Just about everyone I've talked to here in China is concerned with the issue of food safety, and for good reason. The country has a terrible record of keeping the food people eat safe. The most famous instance of this was when melamine, a highly toxic type of plastic, was found in baby milk powder. Six infants died, and thousands became deathly ill. This happened in 2008, and people still travel over three hours from where we live to Hong Kong to buy milk powder, to the extent that the government has limited the amount they can bring back into the mainland. The people responsible for adding the melamine back in 2008 (which was to manipulate the protein levels and increase profits) were executed by the government. Even so, this quick buck/damn the consequences mentality prevails to this day. Chinese businesses have become experts at nickel and dimming customers to maximize profits. I see daily small scale examples: The street vendor who drops a pineapple slice on the filthy street and washes it off when no one is looking instead of throwing it away, the restaurant that doesn't remake an order when it is incorrect, but instead spends five minutes picking out the unwanted item with their hands, kitchens without soap for employees to wash their hands, meat sold in the market that has spoiled, etc. These are the things everyone sees everyday here, and yet don't demand anything different. I can only imagine what goes on in the factories and farms that produce China's food outside anyones watchful eyes. For our part, Julie and I spend tons of money on imported foods, rarely eat meat, soak and scrub all our vegetables with vinegar, don't cook with tap water, and consciously try not to buy the same local brands more than once. We also go through soap at an alarming rate. I took the photos above at a nearby open-air market, known locally as a "wet-market". A visit will make a vegetarian out of anybody.
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