Another post from the days when almost none of you were around yet.
Ever been to China? Like, real China? I’m not talking about the one in the middle of San Fransisco, I’m talking about the place where you can get a room at a five-star hotel for $30/night and a block down the road you can pick up a nice dog roast (I’m being nice when I say roast; all I saw were dog legs to gnaw on), mostly hair free. Well, I have been there, twice now, and let me tell you that it is awesome. Most everything, that is, except for the food.
Thanks to some recent “experiences” in China, I don’t really like absolutely hate going out for Chinese food now. I used to love it. Problem is, I went to real China where they make real Chinese Food and eat it with real chopsticks and I’m pretty sure they always mix it with something disgusting. It was so bad that I can’t even stand the fake good stuff they make here in America anymore, just because they happen to claim it’s food from the same place.
First of all, it doesn’t help in a place like China that I am the adventurous type and I always try anything at least once. No matter how nasty it is. And China knows nasty when it comes to food.
There is no breakfast food. There is just China food. Every morning in the lobby of our 5-star hotel we ate breakfast and every morning it was the same grease soaked crap. And it’s the same crap you eat for lunch and dinner. I’d have given just about anything for some Reese’s Puffs. Or milk that came from an animal I’ve actually heard of. Or some type of meat that didn’t have course little curly hairs on it.
On the trip I last returned from, twice each day our supplier took us out to eat at some fancy restaurant. He never once asked us what we wanted; he or his assistant just loaded up the lazy susan (or maybe that’s lazy sieu san) full of different dishes. The menu photos certainly did live up to the plates they put in front of us.
Fried fish. And when I say fried fish, I mean little fish thrown in a frier, with their eyeballs and guts and heads and fins still very much part of the experience. Crab eggs. Mushrooms the size of eggplants that probably would have given me an awesome high if I had actually tried them. Turtle. Carp. Fish heads. Crocodile Legs. Frogs. Fried Entrails. You name it, it was probably on their menu. I think they’d even bring you out a plate of deep-fried sewage if you wanted it.
The first day or two of a trip to China, the experience of “getting the experience” makes it worth trying all the nasty nasty. It doesn’t take long though, before you just start skipping meals altogether and tackling the chauffeur when you pass a KFC. Causing a car crash wasn’t ever worth it though. I’m pretty sure it was just Kentucky Fried Chicken Feet.
The hot water they serve you to drink also gets really old really fast. The first words I learned to say in Chinese were Bin Shway (no that’s not spelled right, and no, nobody could ever understand me when I said it) which meant cold water. In China, they don’t serve cold water, they serve glasses of steaming hot water, sometimes hot enough to scald your tongue which is good because otherwise I’d have been teaching the waiters some of the not-so-good American expletives.
After about a week of the food in China you start losing track of time and space. Your mental and physical health quickly diminishes and you start eye-balling your own limbs as a better alternative to the food they’re forcing you to eat every day.
The day before the end of our journey, I looked at our supplier and I said, “tomorrow we want to buy you guys lunch.” He agreed. “But, we get to pick our own food off the menu”. He agreed. Quite honestly he didn’t know why we would have any sort of problem eating parrot beaks soaked in melted lard.
The next day arrived about a week later. We met for lunch and I snatched the menu up before anybody could say anything. There were a few words in English, though not many, but enough to figure out what the safe bets were. And I was going safe on this round. Italian. Yes, that sounds safe. Pizza. Yes, that sounds safe. Hawaiian Pizza. YES. SAFETY AT LAST! Seriously, can you go wrong with Hawaiian Pizza?
Yes. OMG yes, yes, yes, you can. Before I go on, you need to watch the video of the Hawaiian pizza. That’s right. You need to see this pizza at 30 frames per second. A still photograph just wouldn’t do.
I meant what I said in the last line of that video. There is no safe food in China.
I started to weep when we left lunch that day. I don’t know if I was crying because I had failed at finding something palatable when I had the chance, or because I ate three slices of the pizza while it was still moving. And guess what else. That wasn’t pineapple on top. I think it was buttapple. Was it coincidence that 30 minutes later I had to scream at the chauffeur to find a bathroom and quick? The diarrhea lasted three weeks. And that was enough to make me never want to eat Chinese Food again.
Dan Pearce, Single Dad Laughing
PS, after extensive research, I’ve discovered that the moving stuff on top of the pizza is fish skin. I guess it reacts to heat somehow. They’re called Japanese Bonito Flakes. I just ordered me a bag and I think my next social gathering will be one that everybody remembers!
....I have Chinese food leftovers in my fridge. I was lamenting earlier in how several weeks of "clean eating" has changed my taste buds and it didn't even taste good.
