I have come to the realization that I don’t really like your standard garden-variety fish. And I love other types of seafood such as salmon, tuna, lobster, crabs and shrimp. But if the choice is between a pork chop and a hunk of fish, pork chop always wins. The flavor usually isn’t it any thing special and my paranoia tells me that there are small bones that can get stuck in my throat and kill me. The majority of fish that I have had while in China is some kind of white fish, and the way it is prepared not usually that tasty. The two main ways it is served is either the whole fish is brought out or it is sliced and placed into a large pot, both of which are edible but nothing I would go out of my way to eat. This however was something that needed to be tried:

Quick back story; I found this in Walmart, and it was in the same aisle as the dried meats and fish snacks. This leads me to assume that this is a stand alone snack, not just a cooking ingredient as one might think on first inspection. Although why you would want to eat something that is almost entirely bone is beyond me, the back of the package advertised “authentic fish spine flavor”. For the 2 RMB I knew that this had to be purchased. It took me a few days to work up the courage to try this snack, as I was intimidated by the strange resemblance they had to centipedes and mostly confused as to how eat it. I decided in the end that you must just suck on it like a lozenge, and eventually the meat falls off. A reaction shot:

This lasted about 10 seconds. The fish taste was over-powering, like I opened a jar of fish food and dumped it in my mouth. I spit it out and then had to chew gum to try and get rid of the taste, which seemed to stay with me the rest of the day. And just my opening the package stunk up the apartment so bad I had to light some intense to get rid of the smell. Factoring in taste, flavor and appearance of the fish spines, this is now official the worst thing I have eaten in China.

For a better look at the packaging see Jenn’s well titled picture The Horribly Smelly Fish Spine Debacle.

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I have seen the face of this cartoon cow on the HERDS wrapper blissfully smiling at me while she flies through the air for many months before finally purchasing it. Actually I don’t know if she is really that blissfully, her eyes look a little blank. Maybe she whacked-out on bovine growth hormone. Anyway, I can only hold out so long against buying products with cartoon animal advertising. It is my greatest weakness.

At this point I know that Chinese milk doesn’t not taste the same as American milk. The whole, 2%, 1% and skim varieties do not exist here, and you are left with just milk. The milk tastes sort of like you are drinking coffee creamer and even has the thicker consistency of half-and-half. I have gotten used to it at this point, but that does not mean that I want a candy that tastes exactly like Chinese milk, which HERDS oddly does. I drink milk, I don’t hold it in my mouths for about 10 minutes before swallowing. While they should be commended for getting the taste so correct, one has to wonder why it was done in the first place.

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This product claims that it is the specialty product of 云南孔雀之乡, the peacock village of Yunnan Province. I couldn’t find much about the peacock village online, except for Peacock Village Arizona, so it may be known by another name in English or not exist at all. The product name is 菌鸡枞 which literally means mushroom chicken Abies firma (otherwise known as the Japanese Fir). So judging by writing on the front of the package, and the big picture of mushrooms, these are spicy dried chicken flavored vaguely pine tree shaped mushrooms. This theory is backed up by the saying printed on the back.

云南谚语

吃四条腿的猪
不如吃两条腿的鸡
吃两条腿的鸭
不如吃一条腿的蘑菇

Yunnan Proverb

Eating four pig legs
Is not as good as eating two chicken legs
Eating two duck legs
Is not as good as eating one mushroom leg.

So basically the combined tastes of mushroom stems and chicken legs is the best thing ever, I think. And while certainly not as amazing as this proverb would suggest, it was surprisingly not bad. It tasted like a spicy jerky, minus the beef. Although I didn’t notice very much chicken flavoring. And they were not too pretty to look at.

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Here is a basic rule of thumb for life here in China; very often the specialty product of a region is rather disgusting. (Another fact; I don’t think I know how to properly use a semi-colon). For example the specialty product of Nanjing is duck’s blood. But one of the specialty products of Beijing is roast duck, which is quite delicious. Basically what I am saying is that specility products are a crap shoot.

I previously had only heard that Sichuan specialty was just spiciness. The claim on the package of this thing maybe a little strong as to the degree of fame this has received. I bought this based mainly upon the package as it featured this grotesque two faced monstrosity as its main selling point. At first this shape might be in reference to the province’s shape, but after checking the map in my kitchen I found this was certainly not true. Maybe the substance inside is made from the meat of these hidious creatures that are breed on a farm in a secret location somewhere in Hunan.

Surprisingly though this was not in fact meat. It was 3 thin sheets of something that I think was tofu. I purchased the spicy brand (Sichuan style!) instead of the original flavor. My thinking was that the heat would overpower any of the horrible flavor underneath making it a little more palatable. This plan almost worked. At first it was just like eating hot pepper. Not too bad. Then the heat wore away and you are left with a dry expired tofu taste. Once again this is one of those things that really stays with you. Verdict: bad, but not as bad as this.

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Honestly, I thought this might be good. Corn and meat together does not sound like too bad of a combination. Usually when I buy these products I know that it will not be a pleasant experience. But this was a Mother’s brand jerky, whose goods I had praised before, and it looked like a Slim Jim so I thought it would be OK.

The initial bite overwhelms you with a powerful corn flavor. But this is not the delicious corn flavor of say microwavable box corn. This is the China corn cob that you bought on the street and is most likely several days old flavor. At first it’s not that bad, as the background meat flavor balances it out and one can only think, “Wow, this is a bizarre mixture”. This all changes after 30 seconds of chewing when the corn flavor destroys any remaining meat flavor and transforms into this strange plastic corn flavor, as if you are eating a decorative corn cob in one of those thanksgiving fake cornucopias. There is no picture for this as I ate it on my way home. And I would also like say once again that the standard non-corn flavored jerky that mother’s produces is quite good. You really dropped the ball on this one guys.

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As part of an ongoing segment of me trying various snack foods that are questionable edibility, I tried this flattened meat product:

I didn’t take the time to translate the package, especially since the name is in “fancy stylized character” font, and I can never figure those out. But the appearance was similar to a smushed turd that had been sealed in plastic. This is my actual reaction after opening the package and smelling it.

It was really bad. The taste was like fish food but meaty, and had the consistency of a old meatball. This is probably the worst thing that I have eaten in China, and the closest I have come to instantly vomiting after trying something. And the taste really stays with you too.

Also, I noticed today that at Sinosplice he did a similar eating your way through Chinese snack food thing(part 1 and part 2). It’s good. This makes me feel like a hack, but I assume that a lot of people have had this idea, and probably ten China related blogs are doing the same thing right now. So what can you do…

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In my ongoing effort to try all the disgusting snack foods that China has to offer, I bought this at the local SuGuo store for 1.20 RMB.

It was basically just a small hot dog covered in hot pepper. The taste was ok, but certainly not great, kind of like a lot of the food in China. Basically this is not something that I would buy again. The kicker was that the day after I bought this they went on sale for .90 RMB. Bastards!

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