They Got Me

Excuses excuses, I hate excuses. But I was sick.

Really.

The Chinese version of Montezuma's revenge or something. I do know it was something I ate. Now I'm afraid of Chinese food. Before you could have handed me a won ton with a dog turd marinated in soy sauce buried in it and if I'd have seen another Chinaman eat it, so would I. Now all I want to do is eat rice and drink Coke Cola.

Man I was sick.

I've never had food poisoning before. It has to be what got me. Surprisingly I wasn't hit earlier. I can only chalk it up to my ordinarily cast iron stomach. In retrospect I should have been much more careful. The things I've seen prepared in the name of dinner. And you should see how they prepare some stuff.

Allow me to elaborate.

To begin with there is what appears to be the A number 1 crop of North China; Cabbage or Bok Choi. They don't have lawns here they have small patches of Bok Choi. Everyone that has a square to spare grows it. You see it piled to the sky on these three wheeled trucks of theirs. They stack it in front of their houses like their building a machine gun nest. You even see it in huge heaping piles at the foundry canteen.

What you don't see is saran wrap, screened in enclosures, refrigerators. So how do they preserve the food. That begs the question:

"What is preservation?"

Well if you think it means keeping something exactly as it is right now, then you don't have the same definition the Chinese have. If you think it means it is still in a form that is consumable to a suitably trained stomach, then you do have the same definition as the Chinese.

What I've seen the "Cook" at the foundry do is take half of his pile of Bok Choi and systematically blanch it in batches in some kind of vinegar smelling liquid. It is a simple matter of taking the Bok Choi from one pile, three to five heads at at time and dunking it in this boiling water. Flies along for the ride are included at no extra charge. The pile is systematically reduced from one end toward the other. Vegetables on the bottom of the pile (sitting on the dirt, paint over spray, rust, grinding abrasive etc.) is given no special treatment.

This recently boiled cabbage is then placed in a growing pile along with its brothers and a shit load of flies on a large plastic sheet. This sheet is sitting in a four foot deep hole just yards away from the "virgin" cabbage. The cook doesn't even bother to brush away the flies as he places the next load in the pit.

This continues most of the day.

Near the end of the day this same tarp is gathered at the top and tied off. Any flies that fail to escape at this time are entombed with the cabbage. No effort is made to warn the unsuspecting insects of their peril. The cook folds up the tarp "covering" this massive pile of steaming stinking cabbage and then drops a large steel plate over the hole.

No muss, no fuss.

The hole is a former garden bed of some sort. There is a short curb of concrete to raise the lip up slightly higher than the surrounding area. And I think they say a prayer to keep the water out. Later, I'm sure they'll process it in some way as to not poison the work force. This will then nourish the labor and we will continue to purchase cheap castings from them.

In the mean time the Bok Choi that was not so treated is being eaten. Every day the cook grabs a number of heads of the stuff and makes a meal of it. This pile sits uncovered all day every day, outside. It has not yet rained since this pile arrived but I suspect nothing would be done differently even if it did.

So to answer the question you're all asking right now; "Was this the stuff that got you?"

Hell No!

I'm crazy, not stupid.

No, it was a relatively innocuous Chinese lunch, fancy even. Sezchuan style. Pretty tasty at the time.

But the cabbage is only one example. They do similar things with fish. I was walking to the market place (read: shopping mall) and came across a stoop that had two large sheets of cardboard laid out on it. On these sheets of cardboard were neatly laid out fillets of fish. These fillets were drying as a method of preservation. Never mind the fact that dust from the city fires fueled by coal, exhaust from the two stroke mopeds or one lung diesel tractor things, anything any number of insects like to leave behind, or whatever else you can think of is collecting on your precious fish. And I saw the same thing with fruit as well.

It was like it was National Dry Stuff On Your Front Step Day.

I don't know why the whole country doesn't shut down every third day as they overwhelm the sewage system, stricken with what I had. It has to be training.

Well, I'm much more cautious now.