By KEN DAJI
Food & Drink Correspondent 

Chef Bing holds aloft his prize nugget, which he claims is now part of China’s ‘inedible cultural heritage’

SHANGHAI (China Daily Show) – What started off as just another day shilling deep-fried protein in batter ended dramatically for chef Lao Bing, after one lucky customer made a unique discovery in his bag of chicken product – a nugget bearing a passable resemblance to Chinese Communist hero Lei Feng.

Lei Feng is a semi-mythical national icon who died aged 22, after a truck backed into telephone pole, toppling onto Li’s head. The chicken nugget, meanwhile, consists of mechanically-separated poultry, machine-moulded and cooked in a fryer.

Experts say the similarities are uncanny.

“Both lived an existence of miserable servitude, had a premature death, and were reformed afterward into unrecognizable but easily digestible morsels,” says historian and notable Sinologist Sir William Buckfast.

Today is the 51st anniversary of Learn From Lei Feng Day, March 5, an occasion usually celebrated with dutiful acts of charity.

The miraculous find has instead catapulted Comrade Feng back onto the international stage – and started a vicious legal battle between chef Bing and his unnamed customer, who quickly sold the precious find for an astonishing 500 million yuan ($8 million).

Coal-mine owner, and latter-day art collector, Wang Ma is now the new owner, after an intense sequence of frantic, last-minute bids against himself. At the hotly anticipated Poly Group auction, the hammer was about to fall on Wang’s own $4-million bid before Wang insisted on doubling up, as eight million is considered a lucky number in China.

“As owner of a multi-million-dollar chicken nugget, I am possibly the luckiest man in the world,” a jubilant Wang told reporters.

The nugget of finely ground white-meat slurry in a delicious crispy coating is due to form the centerpiece of a proposed Lei Feng Memorial Museum about the orphaned PLA solider, which Jiang is bankrolling.

Visitors will be able to listen to audiobooks of Lei’s collected works – which include novels, two prose poems and an uncompleted three-act rock opera – and view numerous waxwork tableaux.

An animatronic vignette re-enacting his legendary death – in which a van backs into a pole that flattens Lei’s head midway through a recitation from Chairman Mao, and the driver flees – can be viewed dozens of times a day.

Meanwhile, Bing says his nugget business is booming, despite the ongoing legal wrangle to determine ownership of his foods. “I believe that, until they enter the digestive tract, all my signature dishes technically still belong to me,” Bing sullenly insisted yesterday.

While few of his customers agree, many were still excitedly checking to see if their food looked like a Communist celebrity this morning.

One seemed convinced that a deep-fried sausage reminded him of former premier Li Peng. Meanwhile, numerous steamed buns were being unflatteringly compared to Jiang Zemin.

Bing says the secret to his flavor is to use a traditional, artificially flavored ammonia-based recipe that’s no longer legally permitted in the US.

The nugget’s newfound fame is sure to boost the government’s ongoing ‘Learning from Lei Feng’ campaign, which begins today. Indeed, several people China Daily Show spoke agreed that the state campaign has already inspired them.

“I have learned to enjoy life while I still can, rather than wasting it serving some nebulous higher cause or societal expectation,” enthused Linda Li, a post-graduate student who has decided to abandon her intensive after-school piano lessons to go backpacking instead. “Frankly, that’s good advice for anyone in China.”

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By JONAS WHALE
Environment Correspondent

Han has promised not to eat the next unicorn he sees

ANHUI (China Daily Show) – A farmer has upset local officials and environmentalists, after treating the first-ever confirmed sighting of a unicorn as time for lunch.

The legendary creature, which is believed to be North Korean in origin, strayed onto Han’s farm in early November and the savvy farmer immediately spotted an opportunity for a fast yuan.

His attempts to remove the creature’s treasured horn and sell it to a local witch doctor went awry, however, when the unicorn kicked him in a treasured place. Thinking on his feet, Han shot the beast but by then, word had spread to local officials.

When a team of cadres arrived to seize his land and belongings, though, they found Han with a full stomach – and no unicorn. Now environmentalists and naturalists are up in arms about the loss of the extinct creature.

“The mythological mammal could have been the potential golden mine our former cancer village had long been looking for,” said tourist chief Li Ding. “Curse Farmer Han!”

