What the Chinese Don't Eat by Xinran Read Free Book Online Page A

yard and let them free. The English couple then sat down to a vegetarian noodle lunch.
    The next morning, the guide was woken by a telephone call. It was the owner of that little wild-food restaurant: ‘Are you still with that English couple? Could you bring them back to my restaurant again? I will pay you double.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘OK, just between us. I woke up this morning to find most of the animals that they freed yesterday have come back to the kitchen yard.’

9th January 2004
    New Year’s Eve in Shanghai: China’s young are happy, carefree and changing fast
    When the bells rang in the new year I was standing by a huge window on the 33rd floor of the Hong Kong SQ hotel in Shanghai with my husband and son. We pressed our warm faces to the cold glass to see the flashing and crowded street at the foot of the 50-storey building in the centre of this city of 20 million people. We stayed by the window for the last 15 minutes of 2003 and the first 20 minutes of 2004.
    My son PanPan was really excited, and described the fireworks that lit up the city in many colours as a ‘computer-designed picture’. I do not think the Chinese man who invented fireworks almost 2,000 years ago could have imagined that they would be a part of modern life in such a computer-controlled world. But I see more of China becoming part of today compared with the last time I went back, only six months ago. The two skyscrapers outside our window were not there last year. Roadside public welfare signs carrying the instructions ‘Do not spit’, ‘Wash your hands before you eat’ and ‘Help needy strangers’ are new. In the newly cleaned public toilets, which used to leave so many foreigners embarrassed, toilet paper has appeared.
    We had our last meal of 2003 in a restaurant called Little South State (Xiao-Nan-Guo), which serves traditional Shanghai food, prepared according to ancient methods. My husband Toby, who has been to China at least twice a year since the early 90s, and is one of the few westerners who can eat most Chinese food, such as snake, ducks’ feet and pigs’ kidneys, was surprised by what he saw around us: there were many extended Chinesefamilies (at least three generations together) having their New Year’s Eve dinner in a place that used to be frequented by drunken governors and businessmen. People ate ‘endless’ dishes, which they ordered from a menu the size of a book. The ‘drunk prawns’ woke up and jumped out of diners’ mouths, ‘crab with eggs’ was beautifully displayed, raw fish arranged like ‘seasonal flowers’ bloomed at the table and Shanghai veget-ables brought spring green to people’s desires for the new year.
    There were about 800 other diners with us, although that was far fewer than when we had dinner in Nanjing in the autumn of 2002. Then, 5,000 people sat down to eat together in a restaurant called Xiang-Yang Fishing House.
    After dinner, we had to go for a walk to settle our full stomachs. Along the Huai-Hai Road, adorned by neon lights and given voice by the crowds, we noticed that people in China are much more relaxed and happy today than we have ever seen them in the past. Toby said he would never have believed that the modern world would arrive in China so soon. He was very moved by Chinese people’s behaviour at the new year: ‘clean and not drunk’ in the streets of Shanghai, because he knows the Chinese like to drink strong alcohol.
    I hardly slept for the first night of 2004 because my mobile didn’t stop bleeping with messages. Some were greetings from my friends. Some were from companies with information on shopping, travel and sales, offering body and foot massage, help with finding a lover, help with homework, house-cleaning, secondhand goods and weather forecasts. Some were from young people playing at ‘new politicians’: ‘Don’t say Bin Laden is too bad, don’t think Bush is too kind, no oil no mad, let’s see what those Americans mind …’; ‘Think of Mao