Food, Part 1

     Some of my experiences with food so far in China:  You have all seen the picture of the peking duck by now (in one of my first posts), but apparently there are other ways to eat duck in Beijing.  When presented with this plate, it actually took me about 10 minutes to realize that it was an entire duck head on the plate, complete with neck chunks.  Apparently you are supposed to suck on the chunks and just admire the head. The rest of the duck tasted quite good!

The duck head is on the left; sorry its so dark i couldn't figure out how to fix it.

     Apparently big mega grocery stores have hit China as well as the rest of the world; while there are still little family-owned groceries as well as fruit stands and random people selling unique vegetables on the street, there is also Walmart and Carrefour, a french mega-store chain.  Imagine my surprise to be greeted with a ghost of my year in France when I arrived in my neighborhood!  Actually, despite the horrendous crowds and quite aggressive salespeople, the Carrefour has been nice due to its occasional french food staples, such as baquettes, pain au chocolat (sadly not up to French standard, I tried!) and raspberry confiture, all of which have been a bit of a comfort as I have tried to come to terms with the rest of the very Chinese supermarket.  I actually got a tour yesterday thanks to one of the Fogarty fellows who is from China, and became a bit more adventurous today as a result:

 No, I do not know what it is.  This was its appearance in the store; imagine a huge pile of similar-sized porcupine fruit!  I just HAD to get one...  After only one serious poke, I managed to get the thing sawed open only to find smaller yellow bean-shaped pods of squashy but sweet and delicious fruit surrounding a brown seed.  It was awesome, but certainly took some work to get into!

  Here is a Chinese Pepsi can just for fun; it tastes just like Pepsi at home.  Cola products in Europe tend to taste different due to the use of sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup; they must use the same here as at home.

 And lastly, a fruit I ventured to buy earlier this week even sans supermarket tour.  Apparently a passion fruit??  It was also delicious!  And very fun-looking inside!!

 Oh!  And I almost forgot about lunch today!  It was our first day going to the Cancer Hospital Canteen, and we had to get electronic lunch cards and load them with money before even entering the canteen.  I was expecting something rather high-tech after the lunch card loading, but lo and behold, lunch was served in a plastic bag!  And really, why not, its cheap and as long as they don't leak (which it didn't) works well when everything you eat is mixable anyway.  Nevermind about carcinogens in the plastic...