onto your tongue, into this kind of lumpy liquid which made it impossible to tell your mouth, brain or moral conscience that you were eating anything other than blood. As for the goose feet, I'm sure I don't need to tell you that they were beyond bad. The picture that will hopefully be on this page should tell you all you need to know about them, but let me be the first to tell you, they taste a lot worse than they look. Again the practice with these is to put them into your mouth, suck or lick off the skin, because any idiot knows that that is where the flavour is, and then spit out the bones. I bet you feel a bit sick at the thought of it don't you? Occasionally I'll be buying food and I'll see them, (because they are impossibly popular here) and even months after I tried them, the mere sight of them still makes me uneasy.
Of course in terms of what we would think of as weird food, there have been plenty of successes, not least the duck necks which despite being like a rib in terms of how they had to be eaten, were delicious. Pig's ear was like a particularly streaky piece of bacon which wasn't without it's charm, chicken hearts looked unpleasant (like little grey testicles) but were just a bit bland - and annoyingly they didn't pop in my mouth like little cherry tomatoes when I bit into them - and spiced bullfrog was just a bit like very spicy chicken. All quite fun to say that I've eaten, all interesting stories to tell and all left me feeling ok the next morning - but none were a patch on cheese on toast.
Pura Vida
Dave
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