Ok, you asked. Food.

You really can find just about anything you want to eat in China. Here I am eating one of my favorites, stir-fried eggs and tomatoes.

Here is the marketplace with an endless variety of grains, nuts, dried fruit, and other delicious things that made me imagine I was actually at a Middle Eastern Market.

Remember growing up when you were told to eat everything off your plate so that nothing went to waste?  Well.....  The Chinese shopkeepers make sure that nothing goes to waste, especially out on the plains.  Close your eyes and skip the rest of this post if you're a little squeamish!

Above, the shopkeepers have the task of making sure no part of the animal goes to waste.  Yes, look closely, and you do see some hooves.

Below, left, this is Peking Duck.  The point of this delicacy is this crispy, crackly skin and the savory fat beneath it.  You dip it in that brown sauce on the side.  And, yeah, that's the head and you can eat it.  Remember, nothing goes to waste!

 

Like I said, NO PART of the animal goes to waste. You could probably find some brain and entrails soup around here somewhere if you went looking for it. I know we ate the intestines of the sheep we watched get slaughtered out on the grasslands. Generally I have found that Chinese are much more willing to eat animal body parts that Westerners won't touch. For example, I have twice been to restaurants here for the main course is where they give you plastic gloves and you go to work on individual joints of sheep spine.  First you worry the meat off the bones and then you suck the marrow out of the tube in the middle of the bone. And this is fun! This is the main attraction of the restaurant! It doesn't sound like anything you'd find in America, does it?!  The way we eat meat in North America we don't often think about where the meat came from.  It's hard to forget the origin here.

 So how about some Domino's pizza?