TeaChat

brandon wrote:
This thread is a laugh a minute.

I'm a native Chinese here, who really love tea . But it is not real in China, our government pay more attention to food inspection. Rice here is health, so as tea, toufu, water, vegetable and lots of things.

brandon wrote:
This thread is a laugh a minute.

This is so cute!

chaos123 wrote:I'm a native Chinese here, who really love tea . But it is not real in China, our government pay more attention to food inspection. Rice here is health, so as tea, toufu, water, vegetable and lots of things.

I am sure my view is biased... because I have a Chinese stomach. Since I currently spend very limited time in China, I constantly miss the fresh vegetable, fruits, tofu and a lot of other things in China. Food scandals do exist in China, sometimes they can be so bad. But yeah usually foreign media only care about the bad food in China since they would be stressed by corporations if they focus more on things like bovine growth hormone.

I hope my view is not biased about Mexican food. I spent a month in Mexico last winter, and missed the fresh vegetable, fruits, meat and eggs there since then. It's not that I can't get the fresh food here, but not at every street corner store, not at affordable (to me) prices, and not with that broad varieties. When I told my friends how nice Mexican groceries are, very often I got the question, "is the food there safe?" Well, I did get some stomach flu and stayed in bed for a whole day. And I know this happens to a lot of travelers. But then I was "strengthened" and kept enjoying all kinds of food in the rest of my trip. I won't hesitate to get myself another stomach flu if I can get another month of fresh Mexican food

Many people in developing world consciously know what's missing in their life, and therefore envy life in developed world. On the other hand, many people in developed world tend to think "we" are safer, cleaner and better than "them". But many people may not know what they miss...

Oh, I should also mention that I prefer obviously fake news to seemingly-true fake news

I´ve been to Mexico twice...for just over a month total. I definitely agree the food in Mexico is very good. Everything there was so delicious! I think much better quality than what we eat in Canada and the United States and I often find myself wishing we had so many products from Mexico, including many of the fresh fruits and vegetables that are hard to find and expensive here.

And I didn´t get sick there

Just saying, as some people pointed out, faking certain things that are dirt cheap aren't even worth the effort. Like really? Couldn't get a DVD burner? But these things get big news coverage because it's that insane and makes for a good story. No one wants to talk about what new measures are being added to phys. ed classes in America to improve the health of the youth. We only want to hear about how fat Americans are.

Meanwhile I do agree Chinese food testing isn't exactly legendary. And it is true fake foods exist in China, however these fake foods are usually stuff you can actually make money off of like rare herbs, bird nest, special sea weed, Pu-erh, etc...

I also want to point out, if it's true about some of those things like plastic rice, chances are whoever is growing them aren't breathing right now. Remember the Chinese milk scandal guys? Where are they now? If the gov't there catches wind of you bootlegging food you better pack your bags.

I think I'm pretty late in the game here, but I just have to throw in my two cents.

I have traveled pretty well around the world, and I have eaten almost anything I could. I have gotten as sick in the USA as anywhere else!

I have also found that EVERYWHERE I have traveled thinks that other places are really dangerous, that the food is dangerous, the poeple are dangerous, and that getting off the plane in another country can kill you. Obviously not everyone thinks like this, but there have been substantial populations in every country I have visited with this mentality.

I know China has some pretty nasty fakes, in every arena, but China is HUGE people! There are bound to be some issues here and there, but there are way more normal, just-fine items available. I do think, Tead-Off, that this thread is pretty funny and scary at the same time. Thanks for the posts.

auhckw wrote:How to Make a Fake Egg - Technology from China
http://hubpages.com/hub/how-to-make-fak ... from-china

Can't believe its so cheap, seems pretty complicated to me. Anyway I'm impressed by the genius of chinese to always find a way, others would think it is not possible.

But it really scares me how save is my chinese tea, and can i really drink pu erh without dying?

You know its funny, in Solschenyzins book one person never ate anything else besides eggs, because he thought soviets couldn't poison them.

For most Chinese tea you simply don't know if it is safe or not, if pesticide was used on a small scale or in huge amounts, if the pesticides are fairly safe ones or banned dangerous ones, if these chemicals will harm your health in the short-term or the long-term ... or ... if there's nothing to worry about.

I feel like instances that are a very small percentage are represented as a much larger portion, even to the point that something that happens once leads people to say, "It will happen to you!!!"