Meanwhile, Han is baffled by the fuss and says that strange creatures wander onto his farm the whole time.

“We had the snake with a rooster’s comb come over, but it was frightening the pigs. It was quite stringy, as I recall,” he recalled. “I also saw the donkey-headed wolf last year, which is an auspicious sign. We celebrated the omen by consuming it.

“But my wife was very worried when the children came home one day with an all-yellow tiger, normally a symbol of prosperity – but not in the Year of the Rabbit!” Han told media. “Unfortunately, it got away and killed Daughter Number Four, but its teeth would have been perfect for a masculine tonic.”

The existence of unicorns has long been the subject of debate in China. The seventh century poet Qu Yang wrote of the “feeling a man has when he gets on the horse/ it bears a strong horn” but scholars still argue over the exact meaning of Qu’s words.

There were also frequent rural reports of strange animal sightings in China during the 1950s, but historians point out that the existence of any edible creature back then was cause for conversation.

In 1976, a so-called unicorn was spotted in Shennongjia shortly before the death of Mao Zedong; the creature was described as covered in gray, red or black hair and “mouth-watering.”

The Chinese Academy of Serious Science sent a six-man team of paleoanthropologists to investigate the rumors but they returned with nothing but village gossip and a recipe for deep-spiced horse testicles.

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By WO KOU
Sovereignty Correspondent

Aggrieved at Japan’s clear flouting of international maritime law, four-year-old Li locked himself in his bedroom yesterday and wept

SHENZHEN (China Daily Show) – The parents of plucky toddler Li Beibei say he’ll be showing his patriotism the only way he knows how this week: by refusing to eat raw fish.

As demonstrations against the Japanese nationalization of the Diaoyu Islands spread across China, young Li spent much of his weekend angrily playing Playstation 3.

Incensed by what he sees as Japan’s violation of China’s sovereignty, the plucky four year old began his sushi boycott on Sunday.

“Please, Daddy, I don’t like that stuff,” Li protested, his heart burning for the motherland and nose wrinkling at a plate of uncooked seabass, wasabi and raw, dripping mackerel, wielded by his 46-year-old father.

Little Li’s distaste for Japan’s national cuisine demonstrates an unflinching support of the motherland, his parents claim.

“Look how much he cares about ancient sovereign territory,” beamed proud mother Mrs Zang, watching her four-year-old son begin to wail and cry as his father thrust a live, wriggling squid – dripping with soy sauce – into Li’s mouth. “That’ll show the dogs.”

“The boy’s hatred of sushi will certainly foment and harden into a rational loathing of the Japanese nation,” grunted Mr Li, as he later dangled a glistening slice of sashimi in front of his terrified son. “Just give it a few more hours.”

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By Hao Che
Food and Drink Correspondent

Kim finished off the brandy with his signature salute

PYONGYANG (China Daily Show) – A controversial lunch in Pyongyang went off without a hitch, North Korean media reported this weekend.

Over protests from the US, Japan and South Korea, Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un successfully polished off a four-course pan-Asian banquet of cheeseburgers, rooster testicles and foie gras in front of an ecstatic crowd of 18,000.

The politically charged luncheon was televised to mark the 100th birthday of the late leader – and current president – Kim Il-sung, founder of the Deeply Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The meal triggered alarm in the international community, however, with the UN suggesting it was an affront to the country’s poverty-stricken population and Japanese diplomats jeering that Jong-un was incapable of handling his desserts.

After the portly Jong-un finished the high-profile meal with a Campari-based apertif and amuse-bouche flourish, Chinese Preident Hu Jintao dispatched a congratulatory telegram, noting that “the whole of our country’s belly shares your sense of contentment and filling. I knew you could do this.”

Celebrations in the North Korean capital continued until well past 5pm, with the state television channel broadcasting the live KTV session direct from the Ministry of Truthfulness canteen.

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By CHUN GE
Spring Festival Correspondent

Ji bought enough fireworks to supply a Guangdong rebel village for a week

HARBIN (China Daily Show) – A Dongbei man has defended his decision to spend roughly half his family’s annual income on fireworks, amid criticism that the country’s orgy of New Year fireworks is growing ever-more pointless and environmentally dangerous.

