China, China, and China

Because the Olympic is going to be in Beijing, China the Travel Channel is showing lot of shows with the destination in China, yeah, for the whole week! Last night, the Samantha Brown's Passport to China was followed by Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations which is also in China. As usual, Anthony's is packed with wits and tongue-in-cheeks narrations. But bizarre enough, watching both show back to back, they remind me of Andrew's Bizarre Foods. In Passport to China, Samantha tried deep fried star fish from a back-alley-street-food stand, and then she tasted the duck tongues in a popular restaurant. Anthony had goat's stomach, goat intestines, goat balls, and boat load of other undignified dishes which you would not want to touch if he knows of their origins.

As usual, Anthony paints a beautiful China cuisine picture with words: "the mother of all cuisines". It was funny that when Anthony was presented with a dish, mushy gray substance; being hungry, and trying to be culturally polite as well as the host of the show he chowed it down quickly. With broad smile, he gave the regular thumb up: "It's good!" The gray substance is the left-over soy bean paste, after the tofu was made, these are the left over and many have thought of nothing you can make out of it. However, when the local guide explain in Chinese accent: "You can't find this dish outside of Beijing!", Anthony smiled happily. The guide then followed: "because, outside of Beijing, people give these to pigs." The camera switched back to Anthony's face, and you can see his smile suddenly disappeared. He quickly went for his local drink and I wonder whether to wash that still lingered after taste, or he wants to push the food back down.