Could you remove the scorpions, please? ...........Chinese food

China has produced the greatest mix of strange, good and quite bad food of my travels. The quality of food within this country varies widely and I've had tasty and healthy food in the equivalent of a fast food outlet and dire quality food in more expensive restaurants. Very pot luck and I must admit the sin at times of being pleased that McDonalds and KFC were around and have taken over the world!
For Western palates, there are challenges. They eat tofu here with the most foul smelling sauce - it produced a massive gag reflex in three of us who were passing by the stall - and possibly explains away the street and toilet smells you come across here. Unless you specify otherwise, they chop chicken as it is with the bones and all. Chicken knees and ankles need a bit of practise to eat with chopsticks, I can tell you, and puts you in danger of whizzing a part of your dinner over to the next table. I decided to waive the opportunity of expanding my appreciation of international cuisine by passing on the roasted chicken feet and the fried ants, grasshoppers and scorpions which are considered very yummy here. Mad Mark was brave enough to try the fried scorpions - see the video evidence below! Also, abalone is not an Italian dessert but an ocean mollusc and sea cucumbers are like giant slugs, rather than a ocean equivalent of the vegetable we know. (They apparently have the peculiar ability to expel their internal organs when startled by a potential predator and then regrow them!) But anything that looks like a large, wet muscle turned inside out, is not for me I'm afraid. We were advised to peel fruit unless it was in a skin of its own such as bananas, due to the copious use of pesticides and the fact that they are often sold at the sides of busy roads - carbon flavoured apples have not caught on in the UK as of yet are far as I'm aware.
You are best going to a more expensive restaurant to enjoy the famous Beijing duck or Peking duck as it's still known, to really appreciate this dish and get a good quality bird. We ate this at my last hotel and it was decidedly tasty. Dishes I have really enjoyed are: boneless chicken with cashew nuts and chilli - in fact most things with chilli in so that the food made your lips go slightly numb were fine by me. Also, stir fried beef and peppers, meat and vegetable dumplings and broccoli dishes as they cook the vegetables 'al dente'. Sometimes the sweet and sour dishes came with a thin sauce rather than the thick, gloopy sauce we know in the UK and it was so much better for it. And you can always rely on rice, boiled or fried,...or McDonalds if nothing else appeals. :-))
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/PocketGem/ChinaFood#
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/PocketGem/AudraSTravelVideos#5379240906235275986