Confucius say, taste great!

I was so inspired by the Chinese alphabet blocks from a previous post that my mind turned to other misadventures in the Land of the Great Wall. Chinese food over there is not what you pick up for takeout on a Friday night here. I loved much of the cuisine in Shanghai, but so-called staples like sweet-and-sour chicken, chow mein, and Moo Shu pork were nowhere to be found. There were plenty of other food items you could find, though - many of them floating in your soup!

In my three years over there, I ate some pretty weird things. Snake blood (fresh from a skinned snake, the honours done right in front of Yours Truly), fish eyeball, drunken shrimp that were still alive and wiggled on the way down, eel soup, chicken hearts, etc. The best rule of thumb was to not think about what was going down your gullet, and wash it back with some good beer.

I'll never forget the first time our cook, Helen, proposed some menu options for supper. She had come from a chef's position at a local restaurant, and was a fantastic cook - and to make the household assimilation process easier, she had brought a book of menus translated into English to our house. My mum and I thumbed through it with growing horror, and finally stopped at "Three Snake Fricassee with Cat." We glanced from our furry cat Rocky (brought over from the States with the rest of us) to Helen, and had to emphatically insist, "no food containing cat." Rocky survived the Shanghai experience intact, but given that she was a huge Maine Coon cat (weighing around 18 lbs.), whenever locals would come over to our house, they would eye her with interest, and I knew they were thinking that she could feed a family of three, easily, for a week.

The all time best food encounter, though, is described below. I've scanned the package so you can appreciate the hilarity in its original splendour, but as the writing is quite small, I'll provide an exact transcription below. All typos, of course, are as-is.




A Big Eat of Game
Eight Dainty Dog Meat
Liangshan is surrounded by Eight hundred Liwater area. rare birds and animals are numerous.long ago, when Shuihu heroes got together ,they used kinds game to make delicious dishes ,Eight Dainty Dog meat is one of these dishes.It is said that "The smell of dog meat can't be resisted. "It con-tains, Ptotein.vitamin ect.Which can nourish liver and kidnny.
In modern times,it is a real delicacy.
Ingredients: dog meat, astragalus membranaceus, ginseng, lycium Chinese, slender acanthopanax skin, ophlopogen, japonicus,aniseed,ginger,soysauce,refined salt.
Direction: Eat soon after opening, cool or hot will OK.
If you find the dag to expand don't eat
EXP: 8 months Net weight:250g
A big eat of game Shandong Liangshan Food Factory

Wow. Kind of gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "walk ... er, I mean, wok ... your dog."