Changing China
Giant on the move
Why we like garlic
It beats gold, stocks and even property with prices up as much as 40 -fold.
Is it because of swine flu or rising production costs or market speculators ?
Beijingers give their reasons for the humble garlic bulb’s rise to success.
Video credit: Christina Hu
Photo credit: David Gray
Whatever happened to culinary diplomacy?
There are 21,600 reporters covering the Olympic Games, the vast majority from outside China, and a lot of them will be going home with a nasty taste in their mouths.
Al Himmer and Erik Kirschbaum blogged about their experience of crash-dieting during the Olympics, with most of the venues offering only cookies and bananas for reporters putting in 10 or 12 or 14 hours covering a sport.
The bin-scavenging Olympics
Listening to journalists bellyache about how tough life is at the Games gets old pretty quickly, but there is one genuinely frustrating aspect of the Beijing media beat — finding something to eat.
The Main Press Centre has a cavernous dining area with food from around the world but reporters out at the venues are typing to the sound of rumbling stomachs — with nothing more than a few nuts and berries available anywhere near the stadiums.
Exploding stomachs slip through language police’s net
Let’s face it, if moves by Beijing’s Government and Tourism Bureaus to take the Chinglish off menus and road signs as we reported in an earlier story really worked, dining out in Beijing wouldn’t be half as fun.
Colleagues eating at a Beijing restaurant in the final countdown to the Aug. 8 start of the Games came up with the following interesting dishes which diners can order at their peril:
The Olympic rings in noodles and cucumber
What connects deep-fried pork cutlets, black and pink noodles and the Beijing Olympics? An appeal to Japan’s ancient fighting spirit or a clever marketing trick, depending on how you look at it.
All Nippon Airways served what appeared to be an ordinary, tepid airplane lunch on its Tokyo-Beijing flight – “katsu” pork with curry, beefsteak with a cheesy crust, “somen” noodles. But a look at its in-flight magazine revealed that in fact, the aluminium trays contained a small homage to Japan’s athletes, and each ingredient had been carefully selected for its pun value.
