But now we don't dare to eat...

"Chinese artist Liu Bolin waits for his colleagues to put a finishing touch on him to blend into rows of soft drinks in his artwork entitled "Plasticizer" to express his speechlessness at use of plasticizer in food additives, in his studio at the 798 Art District in Beijing, China, on August 10, 2011." From a photo essay in the Atlantic.

 One life-long resident of Old Nanjing, Hou Bo,* was born in the 1930s. He was teaching me a few phrases in the Nanjing dialect, he said, "When Nanjing was the capital of China, the Nanjing "dialect" was the standard language [putonghua, what would now be considered "Mandarin"] throughout all of China. When the capital was moved to Beijing in 1949, the Beijing dialect became the standard language." I asked him what other major changes in his life have taken place, and he said, "Well, we have enough food to eat now. That is the biggest change in my life, at least in the last 30 years. We never had enough to eat during the Mao Zedong era. Now we can fill our stomachs." Then he paused for a minute, smiled, and said, “But now our food is full of poison, plastic, and pollution (污染). We have to be very careful and wash everything 3 times. It is a terrible crisis. Before we didn't have any money and didn't have enough to eat. Now we have money and have enough to eat, but we don't dare to eat." 

Hou Bo was referring to the scandals of chemicals in baby formula, watermelons, milk products, and fish oil in recent years. It is something that has touched the news in the Western world, but I was surprised how conscious Chinese people are about it. For example, they wash their fruits and vegetables with a special soap that is not unlike dish soap. I am still unsure if this is better or worse (my fruit always smells like soap afterward). I talk to Chinese people about it almost everyday. "Let's not go to that restaurant, they use petrol instead of vegetable oil in their cooking." or, "You've probably heard about how dangerous plastic products and good is here in China." As a result, foreign brands have taken off in China. I saw a commercial for some sort of fish oil supplement for babies on TV the other day. It sure seemed like a Chinese product to me, but it promoted itself as an "international" brand.  Another mother in Old Nanjing has a daughter working abroad and she is taking care of her grandson. She had a closet full of baby formula that had been brought by her daughter from abroad. "Baby formula is not safe here," she told me.

Anyway, food safety is a big deal in China. I read this translated "text message" on Maryann O'Donnell's blog entitled "If we are what we eat, then what are we becoming" that was quite moving:

百毒不侵的中国人是怎么炼成的？早起，穿冒牌运动服出门，买地沟油炸油条，切个苏丹红咸蛋，冲杯三聚氰氨奶，上班。中午，在食堂要一注水肉炒农药韭 菜，有毒猪血，来碗翻新陈米饭，泡壶香精茶叶。下班，买条避孕药鱼，尿素豆芽，膨大西红柿，开瓶甲醇酒，伴根瘦肉精的双汇火腿肠吃个硫磺馒头。饭后在地摊 上买本盗版小说盗版光盘，晚上钻进黑心棉被，睡了…

How is Chinese resistance to one hundred toxins cultivated? Get up early, put on a fake namebrand sweatsuit, buy an oil stick fried in gutter oil, cut a tonyred salted egg, pour a glass of melamine milk, go to work. At lunch, have a serving of water-injected meat fried with over-fertilized chives, toxic pig’s blood, have a bowl of repackaged old rice, brew a pot perfumed tea leaves. Get off work, buy a prophylactic fish, carbamide bean sprouts, enhanced tomatoes, a bottle of methanol liquor, clenobuterol hydrochloride ham, and a sulfur steamed bun. After dinner, go to the kiosk, buy a counterfeit novel and DVD. At night, snuggle into a black hearted blanket, sleep…

*Names of people and places have been changed to protect anonymity

Chinese word of the day

创造- chuang4 zao4- literally "to create and concoct" aka "to invent or create"