Dear Amber - Food Oddities and Eye Exercises

Funny enough I discovered eye exercises when I was 19, that's 5 years before I came to China - it just felt really good (Marco says I'm an epicurean in the true sense of the word). Was anyone else into this before they came across it here in China?

醉虾 (zuìxiā) is also known as 呛虾 (qiàngxiā) - this means CHOKED SHRIMP - as the shrimp choke on the Baijiu (Chinese grain spirit) and sauce. Not bad, but the whole raw shellfish thing deters me (that and the choked shrimp death)

Regarding chicken breast, unlike leg and wing, the breast meat is nice and relatively boneless from a western perspective. However back in 2005, entering my 3rd year in China, I realised how dry and tasteless it was. These days I much prefer the wing, leg and the occaisional phoenix claw (chicken feet - 凤抓－fèngzhuǎ). 山椒凤抓 (shānjiāofèngzhuǎ) has got to be my favourite version when done properly well (Mountain Chilli Phoenix Claw).

Oh it's brekkie time, will post more later. Happy Saturday!!!

Here is the video:

嗨 Matt_c！

我们也挺喜欢吃山椒凤抓

通常我们的外国朋友都不喜欢吃chicken feet的

您就是例外！顶瓜瓜！

博士

@wchan (陈博士）嗯， 我只喜欢吃质量好一点的山脚凤抓，人家需要用新鲜的鸡抓和新鲜的绿色花椒和篇拉的小天椒。

再说如果吃凤抓的话，我比较喜欢鸡抓里面只剩软骨的那种(de-boned)。 你呢？

JP - Great, thanks, very instructional, but I think you enjoyed massaging your orbs way too much.

RJ

Weird, the Phoenix feet comes up as 凤抓 (zhuā) in IKMQIM auto type, but shouldn't it be 凤爪 (fèngzhuǎ)? Anyone?

I've gotten used to a lot of things like tripe, black and white fungus, and chicken feet. Haven't gotten into rabbit heads; don't like the brain of things like roasted duck but I do love the bill; it's crispy and has great flavour from the marinade or whatever it's basted in.

A group of older people in my complex sometimes do the eye massage together. Looks pretty strange if you don't know what it is. And many book stores have illustrated guides in the medical poster section (I love Chinese medical posters - the reflex maps of the hands, feet, and head; the eye charts that are all E.....)

Amber tell me you are not really Canadian!

I am sure you are a closet American.

Hi matt_c,

I found for

抓 zhua1 = scratch, clutch, seize, grab

爪 zhua3 = clow, nail, talon; animal feet

凤爪 is the right one.

Greetings

Jack

JP, Amber you two are the best!!!!!!

great video!!

I wonder if there's a particular way to name this eye exercise. Would adults from fifty years ago who immigrated to other countries know this too?

Thanks for the video JP and Amber,  very relaxing!

I will eat almost anything, but I tend to avoid the ones that are unecessarily cruel.  I'm far from being a vegetarian, but I do like my food to be dispatched efficiently.  I'd include sharks fin, birds nest and the choked shrimp as foods I'd try to avoid.

On the other hand choudofu-臭豆腐 (stinky bean curd)... I love that stuff.  Taiwan is the best--I've had three or four different kinds of 臭豆腐.

NO EYES LEFT BEHIND!! 哈哈哈哈哈哈！

good one JP!

I can finally think about food again, after 3 days of what I think was food poisoning from some NYE oysters here in Taipei.

The only other Westerner with us that night also got sick around the same time I did, with the same symptoms.  Ironically, none of the Taiwanese we were with (6 of them) got sick.

Chinese have stomachs of steel!!!

At the end of a flight on a Chinese airline the flight attendants gave us all stretching exercises to help us recover from the flight.  Eye exercises were among them, but I don't remember what they were.  I thought they were just rolling our eyes to the left and right and around.  Do Chinese do that too, or was I just remembering from my own childhood? 

Anyhow, I loved the idea of flight attendants leading us in stretching, legitimizing what I want to do but don't have the nerve on American flights.

Thank you, Amber and JP and weird food tester guy, for a very enjoyable listen.

I think people need to be more aware of animal rights in China. I think it's cruel to eat those things.

Perhaps the same could be said of us people in the US, and the things we eat?

I agree with Andrew.  Lobster for example...boiled to death. 

I don't think it's "cruel to eat those things," there's nothing wrong with killing animals for food.  Maybe sometimes the means of killing is not the most "humane," for instance choked shrimp and boiled lobster.

from what I hear the lobster's nervous system is not capable of feeling that kind of pain. The noise they make has nothing to do with discomfort, its just some sort of physcial phenomena. Otherwise I would agree with you.           

