Virtual China

43 places + food + China

大众点评网 ("The Masses Rates Web") allows viewers to vote on their favorite restaurants.

For example, pictured above is Hong Kong's 许留山. It got 25 points for its food, 12 for environment, 15 for service and is priced at ￥32. You can bookmark requests, send them to friends, or rate them. And of course, you can add to the pages of comments already there!

Restaurants are categorized by food type as well as city, and if you're a loyal user, you might make it onto the 食神榜 (God of Food Listing).

(The website seems to be expanding this restaurants sharing service to shopping, entertainment, etc as well, but right now, it defaults to restaurants.)

Thanks Ben Chen. Link here.

peasant webs 2

Number two on a Baidu search for 农民网 is Jiangsu's Modern Peasant 现代农民, a site run by the provincial committee for implementing a policy called "万名科技专家兴农富民工程" -- can't quite understand it, but something like "Scientific Experts Promoting Rural Wealth and Rural Projects."  It's a government site listing current policies, meetings, and projects.  Not much human interest here.

The next is more interesting: Jintan Peasant is a site run by the city of Jintan, also in Jiangsu province.  Apparently the Jiangsu governmental apparatus has a strong web presence.  This is state internet at its most typical: articles lauding such-and-such a township for its enthusiastic work in doing the latest survey of rural incomes; the progress in implementing "modernized model villages"; the establishment of a committee on fruit varieties; work reports on the progress of establishing new villages and new rural education.  There are also analyses of production and consumption numbers for various agricultural products, such as mushrooms and edible fungi. Interesting for those trying to understand rural reforms, implementation of central government policies, on-the-ground agricultural data, and those with a general interest in Chinese political slogans.  The site had 365 visitors today.

the revolution will be..."New Fast Food"?

Is it uber-ironic fast food advertising with a nod to socialist realist art?  A straight ahead appeal to Chinese patriotism?  It's ad copy and therefore a bit hard to translate, but given the rest of the copy I'd say Kentucky Fried Chicken is going for something like: "KFC. Changing for China. Creating the New Fast Food." 

The KFC China website says that the company is "calling for a new fast food movement, starting with each of us, and encouraging others in the fast food industry to join the movement, and together we will create a new fast food that meets the needs of the people of the future and accords with Chinese national conditions."  According to KFC, compared with Traditional Foreign Fast Food, New Fast Food has more variety, a better blend of Western and Chinese flavors, more methods of preparation, more vegetables, more frequent introduction of new products, a more balanced approach to health, and more complete integration with Chinese safety standards. 

KFC's definition of "new fast food":

safe and flavorful        the fast way to high quality      

balanced nutrition        healthy life

based on China             infinite innovation   

Meanwhile, on KFC's US homepage, the main attraction seems to be huge quantities of food for low prices.  The centerpiece of the page is a "KFC Famous Bowl": an extraordinary combo of melted cheese topping crunchy chicken nuggets topping canned corn, all atop a bowl of mashed potatos and gravy. 

(thanks plupp plupp, via my colleague Jason Tester)

eating Chinese

If you haven't visited it yet, or recently, you've got to see the menu (sorry) at eatingchinese.org, a glorious site that brings together everything to do with chinese food that can be done online, including:

chinese crepes on YouTube--what a great idea to expand upon for all of us living and traveling in China.  Videos of street food being prepared all over China, available for food lovers to figure out how they might do it themselves.

photos of regional cuisine such as this gallery of food from Xi'an (with the famous yangrou paomo 羊肉泡膜, or mutton broth with broken bread).  (They probably don't need millions of photos of Sichuan hotpot, but they might appreciate some unusual meal you had recently). 

chinese food discussion forums such as Chinese fast food: Not Western Fast Food in China, or Chinese Fast Food in the West. What's up with all the Hot Pot chains named for furry cratures? How is Ronghua Chicken doing? What about Ma Lan Noodles, Da Niang dumplings or "Real Kung Fu Eats?"  and

Chinese Menu Translator Project and Chinese Food DIY for those who want to make it better at home.

Plus many, many links to readings like "Jews and Chinese Food," or "History of Beijing Halal Cuisine"--and to the Flickr Chinese food photo pool (a group with 568 members).   

The site is clearly a labor of love, done by someone who calls himself Gary Soup.  Enjoy. Contribute.

Nokia Celebrates Mid-Autumn Festival

Nokia Mooncakes (for the Mid-Autumn Festival last Friday).

Design by Nokia. Culinary skills provided by Starbucks.

Via Postshow, via Engadget(CN), via alexwutw's post on PalmIsLife.

BBS today: your favorite poisonous snacks

This BBS photo post from June 2, has received about 670,000 visits in the last few days.  And why not?  The author reveals the poisonous secrets of everyone's favorite street snacks.  Each snack has its own photo, with ratings of up to 5 stars denoting how much harm it causes and how much everyone loves it, "key word" ingredients, and the criminal acts potentially undertaken in its preparation.   Example below:

       stinky tofu 臭豆腐
      harmfulness 危害度：★★★★☆                
      popularity 公众喜欢度：★★★
　   crimes revealed: using ferrous sulfate to chemically blacken the tofu

Selected comments:

So what's left to eat??

Who cares if it's clean or not, I eat them and don't get sick!

Really makes me want to throw up.

In today's world of advanced chemistry, if you think you're going to find real healthy food to eat you're deluded!  How much of the meat and vegetables sold in the markets are healthy and sanitary? Pesticides? Poisonous chemical additives...except for the vegetables grown for themselves in villages, pigs raised by hand, I don't believe anything else can be healthy.  It's like that in the outside world, and the things sold in the big restaurants aren't necessarily any better than those sold in the street markets!

It's like that with anything you buy anymore, you're afraid to bring it home.  Who knows what one can believe in anymore?  How did China get to this? Poisoning ourselves...

Come on, they can't all be like that.