Ji Guang, a 47-year-old food vendor and father of three, admitted he’d dropped nearly 2,000 yuan on a box of 25 Deng’s Delight Catherine wheels.

Ji told media he also spent 1,500 yuan on Roman candles, plus a hundredweight of Thunder King firecrackers – described by manufacturers as “guaranteed to delight neighbour, shock the Grandma and terrify dogs and small children.”

But Ji denied spending a further 3,000 kuai on a variety pack of luxury artillery shells, arguing the true figure was “more like 2,800.”

Ji said that his proposed Spring Festival show – which experts estimate will last between three to four minutes at best, not including a week of maddening, post-Chunjie firecracker displays – will provide vital memories for his children’s future.

Nutritionists point out that, without proper daily doses of vitamins and protein, his children may not have much of a future.

“Fireworks are a vital part of Chinese culture, which it has fallen upon me to protect,” said Ji. “The children will be fine – the suppliers threw in a box of traditional instant-noodles completely free, as I’d spent over 5,000 yuan by that time.”

And Ji added that his bulk purchase also qualified the family for a corporate gift: a specially commissioned, limited-edition, natural chrysanthemum stone that he received at no extra charge, other than postage, packaging and a reasonable handling fee.

“This is now a precious family heirloom. In the long run, financially, it’s bound to be worth skimping on pork and vegetables for a few months when you consider the stone,” said Ji as he cradled the misshapen item. “Just feel its weight:  the equity on this baby must be, literally, priceless.”

According to his neighbours, however, this isn’t the first time Ji has made an extravagant gesture around Chinese New Year. Last year, he ploughed much of his parents’ savings into a doomed caviar-dumpling enterprise, convinced the rural Heilongjiang market was ready for luxury chunjie goods.

Most of his sturgeon failed to spawn, however.

And a crate of General Wu Rebel Rockets (4,800 yuan/12) Ji provided for his village’s Year of the Rabbit celebrations proved something of a damp squib, with many failing even to ignite. As one eyewitness recalled, “We were promised a fireworks orgy – it was more like watching a bunch of eunuchs.”

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By JONAS WHALE
Environment Correspondent

Mermaids are traditionally open about baring their breasts but this little tease happens to be shy

DALIAN (China Daily Show) — There was an unexpected extra in Liu Xinpeng’s fishing net last week. A long day’s trawl off the coast of Dalian accidentally landed the unsuspecting skipper with the solution to one of mankind’s most abiding myths: the mermaid.

Along with the usual haul of mackerel, Li and his crew were amazed to find the stunned — but still alive — creature thrashing about at the bottom. The mythical half-woman, half-fish had apparently been snared unawares while relaxing in the warm tropical waters.

“She was dazed, and in her confusion dropped a mother-of-pearl comb, which later fetched a very decent price at market,” Liu told a China Daily Show reporter. “We were amazed by her large, naked breasts. Later, much later in fact, we noticed she had a long, silvery fishtail.

“I knew immediately there was enough food on her to last a month.”

After exchanging a few sentences with the mermaid, which apparently included the information that her name was Krill, and she was the 3,600-year-old last descendant of her kind, Li’s crew set about gutting and butchering the semi-piscine creature, long considered extinct.

Naturalists expressed amazement at the find.

“If the story is true, this is possibly one of the biggest upsets in recent scientific history and will completely rewrite our understanding of evolution, as well as provide research grants and new funding for hundreds of important biological endeavors,” Yale University’s Marine Biology Professor Davis Williams, who was unaware of the mermaid’s fate, told China Daily Show.

“As a side-effect, it might even encourage a new understanding of the importance of ecological protection laws.” Such laws may have prevented the discovery, last year, of Bigfoot on a Chinese menu.

“Anyone was says mermaids aren’t real can ask my wife and daughter,” chuckled Liu, as he chewed thoughtfully on a mer-rib. “They’ve been dining on one for the last week!”

Liu said he plans to sell the mermaid’s remains to a local museum, which will make a plaster cast of the skeleton and cover it with a plastic mould, before painting and displaying the result, and disposing of the bones in a nourishing medicinal soup.

