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In the week that China executed Zheng Xiaoyu, the man once responsible for
ensuring the safety of China's food and drugs, Fuchsia Dunlop, an expert on
Chinese cuisine, finds tainted food has blunted her appetite.
The highlight of this particular banquet is the whole sea cucumber. Mine lies
on my plate in a slick of dark sauce, glistening.
To Western eyes, it looks more like a sex toy than a delicacy, with its phallic
shape and rows of playful little spikes. And to the Western palate, it is also
baffling, because it is eaten only for its texture, and has no flavour of its
own.
Chinese gourmets adore its kou gan, or mouthfeel, that squelchy rubberiness,
that surprising hint of crispness in the bite.
When I first lived in China, I found sea cucumbers revolting, and ate them just
to be polite.
Now, though, after years of applying myself to the Chinese arts of eating, I
understand the pleasure of having something slithery and bouncy in my mouth.
Different kind of qualm
It is the same with many other Chinese delicacies.
Goose intestines, frogs, insects, ducks' tongues: I have eaten and enjoyed them
all. But although I have lost my European squeamishness, I find my dining out
in China increasingly beset by a different kind of qualm.
Take that sea cucumber, for example.
The Chinese economic boom of the last two decades has led to a surge in
banqueting, and the boundless appetite of the new Chinese rich for this slimy
creature has decimated its stocks in Chinese waters.
These days the supplies that grace the dinner table come from as far away as
the Galapagos Islands off the South American coast.
If I eat one, am I contributing to the ruin of marine ecosystems all over the
world?
It is a similar story with many other expensive delicacies, like sharks' fins,
turtles and pangolins.
Chinese restaurants are the engine driving a global trade in endangered
species. And in China, there is a thriving black market in all kinds of
supposedly protected animals.
I am offered them all the time, even at banquets attended by the very Communist
Party and government officials who are meant to be enforcing environmental
laws.
Pollution
My appetite is also shrinking because of the dire pollution in China.
Last autumn I was in Suzhou for the hairy crab season.
I revelled in the taste of this fabled delicacy, its sweet flesh dipped in
ginger-vinegar, until I read in the papers that many farmed crabs were tainted
with a cancer-causing antibiotic.
And then I looked into the waters of one lakeside farm, and saw a swirl of oily
scum and other muck.
Earlier this month government inspectors found paraffin wax, formaldehyde and
other illegal additives being used in the production of everyday foodstuffs
like biscuits and seafood.
And the United States turned back more than 100 shipments of Chinese food
products in a single month this spring, after finding them laced with banned
chemicals and antibiotics.
My friends in China are increasingly worried about the food they eat.
Many mutter darkly about the use of hormones in rearing livestock, and they
seek out vegetables that have insect bites on their leaves - a sign that they
have not been drenched in pesticides.
On my own trips to China, I eat less and less meat and seafood, because I just
do not know what is in them.
Instead, I help myself to vegetables and beancurd.
But even they might be risky. According to official figures, 10% of Chinese
farmland is dangerously contaminated with pollution.
And the newspapers are filled with terrifying stories about poisoned rivers,
lakes and reservoirs, their waters unfit even for irrigation.
Corruption
Of course, pollution, tainted food and the consumption of endangered species
are international problems.
But in China the media is state-controlled, environmental activists are
routinely harassed, and corruption is endemic.
The government is taking the nation's environmental crisis increasingly
seriously, largely because of the threat of social unrest triggered by
pollution.
But although the former head of the Chinese Food and Drug Administration has
been executed for taking bribes, many local officials still disregard rules on
environmental protection, and Beijing itself is said to have tried to cover up
a World Bank report revealing that more than 700,000 people die every year in
China because of air and water pollution.
China probably has the world's finest cuisine.
After more than a decade of researching it, I am still astonished by Chinese
culinary culture, and in awe of the skills of the country's chefs.
But these days, as I sit down before their beautiful tables of plenty, the
shadows of pollution and environmental degradation hover in the background.
The banquets that once seemed to be a glorious perk of my job have begun to
feel like an occupational hazard.
The meals that give me most pleasure are those in the remote countryside, where
I can dine on wild mushrooms and bamboo shoots, and pork from pigs raised by
people I know.
It is ironic that in all these years of eating in China, I have deliberately
dismantled all my cultural barriers, to the point where I eat like a Chinese
person.
No weird Chinese delicacy can shock me: culturally, I eat everything.
Yet when I read the endless litany of food scare stories in the Chinese press,
I find I am asking myself: "Do I want to eat anything?"