Chinese eat everything

Yes, it’s true:

“Chinese eat everything that can fly and is no plane, that has legs and is no desk and that can swim and is no submarine”

Wal-Mart is a superlative super market with three floors filled with everything you can imagine – from hygiene article to professional trekking-equipment, from sound-systems to wellness-mattresses: From all these things an innumerably amount of different kinds and brands exist. And of course, this supermarket also has a big food-department… You already can smell an aroma-potpourrie of dried meat, fresh fish, butchery (D: Schlachterei), fruits and much more non identifyable from a big distance. At the beginning you cannot classify the smell, but when you get nearer and nearer you see the dried ducks and chicken and whatever (but whole bodies with their heads etc.). The deeper you go into the department the more disgusting it gets: aquariums with fresh fish is something normal we also have at home, but when next to the fishes are aquariums with turtles having no turtle shell (D: Panzer) – the people from the supermarket just removed it from the poor animals. But this is not the only strangeness: Also living frogs can be bought – sitting next to the aquariums glass front. So you can decide which of the frogs you want to eat this evening; “Squizzling frog” (D: sabbernder Frosch) is a delicatessen .

I wanted to buy a frog (actually these “frogs” have been “toads”) (D: Kroeten), but they looked so helpless and poor that I intended to buy one just as a pet. But my room mate was not that amused about this idea… 😉

In Shanghai you can differentiate three kinds of restaurants: Cheap “Chinese snack restaurants” are for natives, very very cheap, you can sit down inside, interior often looks cheap (e.g. plastic chairs), no English descriptions, therefore difficult to order what you want or to just get out what they are offering. This always directs to blind ordering and hoping for a good resulting meal. I call the second type “improved Chinese restaurants”: They are a bit touristic – either having English menus or menus with pictures, the price is up to fife times higher than the same meal in a “snack restaurant”. Last type are “non Chinese restaurants” – e.g. Korean, Italian Pizzerias, Japanese, etc. mostly offering qualitative high meals, but are very rare and the prices are really expensive for here (same prices than at home). Fast Food franchise companies like McDonalds (by the way – crispy chicken is hot chicken in China!) also do exist in more touristic places, StarBucks can be found everywhere…

As I said its very difficult to order… So it can happen that you get decorated innards (D: Innereien) instead of a hotpot, deep-fried corn with mayonnaise (D: Frittierter Mais mit Majonaise) instead of a sweet dessert, or a small (black)bird instead of a fried duck. We don’t have to know what the bird ate before – I am sure no crap and dirt in this clean city. At least I didn’t see its eyes glowing… But maybe I just didn’t see because of Shanghai’s heavy smog… 🙂

Interesting was that when we sat in such an exclusive restaurant (by the way – the waiters didn’t speak any word of English) during our late brunch at 4 in the afternoon the whole personnel callibrated to a specific position, the manager talked to them, they answered in a spoken chorus, procedure repetited several times. Seemed to be some kind of military drill. Then one after each other several of the workers got out of line next to the manager and read a text which was answered again by a spoken chorus of the others. Later we got out that this was some kind of drilled preparation for the evening – they said texts that they will give their best for the customers, that they are well prepaired and will offer great service.

An exclusivity of Shanghai (not China generally) is that you get delivered your meal without rice. Maybe later, when you nearly finished the meal, you get the rice to fill up your stomach. But, because I do not want to eat meat meat meat without rice, I always have to order extra rice – which waiters never can believe at the beginning. Normally in Shanghai only poor people order rice to satiate earlier… And, Chinese people like to nibble / chew (D: abnagen) all kind of bones: Every time you order e.g. chicken you get very very small pieces with lots of bones and less meat around.

Furthermore, even if the restaurant is big, very high priced and upper class, it is not sure that there is a toilet inside. And if there are toilets, mainly simple dirty shit holes are available or pissoirs are installed at 20 centimeter height and the environment looks corresponding. And waiters/cooks don’t mind to smoke next to you.

On the one hand most Europeans like to eat Chinese food, on the other one imagine you eat this Chinese food for breakfast, lunch and dinner, day for day, week for week… Even if I like the food, it’s nice to get something else every few days…