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The mouthwatering tradition of moon cakes dates back to the Tang Dynasty Patisserie Wars

By MAN MANCHI
Food & Drink Correspondent

HEFEI (China Daily Show) — An Anhui man has spoken of his remorse at consuming an unspecified number of moon cakes, following a recent party to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival.

Paterfamilias Wang Ziqi began starving himself 24 hours in advance of an  all-you-can-eat buffet organized by his village’s Party Secretary. Wang is said to have held a grudge after running out of duck blood at a 2007 banquet and told family members he “intended to get his money’s worth this time.”

But after paying five kuai to get in, Wang discovered the offer only applied to the cakes.

Undeterred, Wang tucked in heartily but began showing signs of distress midway through a 24-bun confit of minced lotus, wolfberry and donkey meat. After fainting twice, Wang finished the box but insisted on an after-dinner soufflé. He was tearfully admitted to the gastro-entomologist ward shortly afterward.

Moon cakes are a traditional Chinese delicacy, although they are normally considered a symbolic form of currency and rarely eaten. Luxury versions contain fillings such as Tabasco sauce, lead, mercury, gold and used razors.

The previous record for moon cake consumption was held by China’s Got Talent entrant Zhang Liu who, owing to a continuity error, was forced to visibly enjoy a smorgasbord of egg-and-pineapple cakes before passing into a coma in 2005.

Liu had survived a Japanese invasion, two famines, the Cultural Revolution and numerous car accidents before meeting his match with a box of the baked goods.

Wang himself remains confused but undaunted from his hospital bed, however. “What month is it?” he asked reporters. “June? Bring on the glutinous rice cakes.”

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By MAN MANCHI
Culinary Correspondent

SICHUAN (China Daily Show) — If the world’s first gastro-etymologist is to be believed, the majority of China’s beloved culinary creations may well be the 5,000-year-old culture’s oldest surviving knock-offs.

Shanzhai Nation: How China Fed and Misled the World  chronicles one professor’s foray into the “deepest and darkest corners of conspiracy and corruption, dating all the back to the Yellow Emperor himself,” according to a review in The New York Times.

Written and researched by Phillip Nam Ngyuen, a French-born Vietnamese professor of gastronomy, the book was inspired by the rhetorical title of a 2008 TED Talk, “Who is General Tso, and why are we eating his chicken?”

“That got me thinking,” said Nguyen in an interview with China Daily Show. “Who is General Tso? Why are we eating his goddamn chicken? I couldn’t ignore those hard-hitting questions.”

Nguyen’s book begins with China’s well-known historical lack of innovation and creativity, and moves on to expose dish after dish as culinary copycats, each chapter garnished with impressive sources, dates and statistics. From hot pot to hundun, and dumplings to dim sum, no Chinese “creation” is free from Nguyen’s investigative eye.

According to Nguyen, sea cucumbers were first introduced to the Chinese during a 1967 state dinner with Klingons

“Everyone knows hot pot comes from 12th-century Mongolia,” said Ngyuen, “but most would be surprised to learn that Kungpao chicken, or in its butchered Chinese form, gongbao jiding, is a ripped-off version of Chicken Gumbo, the beloved Cajun dish first masterminded by Bantu-speaking African slaves in Louisiana in 1802, and subsequently copied by a ‘visiting Chinaman of Kwei-chow origin named T’ing P’ow-jun,’ according to police records published in The Picayune in 1842.”

“Roast dog?” Nguyen continued, “Korean. Chuan’r? Persian. Baozi? Hell, baozi was invented  by the Germans. Ever heard of the hamburger?”

And as for General Tso’s Chicken?

“That was created by the Oxford-educated Tibetan military scholar, General George Tsozarayim,” said Nguyen. “And we all know that Tibet is—oh, to hell with it, let’s just pretend that General Tso’s chicken is ‘Chinese.’”

Nguyen’s book is currently banned on the mainland, while state agencies remain mum on the veracity of his findings or the implications of widespread historical fraud.

“Five thousand years of history and you can only come up with four inventions?” said Nguyen. “I think I may have just found the topic of my next book.”

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By Nan Che
Food and Drink Correspondent

Most Chinese prefer to order their tainted meat in bulk, out of the back of a lukewarm station wagon

SHANGHAI (China Daily Show) – Pork that doesn’t taste like beef, milk that doesn’t make you grow breasts and non-lethal steamed buns – such things are unusual, even anathema, to many Chinese food shoppers.