Well, Its time to do my "eye-robics" and go to bed.

Anthropomorphism:

The attributing of human characteristics and purposes to inanimate objects, animals, plants, or other natural phenomena, or to God. To describe a rushing river as “angry” is to anthropomorphize it.

Source

@rjberki

             I agree with you. People are too quick to assume that animals and other creatures experience the same sensations as us. It always turns my stomach when people say, "oh look the dog is smiling" to their kids, when in fact the dog is just sitting there, mouth open with tongue hanging out.

Thus before we start thinking about how cruel the methods of cooking these animals are, should we be looking into zoological physiology and even zoological psychology first?

On the other hand, is it impossible to ever nail down animal psychology, as any experiments are based on frameworks that are completely human constructs, and thus floored, hence the only way we can try to reduce the pain we cause to the creature's whose flesh we so enjoy is to assume they experience things like we do. Thus through anthropomorphic overkill we are still able to help assist these soon to be morsels to suffer a quick and hopefully painless death.

嗨 Matt_c and Jackfrombelgium ！

上次我们真的打错字：

应该是　爪（Zhao3)

对啊　Matt-c 你的确懂得吃呀

你试过"泰国式凤爪"和"女儿红凤爪"吗？

上海有得吃吗？

博士

嗨 Matt_c！

泰国式凤爪　是　de-boned 的

陈博士

@陈博士  哦， 那我最爱吃辣的东西所以我应该去那边常常de-boned的鸡爪 :)

@Jackfrombelgium Thanks for that :)

Just a thought...)) As everyone does eye massages and everyone wears glasses - isn´t wearing glasses just a follow of these eye exercises...?))

Hi,

I will make use of the eye excercices.

On 22 december last year I had a retina detachment.

An operation with laser was very urgent. I was nearly blind on one eye.

Coincidence or not?

Jack

Like Matt_c, I also discovered these eye exercises 5-6 years ago and I still do them now, but a longer version. Recently I've discovered some 'Western' ones from an American prof.

Amber, do you have a link to the new exercises by any chance?

On the food topic: I've had bird's nest. We ate it with coconut milk, honey and almond oil, which you add yourself. It basically has a texture like rice noodles. I've also eaten snake and toad in the south of China (and saw the killing process of the snake). A guy from northern China who was eating with us was a bit creeped out.

Oh I actually like stinky tofu! But I really think it smells like chicken droppings... Its that gross smell on some of the streets and restaurants in China, I really cant bring myself to eat when a restaurant smells like that...

JP and Amber that video was hilarious!!

freerider1,

I think the "west" has very odd ideas about whats "eatable" and whats not. Actually the Chinese use a lot more of the animal and I think its a lot less wasteful.

I don't think a line should be drawn when eating an animal as to whats "humane" to eat and whats not...

In North America, we use every part of the animal too.  With cattle for example, we take all the steaks and things like liver, etc.  All the other parts are known as "hot dogs". ;-)

Some foods that I think are cruel are birds nest... when they take the nest from the cave, the swallows have to cough up more saliva and sometimes spit blood.  With sharks fins, most often they just catch the shark, cut off the fins and throw the shark back in the water to die.

Also, I avoid eating things that might eat me... just a little mutual respect among predators. :-)

I don't think boiling shrimp or lobster is unecessarily cruel, since it is quick.  Dunking them in alcohol first is rather cruel, however.  Shimps don't seem to like it when you do that, if I can judge by their reaction.

Cleaver, you are a better judge of shrimp emotions than I; I just know they wiggle going down your throat live.

Seriously, I am one of those politically incorrect hunter/fisher guys and, accordingly, directly cause the death of a fair amount of my food.  While I agree that anthropomorphicisms can get out of hand, based upon personal experience, animals definitely suffer.  I won't go into specifics here but, when it happens, even the most hardened hunter (or farmer) feels that he has somehow failed.

"Something bu something".What are the somethings filled in with in Chinese Medicine? Is it like 心不心 for heart problems?

Hi tvan

Don't feel too guilty about hunting and fishing. Sportsmen and -women do a great deal to protect and respect Mother Nature. Often, they do more than well-meaning armchair conservationists.

Animals clearly suffer, and I don't eat them anymore myself. But they and we would be far better off if more people followed your example and caught their own. Instead, most of us are happy to pay as little as possible for feedlot meat raised with cheap oil and antibiotics.

Drunken shrimp:

From a Chinese restaurant in Vancouver:

Quote from the site the photo was taken from:

"One of the things I love about Chinese restaurants is there is no embarrassment just using your hands. Well, how else can you get at the squab meat, especially between their little bones?

See, I just used my hand to fly that head into my waiting mouth.

