This day, 12 October, in 2021, President Xi Jinping attended the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP) to the Convention on Biological Diversity in Kunming via video...
You don’t need to come to Asia to encounter bamboo; it’s there on the steering wheel of the E-Type Jaguar, on umbrella handles, there on that corporal punishment device once kept behind teachers’ desks.
Even edible bamboo was a concept familiar to me before I arrived here; bamboo shoots in tins were part of my English mother’s cooking in the 1980s. But, as with many things we already know about China, we’re not prepared for the abundance or the variety.
The bamboo shoots that appear in Chinese dishes in the real...
We can never borrow each other’s mouths. I will never know what it means to taste the way you do, nor you me.
Then again, perhaps if we could try that, we would no longer be the sufficiently the same people we originally were to make the new observation meaningful...
Anyway, that imperfect empathy is part of the tragedy of writing and reading about food and drink. I also often wonder if my speculations on taste may be even less meaningful to someone who has a Y chromosome.
In Classical legend, there...
I need to cut back. We’ve overspent this month.
When I look back, I don’t know whether it’s the newly-printed poster board on my wall which I’ll point to as “peak-splurge”.
Maybe it will be the sailing sun-hat from the French sports shop in Shanghai. The family have teased me about the price tag on that one. I bought the poster despite the teasing. Profligacy.
Maybe it will be the tea I’m drinking these days; comfortably the most expensive I’ve bought with real money in ages. It was ¥170 for a bag,...
瓜子 (guazi) or “Melon Seed” is the name of an online used-car selling platform.
It’s an example of how brand conventions have evolved in China beyond fruits (Apple, Blackberry) to the names of dried food commodities (Xiaomi, Sesame, etc.) It’s also an example of a shift from branded physical products to services.
Actually, the subject of this month’s Strainer is not a tech startup or a financial service. It’s not even the humble melon seed itself (a fine Autumn snack); it’s a variety of green tea that is also named 瓜片...