This has convinced me to just toss the leftovers in the trash. My waistline thanks you.
PS I can almost *feel* the skin moving on my tongue...GAHHHHHH
Stupid iPad... I'm JEN not Je! And now I'm rereading my comment and seeing other boners. Awesome.
Ha, just saw this one! Western food in China is generally the pits - they just do not get it - most of the time! I lived in northern China for a year, and the food rocked my world. I still have to go to a northern chinese noodle restaurant at least once a month - luckily here in Sydney Australia there are a few around! I was lucky with my food experiences in China - some things were a bit icky but its a cultural thing, I don't like jellyfish, or ducks blood (or pigs for that matter). Cicadas are an acquired taste too! We were back there in July for a friends wedding, with our two blonde kids in tow and it was great fun! This really took me back there!
@Mary J We lived in Sydney for three years, I miss the good Asian food. We have no Dim Sum here, and I miss BBQ King (Although I will admit, we sent friends there a few times and they could not get past the "atmosphere" (I guess not pristinely clean enough for them.. I just tell people, once you have eaten in China and seen a kitchen there, you don't so much worry about that sort of thing any more)
I should not have read this one while eating lunch. No longer hungry. May not eat Chinese food again.
Oh my goodness, I nearly peed just now: that was so funny. Funny because it's true, of course! I've been to China. In fact, I lived there, well, Taiwan, for two years. And you know what? You can get fried sewage! OK, not really, but they have this thing called Jiou Tofu (literal translation is stinky tofu), and it certainly smells like raw sewage. It is tofu fried with rotten cabbage. Not cabbage that has been processed, like saurkraut, with vinegar, but actual rotten cabbage that's all slimy and moldy and perhaps has worms in it. Just the thought of the memory makes me start gagging. Next time you go to China you need to go with someone who knows how to order good food - because they do have good food, really, really good food - so that you don't suffer so much.
And that is why I can't even eat the Chinese food made in America! Fish skin on a Hawaiian pizza is just wrong- on so many levels!
Hey Dan! Great post! For those who think you just managed to luck into all the bad places somehow, consider this: in the 14th century, Ibn Battuta, a traveller from Morocco, set off for Mecca, and carried on travelling for 29 years. He went to Russia, down the coast of Africa, through India, all over the place. He wrote extensively about his adventures. Eventually he got to China and he HATED it. Mainly because the food HORRIFIED him. He was so revolted by what he saw being cooked on the streets or offered for sale, he refused to even describe it, he wouldn't go out of his dwelling, and ultimately, he cut his entire trip short and went home. He'd had shipwrecks, been marooned, married several times along the way and lost both wives and friends, and would have had many unusual adventures and experiences, but Chinese food was too much even for him. Food in China has been horrifying people for centuries, folks. Some travellers have a good experience, many do not. We can acquire tastes for certain things, but sometimes, there is no accounting for tastes in food, and no arguing with them. It's too bad we can't all love everyone else's food, but the fact is, we don't. That has no bearing on whether we respect their culture or appreciate their history or accept them as fellow human beings. How I feel about someone should not be based on whether they like all the same things I do. I enjoyed reading this.
Haha! Chinese food in China is very good, but "Western" food is the worst! It's the same in most Asian countries. They just don't "get" it. I suppose they say the same about the way we prepare Asian food in the US. The trick is NOT to go to the most fancy restaurants. Remember, the very fancy restaurants in the US also prepare some very weird shit to be "cool" and "different"...if you want good eats, go where the locals go If you see a long line of people at a restaurant, no matter the time of day, stop to eat THERE. And look around and see what they are eating and point and say "I want THAT." Can't go wrong, and you most likely won't be eating anything horrible.
I can't guarantee you won't get food poisoning though. Any time you travel to a foreign country you will be subjected to their bugs and China has really really really poor hygiene.
As for the benito fish flakes, I learned to love them in Japan. It's smoked and dried benito fish that has been shaved very thin. It "dances" from the rising heat of the food. My kids love to eat the "dancing fish flakes"...it's tasty, when it's not on a pizza!
Dan, I visited the Philippines in January of 2010... My experience was quite similar! LOL While the food could be amazingly wonderful... I had to be quite careful! Dog is also eaten there.. which is not something I would EVER want to try!! Thanks for the giggles!
Have you read any of Fucia Dunlaps Books? They go among way to explaing how to enjoy china, as long as you don't expect to be in control or framilar with most of what you put in your mouth.
I think this was the very first post of yours I ever read. Why it enticed me to stick around I have no clue, but I'm glad I did.
