Five Famous Chinese Food Believe it or Nots

5. Cardboard Pork Buns

What's really in these?

Technically "proven" a hoax and the offending journalist sentenced to jail for a year, the cardboard bun scandal of 2007 is an oldie but still a goodie. Just to give a bit of context for those who are not aware, in the summer of 2007, an investigative reporter went around Beijing and discovered that certain street vendors were stuffing their buns not with low grade pork (too expensive!) but cardboard that they softened with chemicals and pork flavors (cost effective!).

This created a massive outcry and panic through the city since buying pork buns from a street vendor in China is as routine and ubiquitous as picking up a morning coffee at Starbucks in the States. Luckily for everyone the Beijing authorities were on the case and hey! No need to panic citizens, the whole story was made up by a meanie head writer out to do a smear campaign on China. All the pork buns in the city are safe! Go Beijing Olympics!!

So was it a cover up or was the journalist really just out to get China? The thing is either is entirely possible. That's the thing with China. You just never really know what to believe. After an initial paranoia, the public soon returned to its old routine and street vendors selling piping hot steamers of pork buns relined Beijing streets. So far the media hasn't reported any deaths by pork bun so I guess everything's fine?

4. Fake Eggs

Um...is it supposed to do that?

DVDs, CDs, clothes, bags, furniture, cigarettes, money, computer programs, electronics, water. If there's a real thing, China's got its fake, less expensive doppelganger. Counterfeiting has become such a part of popular culture that a special Chinese slang word has been created just for it - "shanzhai" which translates to "mountain village edition." So ingrained is piracy that last month when authorities tried to raid popular Beijing fake market, Silk Street, the vendors actually fought back and protested (NOTE: for China users, you'll have to use a proxy to open this site. Thanks net nanny!).

"Oh, you're mad at us? We'll we're now mad at you. How are them apples?"

With a flotilla of Shanzhai goods on the market in every shape and size, you may think that there was couldn't possibly be anything else to add to China's fake product portfolio but then you'd be forgetting that in life, our capacity for innovation is infinite. As far back as 2006, intrepid inventors in Hebei have taken nature into their own hands perfecting the art of making shanzhai'ed eggs. After all, chickens are dirty and noisy and take up space and sometimes die. Nature is so fallible!

Using a mix of gelatin, alum and other mystery chemicals, these forward thinking capitalists create and sell their fake eggs at a fraction of the cost of the real thing without ever having to deal with a real animal (remember SARS? Who want's to deal with that again?). However, another thing we should remember is that usually man-made substitutes compared with the natural thing is like comparing a Hollywood movie to the actual book it was based on - it's just never as good. Cotton is better than polyester, Godiva is better than Hersheys, All the Pretty Horses via Cormac McCarthy is better than All the Pretty Horses via Ted Tally and so, unsurprisingly, real eggs are better than the manufactured ones. Not only do real eggs taste better, it's rumored that the excessive ingestion of alum (a key ingredient in the fake ones) can lead to dementia. I guess you get what you pay for. Or maybe not.


3. Mutant (but discounted) Fruit

More cushion for the pushin'

Speaking of getting what you paid for get a load of these discount pomelos recently purchased off the street. First reported in China Smack, these pomelos apparently are not the only fruit with thick skin.



Looks good doesn't it? Yum yum.

2. Lamb Flavored Cat Skewers

Smell's like lamb, looks like meat...

On any given night in China, you can find street vendors fastidiously fanning their charcoal grills sending billows of tasty smelling, meat laced smoke up into the sky. Next to them are coolers stockpiled with skewers of vegetables and meat. In the pageant of street snacks, lamb skewers or yang rou chrua'r are definitely the crowd favorite; however, even as you slide that hot, grilled piece of meat off the bamboo skewer and taste its juicy, gamey lamb goodness mixing with your saliva your brain can't help to think, "How can this possibly only cost RMB1?" But by that time you're in no mood for sensible thoughts and so the subsequent line of internal monologue ignores the possiblity that the meat is probably pretty poor quality or that the meat may be extremely old or that the meat may be discarded from dubious sources.

Instead, that voice inside your head yells, "You're hungry! There's delicious meat in front of you! EAT IT!!" And so, you chomp down on not one, not two a dozen or so meat skewers. After all, you're having a good time right now, carpe dieming the night and all that. Sure this skewer might be bad for you but how bad could it be?

Well, it could be cat.

Cheap and delicious!

While the consumption of cat is acknowledged to be acceptable in southern China (even local Chinese people sniff with an air of disgusted wonderment, "Those people will eat anything." whenever Guangdong is mentioned), it's become a widely rumored fact that cunning street vendors outside the designated we-actually-like-and-want-to-eat-felines areas are selling cat dressed as lamb. It's street molecular gastronomy- the cat meat is cured in a lamb's stomach to infuse in the flavors.

While some might cry foul, this whole bait 'em and switch 'em scheme seems perfectly in line with China's unique and enthusiastic capitalist-with-a-communist-slant spirit. Just think - in order to herd livestock you've got to have land, grain, farmers. It's an activity that can only be done by the elitist few.


Lambs are for elitist whores

To herd cats, you just need to run around at night with a net, an activity that could be done by the people. Ideologically sound AND efficient. Now that is impressive.

1. Baby Mice

2 cute 2 B Not eaten. LOLZ!

It's a good rule of thumb in cuisine that any dish called a delicacy is probably going to be gross. The grossest delicacies in China mostly hail from the Guangdong province. Remember the saying Chinese have for the people there? However, given this particular delicacy, you can see how most snide sayings are grounded in truth. Called Three Squeaks, this particular dish involves eating baby mice... raw.

The first squeak comes when you grab the mouse with your chopstick, the second when you dip it in sauce and the third when you bite off it's head. I would have thought it was just an urban legend except for the fact I once saw an article in a Chinese magazine about it. My written Chinese is pretty poor but the illustrations told a million words.