As an American child, your parents always told you that you should eat everything on your plate because "there are starving children in China." Well, since I've been here I've started to contemplate reasons why that might be. I mentioned earlier that the food here is holy and for the most part, it is. But I've come to witness lately a strange obsession with the Chinese people to put food, and things that really should not be food, on sticks. In certain parts of the city, they spear everything on long balsa wood skewers and serve it up as local fare.
Now, I've seen fruit like strawberries, melon, kiwi and crab apples candied on long sticks and this looks perfectly acceptable to me. However, I have also had the great misfortune of seeing the following: scorpions, small and large, sea horses, whole eels with the heads, dog meat, locusts, large insect larvae, testicles (I don't know who they belonged to), squid, octopus and many, many other truly wretched creatures that I don't want to see alive and well, let alone dead with a wooden stick going through their heads.
There's a famous night market in an ancient market district of the city called Wang Fu Jing and about 100 food vendors line the street with piles of these "treats" to offer. While I was amazed to see many local Chinese people standing around feasting on their bug lollipops, I couldn't help but think to myself, "If I were a child in China, I'd be starving too."
But the bug lollipop craze isn't the only thing that has turned my stomach. The other day, Serena scurried me off to this place near her dorm where she swore had the best chicken she's ever tasted. She wanted me to try it. So, I agreed and went shuffling off behind her. When we arrived at this location, which was down an alley, then another, then another (I tend to find adventures when I go down too many alleys), I looked around to see rusty bikes tossed aside everywhere, piles of rancid trash, large piles of coal on the street for the restaurants, and potholes filled with stagnant, nasty water.
Many local restauranteurs were preparing food on the ground in front of their stores with nothing more than a dirty tablecloth between the food and the disease infested street. This food was to be served for lunch, apparently. The air was filled with the smell of rotting trash and sewage and the heat and humidity only enhanced the flavor. She pulled me over to this little storefront with roasted chickens and ducks, blossoming salmonella in the window. I politely told her I was still full from our lunch together and perhaps maybe we could have this very special treat another day. She insisted I try it.
She went into the store while I waited outside gawking at these birds that were about to kill me and thinking, "Well, maybe the Chinese hospital won't be too bad." She rambled in Chinese to the woman who grabbed a roasted bird out of the window by the leg, and threw it down on a wooden surface that was still dirty from the previous kill. Then she took a butcher knife and started hacking away at the pathetic carcass. She whacked it in half, and then in half once more. Those two pieces she then chopped, bones and all, into thick slices, then picked it all up with her bare hands and threw it in a small plastic bag.
Serena paid 10 kuai for this bag of brutalized remains and with the giddiness of a schoolgirl handed it to me and anxiously begged me to try it. I promised her I would, so when we got back over to the bus stop she asked me again. I reluctantly peered into the bag to find a piece that had the least amount of bones pieces in it and pulled out a small piece of flesh. Praying for the gods of food poisoning to go easy on me, I put it in my mouth and swallowed.
It really wasn't bad but it had a very distinct flavor I'd never had before and I was just hoping that it wasn't how botulism tasted. I then handed her the bag and offered for her to share it with me, which she gladly did. We jumped on the bus and by the time we made it back to my dorm my stomach was boiling acid with such vigor that I barely made it to the bathroom. Whether it was the food or psychologically induced bowel trauma, I was praying death would be quick and painless.
Serena did not seem to notice my emergency detour to the restroom, so when I came out finally, I went along as if everything was fine, so not to upset her. When she left, though, I tossed the bag of chicken in the trash, feeling a little guilty but also like I had just rid the world of my nemisis.
Feeling relatively lucky that so far I have, for the most part, managed to avoid local food that does not agree with my overly pampered American stomach, I began making a list of things that might prematurely take my life starting with the following:
1. things with more than four legs, more than two eyes and/or an exoskeleton
2. things that are typically called "pets" in America
3. things that are poisonous
4. things that reside in trash cans or can be caught in poisonous traps under the sink
5. things that look like snot before they've been cooked and feel like rubber bands after they've been cooked
6. things that serve to reproduce more of the same things
7. things that are born out of pods
8. things that grow microscopic organisms in storefront windows
It's a growing list, but so far I think I have a lot of "things" covered. If I follow it carefully, I may get through my China adventure without getting first hand experience of the Chinese health care system.
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