Well, thanks for making me Google the word "buttapple" I'm glad to say I'm that more smarter now. hee hee hee
Wow Dan! You are a brave one that is for sure! I would not be able to eat half the stuff you described
@Kerry Cracknell If this post is enough to turn people off of visiting china, they didn't really want to go in the first place.
HAHAHA! That was a total Griswald Family Reunion: I love eating chinese food post! New movie coming to theaters in 2014. Nothing wrong with telling it how you see it. Everyone has an experience. It's just not always the same experience. Right? Life's journey, anyone? LOL, at all the offended, REALLY? Celebrities et al media personalities apologize constantly for their comments, etc and I CONTINUALLY LAUGH at the apologizing. Reason being, WHO CARES! We are humans, we all make mistakes, we flubber words, we all screw something up, or we all have shortcomings, like back hair, YES, women too. I am soooo tired of all the apologizing for just spouting out the first thing that comes to mind about anything. It's not end of the world, it's not the final word, it's not always the truth, it's just a perspective at this point in time. That's PERIOD. So, all you haters, all your perfect people, all you negative nelly's (just4fun), focusing on someone's else's mistakes really shows how much you don't pay attention to your own issues AND SHOULD. Relax, take a break, deal with yourself. Thanks Dan! Love the blog, love honesty, love your humanity, don't stop!
The cartoon is racist. There is really nothing funny about it. It's one thing to be humorously offensive but this cartoon is lacks the the humor.
In my experience, your real problem was eating at "fancy" restaurants instead of from the street vendors and dirt-cheap places of deliciosuness. I visited Hong Kong for 2 weeks and got the tour from my aunt, who lived there and spoke Mandarin as well as Cantonese. Most of the time, I had no idea what I was eating except for the Chinese name for it and whatever it looked like. Everything was amazingly good, until we went out for fancy dinner one of our last nights, which I distinctly remember as very underwhelming compared to all the other food.
Nice to see some posts from this blog when it first began, Dan. A lot of us recent converts missed these. I wonder if you'd consider going to England some day. I'd love to read your review of British food. LOL.
This IS a funny post but what a shame you've put some people right off going to China! You can get amazing Chinese food there - it's not all offal, fish heads and shark's fins. In most Asian countries it's actually better to eat local cuisine than Western (except in Singapore, which is so cosmopolitan you can get anything). I gather Hong Kong and Tokyo are great for eating out, too.
"American" Chinese food is not authentic; we know that...But it IS prepared to make our paletes happy...I have heard that "authentic" chinese food is not for the faint hearted, so I applaud you for not only trying, but surviving your experiences!
I gotta get me some o those flakes! That would be hilarious to freak out the family and friends!
Oh man, you ate the wrong food in China. I lived in Beijing for two years and was able to travel around the country quite a bit. I miss authentic Chinese food so dearly - from gourmet szechuan to local fare in tiny, rural villages, I could always find something that was delicious. Sure there was a ton of weird stuff and dishes that were downright scary, but I could pretty consistently find good gong bao (kung pao) chicken, mabo dofu, and lo mein. And bing xue was very easy to come by. I'm sorry you had such a bad experience.
Where were you? I went to Hong Kong back in 2001 and it was amazing... Our tour guide was nice enough to tell us to look closely at the small bowls of "nuts" on the tables in nice restaurants... Those were not nuts but small dehydrated fish heads! Lol.. there were a few things I ate that I still have no idea what they were, don't tell me cause it was good! I did enjoy shark fin soup (hangs head in shame). Did NOT like abalone. And of course now I can't eat Chinese food here without being underwhelmed because its never as good as it was there lol fo figure
Bonito flakes (thinly shaved pieces of dried fish, not really skin) is mostly used in Japanese food instead of Chinese, although I have no clue why it would be on a Hawaiian pizza. We took some friends out to Japanese food yesterday and had the same conversation about bonito flakes... it's moving because it's thin and the air is moving (either from the hot pizza or the room vents.) It's used to make dashi broth, so if you've had miso soup at a Japanese restaurant you've probably tried it. I never knew that they sell it here as cat treats though, probably because I don't have a cat :)
Ok this totally made my night!!! So funny
Trust me. Somehow in China KFC does not taste like chicken. EVERYTHING tastes like CHICKEN! HOW did they do THAT?! LOL Thanks for the laugh and the memories.
You see Dan, You should've gone to China with Andrew Zimmern, to get the full experience! I am sure he knows all the hot spots!
