Hmmm...China

--Chicken feet, a delicacy in China


Clay and I have been considering taking the children to China sometime in the next few years. There are a lot of factors to consider, and sometimes it seems like the timing won't work, but we hope.

So I read these words with great interest:

"To eat drink and be merry in China is done at your own risk.

China's food scandals are becoming increasingly frequent and bizarre.

In May, a Shanghai woman who had left uncooked pork on her kitchen table woke up in the middle of the night and noticed that the meat was emitting a blue light. Experts pointed to phosphorescent bacteria, blamed for another case of glow-in-the-dark pork last year.

Farmers in Jiangsu province complained to state media last month that their watermelons exploded "like landmines" after they mistakenly applied too much growth hormone in hopes of increasing their size.

To make some breeds of fish mature quicker, aquatic farmers feed them ground-up birth-control pills, which cost virtually nothing because of China's strict limits on family size. In April, authorities in Heifei province busted businesses selling a glaze that makes pork look and smell like more expensive beef--bad news in a country with more than 20 million Muslims."

When we were in China, the guide always chose the local restaurant for us. They said they knew which ones were "safe". I thought that was to avoid simple food poisoning, but apparently, there are other things to avoid as well.

The complete article can be found at: http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/26/world/la-fg-china-food-20110627

Today, I am very thankful for our food supply, and for the culture in which we live. Although China's wealth is growing by leaps and bounds, the majority of the Chinese live in extreme poverty and some use desperate measures to "get ahead".