Archive: 2004-09-08
Last day in Beijing, and back to Shanghai
It’s the last evening of my China trip, and I’m sitting in my hotel room with a few cans of beer and a pack of boiled chicken’s feet with chili. I actually developed a taste for them in Birmingham of all places, and the only non-obscene expression that I can say in Cantonese is “fong zao yart long”—“one plate of chickens’ feet”. These ones are not bad at all for a vacuum-packed snack from the convenience store. Remember: chickens’ feet are a delicacy. Basically, that boils down to: a chicken gives you a whole body’s worth of meet, but only two small feet. Ergo, the feet are rarer and more valuable. Cynically, you might argue that, by the same token, that the chicken’s beak is even more of adelicacy. However, the feet actually are tasty, in spite of the fiddly tiny bones.