Dan, I'm really disappointed by this post. Lately you've been writing a lot about accepting people as they are & this is the exact opposite of that. I agree with other commenters, you come across as an ugly American here. China is a huge country with many different types of cuisine & you just lumped it all together as if it were one. It's like if someone was visiting the US & their host only took them to fast food restaurants, so they decided the didn't like all American food. As someone who is part Chinese, I was offended by your broad generalizations & overall negative tone. It makes me wonder if you really did go into your trip with an open mind, or if you only felt obligated to eat the food to not be rude. That being said, it sounds as if the people ordering for you were too insensitive to at least ask you what you'd like & to try & explain things. A vegan friend not of Asian descent recently went to China & she had no problems finding plenty to eat. You had other options.
Really it was your cartoon that did it in for me- it was crudely done & had no thought behind it. I'm tired of hearing about people eating dog in China. My grandma grew up in China & she never ate dog- sure she had shark, snake & other things our American palates aren't used to, but it's so frustrating to have your entire culture be boiled down to one food that someone finds offensive. That would be like if most Indians thought all Americans were barbarians for eating cows. It's all about cultural perspective & here you were being short-sighted. It's ok to not like the food- my American sensibilities meant I never wanted to try eating fish heads or chicken feet- but they way you framed everything was mean-spirited.
@disparatedisciplines1 Point taken. And it wasn't meant to offend, only to be funny (written years ago). I could have written something equally disturbing about Hometown Buffet.
As for the dog, I wasn't kidding. There was dog meat for sale all over the place where I was. It was very disturbing to me.
I've also visited other areas of China (one of my favorite places on Earth) and had a wonderful experience.
It's funny to see the difference in response now verses when I first posted this two and a half years ago.
@disparatedisciplines1 I agree with you here. The cartoon is CHEAP! So typical.
@disparatedisciplines1 He wrote it in 2010. And it's funny, and meant to be humorous. Grown a funny bone, people. Good Grief.
@HeatherHodges0917 I agree with you Heather, I'm sure it's supposed to be funny, some people are a bit sensitive (like my boyfriend who I posted about earlier being offended) LOL. He wrote this forever ago and he's just being funny/controversial.
LMAO! oh my! no words. except to say - hawaiian pizza should not move. an you are right - still pictures would not do it justice!
Now, Dan -
I think you to be a very open-minded and tolerant person. I love your blog and your posts sometimes even gets my eyes leaking. However, this post comes across as very "Ugly American". I'm sorry the food wasn't to your personal tastes when you went. I'm glad you went into it with an open mind in the beginning, but the whole post was kind of uncomfortable to sit through. I'm not Chinese, but I love all the random things you can eat like tripe and fish guts and pork blood. It's definitely not for everyone, but putting an entire culture's cuisine on blast on the current-sized stage that you have is kinda not cool.
It's ok though, we're only human. I only hope that one day you get to have some bombski Chinese food that changes your perception. *internet hugs*
I have to laugh at this. I am Japanese and I love the guts, eyeballs, stomach etc. etc. I also know its not for everyone :) this post made me giggle and reminded me of the time i tried some DURIAN ice cream LOL.
I’m half Taiwanese, half Spanish, and after a recent trip to China I can assure you the two countries are quite different! China’s at an earlier stage of economic development… that means people care less (a lot less) about hygiene, there’s a lot of deceiving labeling, and you’re more likely to catch a stomach bug. It’s probably like the US was around 1900 (i.e. like Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle).
Taiwan will definitely have food you don’t find appetizing and that’s fine, but it’ll be safe (including the water), and it won’t include dog. Unfortunately for you, seafood is very important there... good luck with that. I find that Taiwan and Spain eat a lot of the same things that Americans find strange (squid, blood pudding, tripe, etc.) and the same is probably true of Mexico. If you can deal with that, you'll be fine!
You may get stares but they'll be of curiosity. I've never had any problems there. Read up on the etiquette differences though! And on Taiwan's history, messy as it is.
@carlisimo was this in response to me? just wondering
Okay, some clarification on those moving things that I got from my boyfriend. Bonito flakes are most often now made from tuna because it's cheaper, and it's not fish skin. The bonito fish is beheaded, gutted and filleted. They are then smoke for extended period of time and shaved when ready to serve.
"Bonito flakes are kept as dry as possible not to lose its flavor till it is served. When it is put on the top of a dish particularly on a hot steaming dish, it begins to absorb moisture quickly and curl or shrink giving the impression as if it move on its own." - From Wikipedia
I just wanted to clarify this for people who didn't know. Apparently I've had bonito flakes in my miso soup before and I didn't even notice. I DO eat tuna... even if I don't eat pretty much any other seafood except for fried Atlantic cod.
Not as gross as it seems from the video once you find out more about it.
Credit: my boyfriend, who was a little offended like @Valeria was a few posts below.
