americantakeout
tasty bytes from China
Categories:

Archives:
Meta:
March 2024
M T W T F S S
« Nov    
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031
02/01/11
KaBoom!
Filed under: General
Posted by: @ 4:34 pm


It’s the Chinese New Year in China. While officially 2011 is the Year of the Rabbit, I disagree. It’s the Year of Pyrotechnics. On every corner, fireworks stands line the street like the Great Wall of China, selling bottle rockets the size of Yule Logs.
Grape-fruit sized cherry bombs, foot-long sparklers, multi-color fountains, sizzling missiles, spinning wheels, poppers and other eardrum crackers.
They’ll allow this here, but not facebook?
We stopped at a stand, one with a fire extinguisher out front. Like that would make a dent in the explosion. The guy working the counter was smoking a cigarette. He borrowed a lighter from a four-year-old who was aiming his sputtering Roman Candle at street traffic.
Good thing the propane delivery guy had a day off.
While there were celebration strings, containing up to 5,000 firecrackers for five thousand future Miracle Ear customers, we passed.
Somewhere, we’ll find a stand that sells spares fingers.
Trying to escape the madness of the street, we went to Wal-Mart. Now If you think Wal-Mart is nuts in the States the week before Christmas, try going to a Wal-Mart in China the week before the Chun Jie.
Note: It was Jeff’s idea.
Special holiday displays included pyramids of gold foiled rabbits and fish (for luck) and gold chocolate coins. There were piles of traditional Chinese candies, including White Rabbit—their albino version of a Toostie Roll that tastes like a shoe string but will cause havoc on your fillings just the same.

ChunJieEve

We squeezed through the narrow aisles, our noses greeted by the smell of dried duck, shriveled sausage, salted fish, and withered legs of pig adorned with more course hairs than a neglected bikini line. There was Chinese liquor galore, otherwise known as turpentine in an ornate bottle.
We searched for the perfect Chun Jie gift–gold foiled wrapped earplugs. We couldn’t find any.
We don’t know if there’s a Chinese Dick Clark who will be dropping a big eggroll in Tiananmen Square at midnight. We’ll find out soon enough.

Leave a Reply