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tasty bytes from China
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08/28/10
Try it, you’ll like it!
Filed under: General
Posted by: @ 11:57 pm

stinkystuffECU

There’s a chinglish term we learned quickly in China: Chi-arrhea.  You don’t have to enroll in Berlitz classes to figure out what it means. The squirts, or as the Chinese accurately call it –fire belly–is as common in Kunming as street food vendors (you think there’s a correlation?). But whatever you eat, Chinese cuisine is like starring on your own personal episode of Bizarre Foods.

I’ve eaten some weird stuff since I’ve been here, and I’m not talking about Cola flavored Mentos or hot Pineapple Tang. On more than one occasion, I had no clue what went down my gullet and eventually squirted out the other end.  

My first adventure of dare food was when we were invited to a fancy dinner at a rooty-tooty  restaurant, the kind of establishment where you’d have an assortment of forks next to your plate in the States. Since we were in China, all we had were chopsticks and Kleenex-thin paper napkins.

Multiple bowls of edibles were placed on the table. First, there was something that looked like “Horton Hears a Who Balls”, delicate puffy white things that were actually deep fried goat cheese. There were platters of thinly shaved mystery meat which we believed to be water buffalo.  For drinks, there was a tea sweetened with yak butter. Yeah, I know.  I affectionately referred to it as yak-acinno.

For the main course, there a big bowl of soup with what appeared to be chopped bike tires floating around. It was a local specialty, a spicy broth featuring chunks of coagulated blood. Not a flavor you’d find back home in the Campbell’s soup section. The spicy broth was like Viagra for the taste-buds, bringing all of my senses to full attention. It was good, but the chunks of blood had a texture a little too weird for me, like hot melting Jello.  

I chased the weirdness away by daring myself to try the deep fried chicken head. Proper poultry part etiquette is to dig out the brains, which resembled a chewed up piece of Wrigley’s. I passed on that. I did manage to suck out an eyeball, which reminded me of an oversized piece of roe from a bad sushi restaurant.

< Vegetables at the local farmer markets look like they are from Mars. Dimpled and bumpy gourds,  squash the size of small children, and some things from legume family that looks like the result of bad inbreeding.

This weekend, we will venture to out to a restaurant for our most bizarre food venture yet. We have located two Dairy Queens and a Pizza hut in Kunming.

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