I have always been telling people that even if I had the money, I would not go to China. There are a whole lot of things that I can touch on, but I think I will just concentrate on those of immediate concern.
My missus would not eat any canned meat from China for a long time now, but I just went on enjoying all that tickled my fancy until I read in somebody’s blog about the anitibiotics content in the very popular Ma Ling luncheon meat. I have not been eating that for a long time now as there have been a lot of imitations and they taste awful. But I don’t know if the other brands are any safer so I guess it would be better just to opt for the more expensive Plumrose brand or SPAM.
Then came the melamine scandal which in a way, is good because it triggered an alarm worldwide and now we know that even right here in our midst, they have been putting that in our favourite biscuits, ice cream and so on.
Then I saw this headline in a local daily…
What about those salted and century eggs? Do ours still come from China like they used to? I remember at one time, there was a ban in the country on Chinese sausages owing to its content of some dangerous preservative but now they’re easily available everywhere in the shops.
Well, the Chinese have always been notorious for consuming all kinds of exotic meats. Somebody was saying, “If it walks, they will eat it,” so much so that they were pinpointing that as the cause of the SARS outbreak not too long ago. I don’t know if that was ever confirmed or whether they actually found the cause of the pandemic.
In my younger days, I would listen in horror to the descriptions of how they would tie a monkey under a table with its head protruding through a hole in the middle and then they would slice off the top part of the cranium, pour wine on the brain and scoop it out with a spoon to eat the cerebral mush. I guess there is some truth in that to some extent but this next disgusting thing is definitely true. I saw it with my very own eyes in a documentary on TV. The chef wrapped the head of the live fish in ice and deep-fried it and when it was served to the diners, the head was still alive and the diners feasted on the cooked part of its body. You can click on this link to watch the youtube video that shows something similar…
Anyway, to move away from the topic of food, once somebody was telling me that rejected tiles were used in the construction of Kuching International Airport. He or she claimed that they were made from radioactive clay, but since there was nothing in black and white on that, I did not take heed of the warning. However, wasn’t it not very long ago that all the made-in-China toys were recalled owing to the dangerous paint used in the making?
Well, the other day, I got this email from someone about flip-flops or what we usually call Japanese slippers that are made in China…
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…which led to this effect on somebody’s feet and it is claimed that it was caused by the paint/colouring used in the manufacture of those slippers…
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Actually, I happened to see some nice and cheap porcelain/ceramic crockery here the other day and was contemplating on buying but now I am having second thoughts about it and have changed my mind considering the fact that they were…made in China!
...STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS! 