I met a group people who thought dinners in the USA were really, really dangerous places. When asked why, they said that in movies, people always get robbed or shot in dinners! I also heard someone say once that if you drive anywhere in the USA, you WILL have someone pull a gun on you.

yanom wrote:For most Chinese tea you simply don't know if it is safe or not, if pesticide was used on a small scale or in huge amounts, if the pesticides are fairly safe ones or banned dangerous ones, if these chemicals will harm your health in the short-term or the long-term ... or ... if there's nothing to worry about.

yanom do you consider taiwan tea safe?

Oh gee what I consider is really not important, I'm no expert in any way: I'm just pointing out that in Mainland China food safety (well, unsafety) is a widespread and established concern. You often read about farmers saying they never eat the stuff they grow & sell because they know how many chemicals they've doused it with. If that attitude exists for vegetables, why not for tea? There's no rule of law that can reliably punish anyone caught breaking rules. There's an expectation that anyone monitoring safety can be bribed. And there's a sense that even if a big boss says don't cut corners, some of his his subordinates will ignore him if they can make some extra money on the side.
None of these are specific to tea -- for all I know, tea could be somehow insulated from how the rest of the country works. But if it isn't, the only way you can know a tea is safe is if you make it yourself, or know & trust the person who does, right?
Then again, maybe the economic reasons that encourage excessive fertiliser use for vegetables don't apply to tea. Or, even if a few corners are cut, the tea could still be perfectly safe -- I mean, do we really know what level of harm a few chemicals soaked in hot water and drunk very diluted can actually do? Perhaps we breathe worse just walking down the street.
So I'm not saying I consider anything unsafe, it's not my place to pretend that I know the answer.

After all that, I should clarify that I'm speaking about Mainland China. I don't know about Taiwan, I'd always assumed (and hoped) that the society there works in a much less flawed way.

Interesting how these things work. In the West we were told by big companies to stop eating butter and eat some artificial equivalent instead ... and now we're told that margarine and so on are full of transfats that kill us and we should have been eating butter all along. Or "low-fat" options that are full of sugar. Different systems, different flaws.

yanom wrote:Oh gee what I consider is really not important, I'm no expert in any way: I'm just pointing out that in Mainland China food safety (well, unsafety) is a widespread and established concern. You often read about farmers saying they never eat the stuff they grow & sell because they know how many chemicals they've doused it with. If that attitude exists for vegetables, why not for tea? There's no rule of law that can reliably punish anyone caught breaking rules. There's an expectation that anyone monitoring safety can be bribed. And there's a sense that even if a big boss says don't cut corners, some of his his subordinates will ignore him if they can make some extra money on the side.
None of these are specific to tea -- for all I know, tea could be somehow insulated from how the rest of the country works. But if it isn't, the only way you can know a tea is safe is if you make it yourself, or know & trust the person who does, right?
Then again, maybe the economic reasons that encourage excessive fertiliser use for vegetables don't apply to tea. Or, even if a few corners are cut, the tea could still be perfectly safe -- I mean, do we really know what level of harm a few chemicals soaked in hot water and drunk very diluted can actually do? Perhaps we breathe worse just walking down the street.
So I'm not saying I consider anything unsafe, it's not my place to pretend that I know the answer.

After all that, I should clarify that I'm speaking about Mainland China. I don't know about Taiwan, I'd always assumed (and hoped) that the society there works in a much less flawed way.

Interesting how these things work. In the West we were told by big companies to stop eating butter and eat some artificial equivalent instead ... and now we're told that margarine and so on are full of transfats that kill us and we should have been eating butter all along. Or "low-fat" options that are full of sugar. Different systems, different flaws.

Yes you are right, and you articulated your point very good. It was a pleasure to listen how you elaborated your standpoint. Thank you very much. I hope taiwanese have saver products.

gingkoseto wrote:

chaos123 wrote:I constantly miss the fresh vegetable, fruits, tofu and a lot of other things in China.

I spent a month in Mexico last winter, and missed the fresh vegetable, fruits, meat and eggs there since then. It's not that I can't get the fresh food here, but not at every street corner store, not at affordable (to me) prices, and not with that broad varieties.

Gastronomy (or the art of cooking food) is culture, same as tea. You dissociate them from that and the spirit deeply suffers. Humans living in more technologically advanced societies suffer from heart disease, obesity, depression, anxiety and stress because of that. Their minds (expressed as health of their internal organs, which make up human consciousness) are heavily shaped by materialism and alienation.

More background info is provided in this link from the Chinese Taoist/Shaman perspective.