Stinky tofu!
You must have been in one of the big cities towards the coast. I however was in Kunming in the Yunnan province. Amazing food. I gained weight. 8 years ago and I had the most fun there..... But never never order western cuisine and think you are getting western food. They work from photos and it can be delicious, but not informed by our culinary tastes at all. My experience was with a country fried steak. My mashed potatoes were a fruit puree, the gravy a fruit sauce the breading crushed walnuts. All cold. All amazing. But I wanted a country fried steak even more after that....
That's funny, I had a totally different experience with Chinese food...and sometimes American Chinese food makes me sad because I know it won't measure up to real Chinese food.
Then again, I was probably luckier than you were. My best friend moved to China and after two years I had finally saved up enough to go see her. So I was with American expats who knew their way around a menu. I also stayed away from the street food, although I did try eel and duck brain. I also got to try traditional Peking Duck (which was kind of like duck-crepe-tacos), and one of my dad's students took me and my friends' family to an absolutely AMAZING Chinese buffet called the Golden Jaguar when we were there. I still think about that buffet. Seriously. They had Ovaltine on tap, one entire buffet section dedicated to just drinks (I stayed away from the alcoholic ones, because I was underage and also they had dragonfruit juice, which interested me way more). It was one of the best food experiences of my life.
During the rest of the trip, though, the food was great, and I really enjoyed the circular lazy susan-thing that food gets shared on. I still miss the food in China....a lot. Hopefully someday I'll get a chance to go back! I hope someday that you get to go back, too, maybe with someone who can show you the better side of Chinese food.
And one of my friends left for China today. He is in for a rude awakening!
Ugh, I'm scared to go there now. My boyfriend is Taiwanese and I thought it would be so exciting to visit where he's from and see the culture... but now I'm unsure. :x
BTW You get stuff like this in Mexico too, and I'm Hispanic (Mexican descent) and as Americans it's just a shock to us pretty much no matter where we go.
I could NEVER eat anything moving. I would throw up on the spot. I'm also a very picky eater so...
@RoxanneFlores Culture is not 100% food. GO to Taiwan. Don't be afraid to try stuff. As I stated below to Valeria, there is plenty of American food that I won't eat. No one is going to find every part of any culture to be 100% to their liking. Don't be afraid to try new stuff..picky or not. You never know until you try and you may find something you love and fall in love with!
@adoptivemomto2 Another thing I'm a bit worried about is, my boyfriend and I get enough looks as it is here in the states. I feel like Asian people do not agree with our relationship, and his mother is very upset that I'm not Asian. What is going to happen in Taiwan, you know? More stare downs and I don't know. Sometimes when we're out at Asian restaurants I just feel uncomfortable :(
@RoxanneFlores Don't be scared! First off, Taiwan is a totally different island with some excellent, excellent food. Because there are people from many different regions of China in Taiwan, you can get many different sorts of food there. Taiwanese soup dumplings have become really famous recently! Also, tropical fruits beyond your wildest imagination =)
And lovely shaved ice. You can find kind of strange street foods at the night market if you are adventurous, like fried stinky tofu. But, if you're not, there are still plenty of foods I'm sure you would love.
@Valeria My boyfriend's favorite thing in the world is stinky tofu and I just can't eat tofu. It feels like there's a loogie in my mouth LOL! I did try to choke some down for him though. I've been adventurous and tried duck (though I felt bad the entire time I was eating it) but when it comes to food, I'm that person that has the one dish at every restaurant they order and never strays from.
I still am excited to visit Taiwan, but if I get served something like this, I won't be the grin and bear it type and I'm afraid it might irritate my boyfriend after a while LOL... he should be used to me by now but... let's just say I'll probably lose some weight.
Oh, and I don't eat any kind of seafood, or fish (unless it's friend Atlantic cod that does not resemble fish). So that makes it even harder but I LOVE dumplings!
What I don't like is that pork they sell at Asian markets that you put in fried rice (my boyfriend made me some) the taste is off for me, I'm not sure what it is.
@Valeria I've never had stinky tofu, he would never even TRY that LOL he knows better. I just had regular tofu and it was hard to get down. The pork looked like those cocktail wieners but a bit bigger. I ate the fried rice anyway because he went through all the trouble to make it and I didn't tell him I didn't like that kind of sausage or pork or whatever till way later LOL
@RoxanneFlores I hate stinky tofu haha. If he makes you eat that again he's just being mean and keeping you from all the other good stuff that's out there!
As for the pork - maybe you don't like five-spice? There's a lot of that in barbecued Taiwanese pork.
Well, at any rate. I hope you go to Taiwan and I hope you have fun!!