So it came as a shock to housewife Zheng Wen, 37, when she recently purchased a batch of minced pork that was apparently unadulterated with chemicals, unnecessary toxic additives or carcinogens.

Zheng suspected nothing when she bought the pork at her local supermarket. Most Chinese supermarket trolleys are equipped with Geiger counters to reassure customers of their products’ toxicity.

“But when I brought the meat home, I put it in the kitchen and turned the lights off. I was shocked when it didn’t then light up like a souvenir from Chernobyl,” a shaken Zheng told China Daily Show.

“At that moment, I knew something was wrong.”

Supermarket bosses have since apologized and offered to replace the purchase with a year’s supply of unspecified meat product from Hunan, believed to be platypus.

Meanwhile, experts have reassured Zheng – and the greater public – that her pork was the exception, rather than the norm.

“China’s food industry is buck-passing around the clock to ensure that every foodstuff meets minimum safety requirements,” said Professor Fu Bao,  a supply chain management expert at Beijing Normal University.

“From money-hungry slaughterhouses to corrupt regulators, complacent local governments to apathetic outlets, every possible effort is made to ensure goods achieve maximum profit with minimum regard to our fellow countrymen’s health.

“Occasionally, though, standards may unintentionally rise when something slips through the net,” Fu admitted, with a weary smile. “Alas, there’s always one good apple.”

For Zheng, however, the damage was already done. “From now on, I’m buying my products from somewhere I can trust: Russia.”

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By RONG REN
Economics Correspondent

Chinese shoppers patiently queue for salt outside one of Lu's stores this weekend

SHANGHAI (China Daily Show) – “When I said I was quitting university to start my own salt-and-vinegar concern, my parents thought I was mad. They tried to disown me,” smiles Lu Yun, 27. “Now I’m the most filial son in the village.”

Lu was speaking at Sotheby’s Hong Kong’s spring auction, where he paid 80 million yuan for an ornate white-jade  seal that may have been used once by Emperor Yongzheng.

Until just last week, however, Lu subsisted on a diet of instant noodles and thought that the Qing Dynasty was a band.

That was before Japan’s East Coast was devastated by a tsunami and earthquake, causing near-meltdowns at several nuclear reactors and sending Chinese consumers in their droves to supermarkets in search of salt, consumption of which is widely – but erroneously – considered to protect the human body from absorbing radiation.

Iodized salt from Macau and Hong Kong to Beijing, Shanghai and as far west as Xinjiang has since sold out, with prices rising by over 1,000 percent – despite government warnings that consumption increases blood pressure and has no discernible scientific affect on radiation poisoning.

China’s latest billionaire has acquired his new-found wealth practically overnight; in 2003, Lu’s salt-and-vinegar business sold out of every range of vinegar stocked, after locals became convinced the condiment provided protection from the SARS virus.

Lu invested all the family money in huge quantities of salt and vinegar, but by then, the crisis had passed and the vinegar craze was over.

“I was on a stopover in London and very hungry,” Lu recalled the origins of his unexpected success story. “The only thing I could buy at that hour were a traditional English delicacy: salt-and-vinegar crisps.’”

Lu was quickly hooked. He dropped out of college in 2002 and formed a business promoting the dish – but found fellow Chinese didn’t share his passion. Until last week, business for Lu’s ingredients was almost non-existent and Lu faced bankruptcy– but on Tuesday, trade began to pick up sharply.

By the weekend, Lu had sold the company to a Hebei-based conglomerate for a billion-dollar figure, invested in several coal mines, blown a million yuan on a Charlie Sheen-themed KTV-and-mahjong bender and established himself as a serious player in China’s burgeoning art market.

“I will pay any price for my health,” said customer Chen Yueli, 23, who admitted she had previously ignored warnings about tainted Henanese pork, toxic milk powder, recycled hogwash oil and chemically enhanced hotpots but took the iodized salt alert seriously.

Chen paid 2,000 yuan for an iodine-rich salt lick, available for 12 yuan only the day before. She paused to lick off another 50-yuan’s worth of “life-saving” salt, adding, “This shows the Chinese are really starting to understand things better.”

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