Wednesday, 19 June 2013

12 Days in China. Day 8: Hitting the wall (not that wall)...



In the last two days I've clocked up 34 hours of work and had about 6 hours' sleep. I'm knackered, but pleased to be going back to Hong Kong tomorrow afternoon. The light at the end of the tunnel is almost here. In Hong Kong I'll still be putting the hours in, but it's a nicer environment in which to do it and the food is much better.

I've become obsessed with food and can't stop thinking about it. I wake up hungry, but don't eat anything until lunchtime. At lunch we'll either go for a McDonald's (which probably isn't a real McDonald's – everything is fake here) or for Chinese food. Chinese food here means lots of fat and lard. I had cabbage last night, which was cooked in lard. I had pork that had a 3:1 fat to meat ratio. Rice is safe, but the water they wash it in isn't. They had a real problem over here a while back with fake baby milk formula. A lot of babies died and now it's even illegal to import baby milk from Hong Kong to China – You're limited to how much you can bring over, much like you are in the Western world with cigarettes or alcohol, but this is because the Chinese are desperate for baby milk formula that isn't harmful and (I believe) the Chinese government want to crack down on illegal sales of the good stuff. Pretty messed up, eh.



For dinner most of this week and last I've had Chinese food, which despite the above sounding like it's horrendous, is the safest bet really. The worst I've experienced is when the restaurants attempt to make Western food: Spaghetti Bolognaise swimming in grease or a club sandwich with florescent pink ham that would probably glow in the dark (I ended up with two slices of toast that time after taking out the tomatoes because of the chemicals they spray them with, the eggs because of the carcinogenics they inject to make the yolks yellow and the aforementioned nuclear ham).

Each time I've come back here over the last few years, the food has gotten marginally better though. There's even a new restaurant/bar called “JR's” which has not-too-bad food. It also had pictures of London dotted around (which was nice) and a Christmas tree in the corner (which was even nicer).




Anyway, off the the market in Shenzen tomorrow morning before heading back to Honkers for the National Holiday.

Almost there...

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