Curiosities of China

Here are several unexpected discoveries we made.

Floss

Our favorite discovery was floss. It is dried meat, such as fish or pork, grated. We had green beans sautéed with fish floss, and soup garnished with pork floss. The most expansive use of floss was at a bakery, which is itself an unusual type of store for China.

These are rolls covered with mayonnaise then rolled in pork floss with dried chilies. We highly recommend them!

Laundry

It's common in many countries for people to hang out their laundry to dry. In China they use any available space.

Lampposts on the street ...

and electric power lines in public parks.

Translations

It's always difficult to translate into another language. There wasn't much English in China, but occasionally we found interesting attempts to describe Chinese food for English speakers.

We also saw signs for the following foods ...

[Notice to non-English speakers -- these make no sense.]

. Blast catena cutlet

. Cold dish made of pigs lungs

. Horseshoe-shaped

. Blast of banger

. Wring of fruit juice

. Frost mung bean almond of bean curd

. Chuanbei cold powder

. Old duck of casserole

. Crackling duck of baboo

. Crispy leather egg lun, a kind of ice cream

Frequently, we were not 100% sure what we were eating, but it was always tasty.

Subsidence

Shanghai's main business district is below river level, and sinking.

This building -- Shanghai Land Subsidence Monitoring Show -- is built under the highway to highlight the problem. It was never open and we don’t think anyone cares about the land sinking. It looks like the building is being crushed by the highway, but it was built that way.

Crickets

Many people keep crickets or katydids as pets. They have a delightful song, and eat the same soybean snacks people like.

They are transported in these lovely little baskets. We saw people selling crickets in several places, and it must be one of the world's great jobs because they sing all the time.

Chinese Takeout

Bicycles are very widely used in the delta, for everything.

We saw bigger loads than these including a man carrying a 6 meter (20 ft.) steel beam. (Think about it!) Some loads were so heavy, other cyclists pushed. We never saw anyone lose a load. The space cadet visors were very popular.