What you see in the middle of nowhere, Part 3

Some of the best feedback I get on my Twitter account and blog posts are around my ‘What you see in the middle of nowhere’ topic.  I do a lot of traveling around the world and I honestly enjoy my travel in China.  The people are amazing and the experience with the culture and local customs is remarkable.  That said, I really don’t enjoy some of the food.   I’ve described business trips in China like an episode of Fear Factor and a drinking game all wrapped into one.

I keep expecting Joe Rogan to jump out and ask me to eat an uncooked elephant intestine for $25,000.  It’s just like that, except no Joe and no money!

Here is an example.  We are in Wuxi, China (few hours drive from Shanghai) and I am served a nice looking dish.  I really like black pepper and spicy food, so I assumed this is a local dish with a bunch of pepper on it. Hmmm, I should have known better. Yah, those black bits are large ants. The dish actually tasted really good, the locally harvested pine nuts were fabulous, but there’s something about a mouth full of ants…

As mentioned in previous posts, Chinese culture is heavily focused around food. It is mandatory to spend time in restaurant in order to conduct successful business. Most Chinese businessmen I’ve met are proud experts at eating out. An interesting experience for the non-China resident is the way they display the food in a restaurant, before it is prepared. Here is a photo of a water snake (or eel) before it is taken out and prepared.

It feels a little bit like being at the zoo, numerous tanks of fresh seafood are displayed and you walk around with an employee and you pick out what you’d like to eat.

Now, I’ve been to hundreds of restaurants in countless different cities and towns in China.  Some are beautiful and clean,  some are not. I’ll let you imagine the physiological battle you need to personally overcome after you’ve had the unfortunate experience of walking in an unclean, live food environment… and then be honored as the first to eat each dish, no one digging in before you do. Yummy.

Finally, on one of my walks through a restaurant in Huizhou, China I took a little video of one of the plastic tray that we could order from.

Again, I started looking around for Joe…

Related posts:

1. Business Travel: What You See In the Middle of Nowhere, Part 2
2. Things you see in the middle of nowhere – an ongoing series
3. BuildDirect Goes to ‘Noble House’
4. Business Travel Adventures in China: Airline Exercises

Tagged as: Business travel, Chinese culture, Traveling in China