Frightful Food

Anyone living in China gets used to the scary food/products stories and learns to dismiss them (along with scary air pollution, 200 people dying a day on the roads etc) as beyond control and therefore not worth bothering about. Or we did. In recent weeks, as readers may have noticed, the number of stories on the subject has skyrocketed. And it’s not just the evil, biased, foolish etc etc foreign press. As Jodi noted in her earlier blog, the story of fake water was broken by the Beijing Times. Scuzzy (and expensive) water is bad enough. But now no less a source than the august China Central Television gives us this piece that features an undercover investigation revealing what exactly goes into your average steamed bun in the Chinese capital: chopped cardboard that has been soaked in an industrial solvent makes up 60 percent of the buns in one neighborhood restaurant. Yummy. I wonder if it’s possible to survive on peanut butter (where was it made?) and jelly sandwiches. And well-boiled water. Or better yet, imported beer. A Corona hecho en Mexico anyone?