I love squab heads:
I love sucking their fried-up brains;
I love nibbling on all the bones in the neck.

I don't have squab often, but when I do, I make sure I eat the whole bird!"

Swifts finishing off nest with salivary arch:

and workers collecting birds nests in Gomantong Caves,Sabah,Malaysia:

cleaver,

I meant my comment as a vegetarian, I don't think eating any animal is "humane", but I really don't care if other people do. I just choose not to that's all.

And I am from the U.S. and believe me the Chinese use more of the animal. My friends father was a cattle farmer and there is a lot of waste...

Pete,

I totally agree! but more than that even is the much larger amount of water it takes to produce meat as opposed to greens.

More water to raise animals than vegetables ?

Nonsense.

It's not even close; crops take thousands upon thousands of gallons per acre.  Take a drive through the country - those five inch pipe sprinkler and irrigation systems ain't spraying water over the hog pen for ten hours a day, sweetheart. They're watering your veggies.

mukden,

Do not try to argue with me on this one. Sorry, your just dead wrong. 

The amount of water needed to produce 1 pound of wheat is 25 gallons.The Amount of water needed to produce 1 pound of beef is 2,500 gallons. -Dr. Georg Borgstrom

Really sweetheart, I've done my research. 

Eating meat is more harmful to the planet than driving a Hummer. 

The meat industry loves promoting false info.

The reason I don't eat meat has nothing to do with saving the poor little animals (people have been eating animals for a very long time,) its because of this:

http://www.earthsave.org/environment/water.htm

http://michaelbluejay.com/veg/environment.html

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_is_it_cheaper_for_a_farmer_to_produce_a_pound_of_grain_than_a_pound_of_meat

http://www.vegsource.com/articles/pimentel_water.htm

OK, that's my rant, I'll stop myself now.

Hi kesirui,

We all love a good intellectual exchange. Let's keep it civil.

Raising livestock with modern, industrial methods does consume a tremendous amount of water, petroleum, and feed. It also creates a lot of pollution in the form of animal waste. Slaughtering, shipping and refrigerating meat also use a lot of energy.

On the other hand, modern methods of industrial agriculture do waste a lot of water. Modern irrigation in particular allows a lot of water to collect on the surface of the soil and evaporate pointlessly. This could all be improved, but it would take time, money, and political will. Mukden, since most modern livestock do not graze but instead are fed crops such as soybeans and corn grown with these wasteful methods, they make the problem even worse.

It wasn't always this way. One of the most interesting books on this topic is F.H. King's Farmers of Forty Centuries. He was a scholar with the US Department of Agriculture who visited China, Japan and Korea in the early 20th century and was amazed at their sustainable, smart (largely vegetarian) methods of farming and eating. It's worthwhile reading for omnivores, vegans, sinophiles and gourmands.

While we're on the topic of saving the world and animals.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/john_doerr_sees_salvation_and_profit_in_greentech.html

Here's a great one on Americanized chinese food.  Interesting and funny...

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jennifer_8_lee_looks_for_general_tso.html

It seems that I and my chubby dog have been damaging the environment by eating meat and fish, haha. But instead, I'm very careful not to waste food, water, electricity (and money) in everyday life. For example, I always try to turn off showers that are wastefully running "without fail" at public saunas here in China. There are many ways you can save our Earth.  

Hi changye

"There are many ways you can save our Earth."

Exactly right. And no matter how much we're doing, it's not enough.

Hi pete, correction:

There are many ways you can save our Earth.

There are many ways you can move back the doomsday date.

Hi changye,

Sadly, it's only the doomsday date for humanity. Mother Earth will keep on spinning long after we are gone.

There will be a few thousand lonely millennia, and then something new will climb out of the mud. It will make love and war, write poems and propaganda for a few thousand years, and then kill itself off. And the Earth will keep right on spinning.

JP, Just saw some of your videos on youtube.  Bro, you should do stand up numbers.  Confessions of an Amber fan... that was hilarious.

Pete,

I'm sorry, I just dont like being condescendingly called sweetheart by someone so out of touch...

(I didn't mean for that to come out sounding uncivil, I was just irritated)

I have to agree with kesirui.  Calling a woman "sweetheart" is extremely condescending, even if you disagree with her and think her facts are "nonsense."

It's 2009, not 1949.

(Sorry kesirui, I know you don't need any backup...I just thought it was rude).

Hi kesirui 

To be honest, my eyes completely skipped the provocative "sweetheart" in the original comment. Chalk it up to jetlag, I guess. Anyway your comments are always informative and to the point.

On a similar note, I'm not very good with names. A friend once suggested that I only need to remember two: "tiger" for men, and "sunshine" for women. I haven't taken his advice, needless to say ;-)

Must say I cringed at the sweetheart comment too.Sorry,but I'm exactly on your wavelength again Calkins.I think all women deserve respect no matter whether you agree with their opinions or not.

