Fine, I'll post something

Got back from China. Had a good time and meant to blog about it, but I couldn't access this website from there. Apparently the Great Firewall of China prohibits the use of Blogs as it creates political unrest when people can write anything they want.

I read the local paper there, The China Daily. It was funny it was so self-congratuatory and full of propaganda.

Here are some email posts I wrote about the dinning experiences:

Today was just some simple Indian Chicken.

Came with some great chili/bean puree mix and some red chili pepper infused

with soy sauce over rice.

Tasty stuff.

I think I'm going Korean tonight.

I love Korean anyway, so here in the center of the best food I have ever

found, I'm expecting good things.

Last nights hits were the skewered chicken with peanut sauce. I could have

eaten the peanut sauce like a soup and been happy!

The actual soup was brimming with shell fish. Big crab, shrimp, muscles

and scallops. They are the big white shells that

they use in bathrooms and such. Anywho, the actual soup was orange with

more spices than I can image. I ate bowl after bowl. Disneyland for the

tongue.

Heavily seasoned beef cubes were amazing. Breaded and fried fish with a

small bowl of seasoned salt which she squeezed a lemon into for dipping.

I'm not a fish eater, but I could have eaten that stuff all night long.

The appetizer course had spring rolls: fried and boiled with Oyster Sauce.

I could eat a stick if I had oyster sauce to dip. I don't know what it

is, but it is Go-OOD! Also a small piece of chicken wrapped in a banana

leaf. Wow.

There was a salad with iceberg, cabbage and chicken. Any other attempt at

an 'oriental salad' will fall tragically short.....

Oh and my beverage was mashed up watermelon. Prepared on the spot. The

decoration and table settings were amazing. I'm not usually impressed by

such things, but this was cool. The pottery was excellent and cool.

Yet another meal report, since all I really did was eat and fly and sit in meetings:

Korean was a disappointment as far as the cuisine goes.

But the table setting and colors and presentation were worth all the money.

And on top of that was the fact that they cooked our meal right at our table. They lifted a metal lid out of the middle of the table and this old dude, (see pictures, if I can find them) brought out these rocks that were so damn hot, they were glowing red and kicked out heat a good 3 feet away. On that, they dropped a frying pan type cover and brought out veggies and plates of meat with various seasonings and gave us dips and seasonings of our own to use.

Of course there was the Saum Jaun, pepper and bean curd puree which I have loved for years. The stuff in the states comes in a can and is AMAZING, but this stuff was freshly made and very tasty.

So, they cooked everything and we wrapped fresh lettuce around them and ate until we were sick. :)

Tonight, I'm in Hainan province, Haikou city. Well, I'm on the plane now, leaving Haikou. Long day of traveling. We are on our way to Cheng Du. Anyway, we were treated like royalty by one of our clients and treated to a 10 course meal, complete with private room, 4-5 serving girls, tons of good food. First course, chicken feet. Bob wouldn't touch it. I nibbled as much skin and meat as I could get and then noticed everyone else and realized they were eating the whole damn thing. Bones and all. I bit one toe off at the knuckle and chewed away, but that was all I could handle.

Duck with a tropical fruit chutney. Awesome.

Boiled chicken served cold with a sauce.

Fresh celery and a vegetable only found on Hainan that is kind of starchy. The only think I can compare it to is the root that is served with Polynesian food, but I don't know the name. So kind of like a potato but not really.

Breaded eggplant with an amazing sweet/hot sauce.

Chicken/Fish soup. Very, very tasty. And the fish melted in one's mouth.

Main course was 5 year old mushroom imported from the mountain region in the mainland. It was an inch think was the consistency and texture of liver and was served with a very unique sauce. Never tasted anything like it. But it was so good, one dude poured it over his bowl of rice and chowed down. Another guy poured his rice into the fish/chicken soup. That was good.

I made the mistake of asking (since Hainan is China's Hawaii) if pineapple was grown there. A quick battery of Chinese to the serving girls and bam, we had a plate of fresh pineapple complete with small dipping dish of sea salt. No, the salt didn't show up, but I asked for it and the president of the company, a lady, was very impressed with me for asking for salt. Like a native.

