What you always wanted to know about Chinese food...

It's all true: Chinese people eat cats. dogs, ducks, frogs, pig's feet, chicken feet, eels, snakes, silkworms (gooey) and their pupa (crunchy).
Some of this fascinating fare I got to see on my very last morning in Shanghai, when I chanced upon a street market in one of the last traditional quarters close to the downtown area of this dynamic city that is changing at breakneck speed. One example: two years ago four metro lines were finished – at present 8 lines are working, and in another two years there will be 12!
I can't help comparing to Greater Istanbul, which also has about 20 million inhabitants: ONE (!) puny metro line that boasts about 6 stops (or maybe a few more in the meantime).

Anyway – this is a traditional Shanghai street market in July 2009:

pigs...

chickens...



Not just hens' eggs!

If you prefer a live chicken, there you go:
head folded under the wing,
and it'll stay perfectly still in that bag.

Want something fancier?

How about quail?










Or frogs?

Glazed duck for tonight's dinner, or fresh fish?

Bones are being taken out of these eel-like fish.

 Seafood, seeweed, sprouts...

                    

 Gargantuan vegetables

The market is not only a place
where things are sold,

lots of things are also produced right there:

  for example noodles

and pastry

baked...

... or steamed

And while you wait for your breakfast to be cooked

you may get your hair cut

and your trousers shortened,

or your watch repaired

while the neighbors go about their daily lives.

Fun with Chinglish

"Gained in translation" part 2

seen at Shanghai airport:

Disappointingly, they didn't sell pretty girls named Cate – just sugary sweet cakes...

When I sent some of my translation riddles to linguistically inclined friends they answered "Piece of Cate" :-)

Signs on Shanghai metro doors:

In contrast to crowded subways in Mexico, Turkey, Italy, or even Austria, it did not seem to me that women were threatened by pinching hands in China ;-)

Of course I'm generalizing – but the Chinese struck me as generally polite, educated, and civilized.

No wonder that even their parks are civilized:

I'll happily accept suggestions about what could be the idea behind it!

MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS

For the birdwatchers among you: can you spot the national bird of China?

1)      Solution see below

Where do wealthy Chinese people have celebrations, and tour groups get taken by their guides ?

A Chinese banquet hall, with a revolving glass plate in the middle of the tables:

Such a banquet will contain all kinds of Chinese food, carefully purged of any dishes that may offend Westerners, such as dog, cat, frog, snake, etc.

8 people at the table – food for at least 12...

Invariably, the banquet would include green tea (limitless), and 1 small glass of the following choice of drinks: Tsingtao beer, Coke/Pepsi, or Sprite (as you can see, all of them highly traditional Chinese beverages, especially the beer, since it was introduced by the Germans already in 1903 ;-)

After dinner, the yuppies will be found drinking coffee in Starbucks and enjoying Häagen Dazs icecream...

Ordinary Chinese people can't splurge on banquets more than once a year, I should think, and probably eat at home most of the time; when they eat fast food, however, you'll see them in the following establishments:

KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken, for you non-Americans) is ubiquitous in China –

I think there must be more of them than in the US (on a short walk of about 10 minutes around the Shanghai Railway Station Square I counted 9)!

Although scooters, mopeds, and motorbikes are becoming more and more widespread, bicycles are still very important.

repair shop

one of the many "bike kitchens"

There is "bike retail" for everything:

fruit

socks and stockings 

books                                            

ice delivery

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1) The crane, of course!

Gained in translation

I collected these gems in China (July 09)

If you can guess what Deformed Man End Place is supposed to mean, you are a linguistic genius! 1) Solution see below

How about Rouge intestinal fat piece? Any idea? Here is a clue: it's something you eat for breakfast.2)

Burns the juice cauliflower: from the breakfast buffet, but not something Westerners would eat for breakfast, because it does indeed burn your stomach juices. I don't think there is an English name.

Would you like ackpepperfille for breakfast?

I am guessing that it is supposed to mean 'black pepper fillet'.

I hope you'll never get afflicted by the foot curse, because I don't think a massage could cure it...

But of course you can try a bath – fully, completely, and totally - in order to get rid of the effects of a health massage!

1) Restroom for Disabled   2) bacon

China July 09: Xi'an

Islam in China

Xi'an has an interesting Muslim quarter, whose food
stalls made me think I was in Turkey:

                                                                                            candied fruit,

                                                         halva,

kebab, pide bread,
and "mısır" (steamed corn on the cob).

There were also bicycle-carts ingeniously transformed into cooking units, offering a type of grilled sausage on skewers.

A contraption with a large metal bowl contained walnuts, which were being churned around and around together with salt.

The Muslim Uighurs in Western China have been on the news lately because of the riots, so most people are aware now that there is a Muslim minority in China. The Uighurs are not the only ones following Islam, however: other ethnic groups outside Western China that practice Islam are called Hui.
The ancestors of some Hui people and all Uighur people were the Uighurs who built the Uighur Empire in the 8th/9th century, but only the Uighurs retain the Turkic language.