Ma La Tong

Recently, Jiao Jiao and I decided to go out for a cheap meal. Nothing can be cheaper in China than Chinese fast food. Authentic Chinese fast food does not come from a carbon cut-out KFC look-alike or a hamburger joint. Instead, it is an industrialized street version of Hot Pot called Ma La Tong. I think you can translate it to "Crazy Hot Soup."  It is done on the street by locals with the cheapest of ingredients and oils. You choose all of the vegetables, sausages, fish cakes, fruit or seemingly inedible things that you want and give them to the man next to the boiling water. He boils your stuff, puts in into a bowl and covers it with peanut oil. Then you eat.

Since YouTube is blocked in China, I have embeded this video on my own. Hope it looks ok. Right click on it to view controls.

It is spicy on the way in and on the way out. Here are some pictures of me after eating it.

Since youtube started working again yesterday, I was able to see some of my subscription's recent work. I came across this piece about food safety in Beijing and thought it would fit well with this piece.

Let me just say that we buy our vegetable from wherever, cause they just need to be washed and actually, the farmers markets often have a better selection of vegetables. When it comes to meat on the other hand, everyone in their right mind will be buying that from the supermarket because they have refrigeration and they also have some sort of organization which could be held responsible for the products they sell. If you buy things from the farmers market, there is no receipt, no government controlling them. Even the small super market like the one in video has unsafe meat. The local Chinese are also into cleanliness and are purchasing more and more meat from supermarkets and less from the peasant markets.

On another note, the girls who are talking about the fruit were most certainly Korean. You can tell by the shape of their face, make-up and the way that they pronounce their words. They have a really, really hard time with the "s" sound.

Comments

[Teresa]

Oh my gosh, Jake! ha Can you say "a big fat visit to a Chinese hospital and then 6 additional visits for IVs for dysentery?" ha ha Nothing like an arm full of holes from antibiotic injections. This happened to me after venturing to eat "chicken on a stick" from a street vendor. Stupid me didn't see him cook it so no telling how long that little dead chicken on a stick had been sitting there. But I learned my lesson. Had a great 1 yuan egg sandwich from the "street" yesterday but out of an abundance of caution, told them to leave off the meat! Bu meat! ha I hope to never experience the 310 PLA Hospital again even though all the nurses there were so great! Upon my first visit, I called my boss (who is American) and said, "Oh my gosh, there's a tree growing out of this building!" ha Nothing like having to go to the temporary clinic building that was constructed over the sidewalk....trees and all! :) As my boss would say, "Welcome to China!" :)

[Stephen]

I'd most likely sweat my ass off eating that. I had Pho a couple months ago and I was literally dripping into the bowl of soup, it was pretty disgusting. I think when I left the restaurant I looked like I had just got out of the shower.