I was on top of my game. Witty. I had them laughing. I'd throw out the very little Chinese that I do know at the perfect time. When we left dinner for the plane, she said, 'You are very welcome next time.' So, I guess I'll be going back to the island paradise. It is a really good company and they are making tons of cash. Pretty cool.

Took pictures of the entire Korean menu. The smallest menu so far. And a picture of the urinal and sink. They seemed cool. The other urinal: bit of an oxymoron....

Other pictures are of client, Shanghai airport and me eating duck stomach on the air plane 5 minutes ago. Given to me by the Shanghai partner in a foil, small package. You know I can pass up meat stored at room temperature...

One more. Last one, I promise:

Ok.

Final food report.

Here were the menu items:

o Pigeon. Very tasty. The strange part was that the plate was covered with heads. I asked the CFO how one eats a pigeon and head and he grabbed one and said, “first you do this” and pulled the beak apart and started munching. The heads were fried, so the beaks were chewable, but I didn’t try it. I figured the leg was enough.

o Pig feet. Here we go again. Gnawing skin and fat off a nasty animal foot. Damn thing was so slippery, I had a hard time eating it. The best thing about Chinese dinning is the COMPLETE lack of table manners. Slurp, chomp, hold the plate up to your mouth-shovel food in, suck noodles up, whatever you want. The weird part, that KILLS the germ freak in me, but I have already grown accustom to is the fact that nobody really as a plate of food. What you have are about 10 plates of food on a round piece of glass on a wheel and you just wheel it around the eat off those. So, yes, double dipping is a way of life here. Not bad when you are with cute Asian girls, but a little freaky when with nasty, old, smoking men. J

o Beef knee soup. Just soup with potatoes and large bones. But Henry, the Shanghai partner grabbed a big bone and put it on his plate and started sucking marrow out, I was a little shocked.

o Shredded root in soupy sauce. Kind of potato.

o Green, slippery noodles made with some root. Strange stuff. I had a hard time holding on to this stuff. It looked and felt like seaweed and served with peppers. Actually the entire meal took place in Sichuan, so you can correctly imagine that nearly every dish was loaded with spices.

o Fried greens

o Slow roasted bacon. Imagine thickly sliced bacon, roasted in spices with some sort of vegetable. The quivering chunks of fat were delicious.

o Fish and eyuta. Big fish with small potato like balls. The resulting mouth full of tiny bones made enjoying this dish difficult.

o Cold chicken in sauce.

o Cold bacon – barely cooked.

o Fried breaded tofu

o Mushroom sauté – long. Some sort of seaweed looking dish. Very long, difficult to chew mushrooms with peppers. I coughed a little after eating a pepper and nearly choked when the pepper nearly went up my sinus. Very hot, but I ate so much of the hot stuff, the CEO sent his driver out for 4 bottles of local/ Sichaun spices in a bottle.

o Rice

o celery carrots

o soy milk with honey for the drink, served warm

o beef soup with noodles

o peanut, seaweed mushroom.

As you can see, these are large fests. 2-3 hours long. With dish after dish coming in and everyone spinning them around and picking at them. We cam no where near eating it all. I didn’t have my camera, so can’t send a picture, but it was impressive.

The culture seems to be what may have been in America during the 20’s with the industrialists being wealthy. All of these businessmen and few women are having the time of their lives. They are respected and feared. The CEO today kept getting saluted by his security guards like they are his own private army. They smoke, drink, drive BMWs and Audis and Volvos. They do what they want; get special treatment from the government and everyone around them. They are loving life. And now, seeking additional funding from US markets to expand their companies. The rest of the country is quite poor, but since everyone is better off, nobody is complaining about the unequal wealth.

Today I’m in Kun Ming. The weather here is amazing. They call it the city of spring because it always feels like spring. They grow tobacco here, but it is actually quite dry. They landscape looks much like south central Utah, but more like Italy and northern California. High mountains, temperate, Mediterranean climate. And they are near the sea and equator so the temperature is the same all year, but high in the mountains 5,000 feet, so it is cool and dry. It is beautiful. I wish I could live here.