The Rickshaw Report: Food For Thought

1. Do both Chinese men and women women  both cook for the family? I think in China, women tend to cook more. ( Smiles) But men, like me, also know how to cook. 2. Oh really? What is your signature dish? I like making sauteed cabbage with vinegar , and a garlicky stew of pork and liver. 3. How is vegetarianism regarded by the Chinese? I have some vegetarian friends, and they have different reasons for this choice. However, I think vegetarians do not have as much energy as meat-eaters. Eating meat brings me so much joy! 4. Can you see any advantages to going veggie? Maybe, there are health advantages – especially if you have a heart condition. But, I could never go veggie! 5. Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary general argued maintaining meat consumption to a level recommended by health authorities would lower emissions and reduce various health problems. Instead, he suggests, more people should eat insects, which he claims to be a good source of nutrition. Your thoughts? Insects? Is he joking? I don’t think Chinese people will get used to that. They will vomit if you try to serve them this! Well, I guess in some parts of Southern China, insects are eaten, but the thought of it makes me want to throw up! 6.Food […]

Dec 4, 2015

Zombie Meat yet another Reason to Go Vege in China

  I have lived in China for around five years now, and much of that was spent in blissful ignorance. By that I mean that one of my favorite things to do in Beijing on a fine summertime evening was to sit around a weather-beaten plastic table that belonged on a patio back when patios were invented and eat chuanr, otherwise known as skewered meat liberally seasoned with cumin and chili. To sit in the nighttime humidity and chow on lamb shish kebabs while complaining about the air pollution and drinking lukewarm Yanjing beer seemed like a truly Beijinger thing to do. But oh how that ignorance has me looking back in wonder that I did not contract rabies or some other equally delicious disease carried by members of the Canidae (dogs, foxes), Mustilidae (badgers, minks) or Muroidea (rats) families. And if not for the dubious “lamb” that I ate, then what of its age? Was it in fact older than I, originating from a cache of “zombie meat” aged 30 years for flavor? Piquant yet nostalgic. I bring this up now as there has never been a better time in China to be a vegetarian. My in-laws are rabid vegetarians for a myriad of reasons, and being the son of a New Zealand sheep and beef farmer I have […]

Jul 14, 2015