Eating weird things in China

by Leolaia 48 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  drwtsn32

  LOL Rachel! I will get you back... when you least expect it.
• 

  Kaethra

  Very cool stories! I couldn't eat some of that stuff, however.

  *ahem* small correction..."We knew that the hump is where the camel stored water..." That is not true. Camel humps are for fat storage. No doubt that is why you found it "tough yet fatty".
• 

  Shutterbug

  I recall watching a show on either "Ripley's Believe it or not" or "Guinness's Records" about the only restaurant in the world that serves rat. It was somewhere in China and they showed the rats in a cage out front of the restraint and when you would go in you would pick out the rat you wanted. They would take it in the back, kill and skin it and make dishes out of it. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes.

  Will

  I saw something of TV once about people in India who are paid to hunt rats, guess what they had for lunch, cooked over an open fire.
• 

  Leolaia

  Thanks for the correction, Kaethra. Drwtsn32 & frankiespeakin....Eating birds and mammals are no big deal (well, except of course for endangered species and primates -- and I don't eat any organs, yuck), but I would definitely have problems with arthropods, insects, and other weird creatures. Balut (Filipino fertilized duck embryo in the shell) however grosses me out, and I wouldn't be able to handle the 1,000 year eggs, I think.

  I don't plan to write anything grander than posts in this forum, but I think I have at least one more thread in me from this trip....I wonder if sometime I should write about my former trips (adventures to Malaysia, Thailand, Italy, Wales, England, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Holland, visiting Charles Manson's ranch in Death Valley, etc. in various prior trips) sometime in the future.....anyone interested??
• 

  mustang

  Culinary adventures??? You betcha; living w/ a "Jung-gwo nin-ren"* will do that for you

  And it doesn't stop there

  * Pinyin for Chinese woman. Pinyin is "Romanized" Mandarin, courtesy of Beijing U.

  It turns out that the words for GOAT MEAT & SHEEP in the written Chinese are usually the same. So, Dragon Lady ordered us "mutton" once; it was definitely NOT sheep-y!!! I double checked the menu and found that the ENGLISH page advertised GOAT. She looked SHEEP-ISH (ya takes yer punz where U can get them) and said "oops!!!! The words ARE the same!!!" (That is about the only time I'm "one-up" on her; I'll take it ) This was in a stateside "Chinatown", BTW.

  I haven't had too much chance to tell of them, but the adventures are there. I found out that a lot of Chinese are mischievous and like to play a combination of "one-ups-man-ship" and "gross out the foreigner". A female friend who did freight forwarding in the Orient used to get contracts by out drinking the guys and cracking jokes over dinner.

  And for things that I won't go into, I don't want to go to a big holiday party in China again without being properly armed: kazoo's, duck calls and a moose horn!!!!

  All-in-all, they are wonderful people.

  I've eaten in a McD's in Shanghai. They moved the one in Singapore that I used for a haven.

  Funny things about KFC's over there: when they first got there, they didn't do so good. A fellow I worked with 20 years ago that visited HK frequently related this. The burger joints were new & novel and took off; meanwhile the KFC's languished. The reasoning was that the Chinese did so much chicken they weren't impressed, but the burgers were new. The novelty wore off and the KFC's took off; that Chinese "thing" for chicken finally took hold. China has the most KFC's in the world now I hear.

  Mustang
• 

  frankiespeakin

  I wonder if sometime I should write about my former trips (adventures to Malaysia, Thailand, Italy, Wales, England, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Holland, visiting Charles Manson's ranch in Death Valley, etc. in various prior trips) sometime in the future.....anyone interested??

  Yes, Italy would be nice.
• 

  LittleToe

  LOL @ Rachel & Watson

  Do they still do "Bird's nest soup"?

  Your trip is fascinating, Leo. Thanks for sharing
• 

  freedom96

  I would certainly lose a lot of weight on a trip to China. I guess my food tastes are just very simple. Don't care for the weird or unusual.

  Do they have Domino's in China?
• 

  Double Edge

  At the restaurant at the hotel, we had among the many choices: "Braised camel's paw" and "Assorted slivers of camel's hump". .... we all decided to go with the hump:

  Now, see that's where we differ ... I would have gone with the Braised Camel's Paw.

  Enjoyed you post.....
• 

  Country Girl

  Great travelogue! I would love to hear the stories of your other travels! Thanks for the pictures and dialog.

  Re: the donkey meat. Ugh. I went to what we call a "horse-off" this weekend. It's a pot-luck dinner put together by people that own and run Spanish mustangs. We eat food and talk about our horses, and then look at and visit with the host's horses. They had a small 9 month old donkey. He took a shine to me, and followed me everywhere. He was very pesky, but cute. He kept trying to eat my sunglasses, my clothes, my keys, anything he could get his little lips on, including my face. I kissed him on his soft muzzle 400 times, but he preferred to nibble at my nose. What a doll. I don't think I could eat a donkey. <sniff>

  Country Girl