Pete, sweetheart, we forgive your oversight, keep up the vigilance, just dont become the post nazi. That would be a little ugly also. :-)

pearltowerpeter:

Why is it sad that it's doomsday only for humanity?It's unfair enough that a lot of species are vanishing because of or with humanity. (Although, I am not so sure about our good friends the cockroaches. Those poor fellas never had it so good before we had built our dwellings.)

Nevertheless, humanity will probably wither away like most other species, too. (There are not that many species around from when dinosaurs roamed the earth.)

If you like reading about earth without humanity, you'll probably enjoy "The World Without Us - Alan Weisman".

If you're not feeling bad enough about life, the universe and everything, then I'd recommend John Gray: Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals.

That said: I am quite confident that animals have feelings - at least the ugly primate here in front of the computer typing this comment.

Btw: Darwin Day is on 12th February 2009! Celebrate!

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoID=954585645

P.P.S.: The sun will explode in appr. 5 billion years and will strip planet earth of it's atmosphere etc. ;-)

All things must pass.

Pete,

Don't worry, I know its your job to keep things under control! 

Its funny though "sunshine" is not nearly as offensive... but it would depend on how it was said of course.

Hi joachim

You're right, of course-- when we go down in flames we'll take a lot of other innocent bystanders with us. I have heard good things about Weisman's book but haven't had a chance to read it. And it's funny you should mention Straw Dogs, which takes its title from a Laozi quote.

Hi rjberki,

I am still trying to strike a balance between iron fist and velvet glove. Don't worry, no danger of me becoming the forum Nazi :-0

Hi kesirui

My favorite thing about the idea of calling someone "tiger" or "sunshine" is that it's so obviously ridiculous, the other person might give you the benefit of the doubt and think that you actually remembered their name!

Im not worried Pete. Just keeping you on your toes.

It's pretty cool listening to stuff about Chinese medicine and philosophy on this site.  The places that they are massaging are acupuncture points.  The funny thing is though, is that the public shcools are only worrying about the eyeball rather than the whole body.  It seems kind of strange to me because the Liver also helps with healthy vision (not to mention adequate nutrition, etc.)

And there sure is a lot of meat talk on this site.  It makes me think that being vegetarian in China is extremely difficult.

I had a person from India tell me that "In India the higher class is vegetarian and the meat eaters are considered untouchables and very low class. Westerners are funny.  They will eat pigs, chickens and cows, but not dog.  At least in China they're not hypocritical about it.  They'll eat anything."

非常感谢 for those eye exercises…

Eye exercies - one of the funny and unexpected moments of English Teaching in China.  I remember on my first day, after class 2 or 3, the bell rang - but nobody moved (usually these middle school students practically trampled each other running out of class).  I asked what was up, and the students said 'eye exerices' - I said What? and they mimicked some of the movements.  I stood there puzzled for about 30 seconds when all of a sudden this LOUD music and counting starts coming from the loud speaker and ALL the students start with the eye exercies!  Twice a day, every day!

pearltowerpeter: The "straw dogs" title is in reference to Daoism. Gray actually quotes Laozi:

"Heaven and earth are ruthless, and treat the myriad creatures as straw dogs."

This seems to be in Chinese:

"天地不仁，以万物为刍狗"

(tiān dì bù rén, yǐ wàn wùwèi chúgǒu.)

The Chinese doesn't sound that cruel to me.

Hi Joachim

Thanks for digging up this quote. I agree with your quibble with the translation. I'd suggest translating  不仁 not as "ruthless" but rather as "indifferent" or "not necessarily compassionate."

In Confucian thinking, people are essentially good and the universe is a warmer, cozier place. Laozi (and Gray) make a strong argument that this is an unfounded assumption that leads us humans to overstate our own importance.

Thanks Joachim, that is a great quote! 

Are these "eye exercises" what's referred to when you do 眼保操？

Hi nial

Yes!

Haha, thanks Pete!　那个词很少用的！！

Maybe I will have learnt Chinese before the sun explodes :-)

I was served bird's nest soup in Thailand.  The taste was good.  when you spoon it up it looks like saliva hanging from your spoon.  I didn't order it but thought I would give it a try.  I don't think I would order it again. Brent

The Chinese eye exercise video was hilarious!  But it was sort of strange to have a Spanish song playing in the background. The most gross food I have ever heard of comes from my mom's home country, the Philippines.  It's called "balut", which is a nearly-formed duck inside the egg and eaten from the shell.  She never ate one in the 4 years she lived there, though she saw plenty of them sold by street vendors.