奶 - Milk

[Nǎi - "Nye"]

Hope everyone had a great milk day. The word specifically for what one refers to as milk in English is 牛奶 [Niúnǎi - "Nyoo Nye", Literally: Cow Milk]. The origin for the character can be read from the two radicals that create it, themselves characters. 女 [Nǚ - "Nü"] on the left means "woman" and on the right 乃 [Nǎi - "Nye"] meant in ancient china "pregnant woman" and depicts a profile view of breasts and belly. Today, pregnant is written as 孕 [Yùn - "Yoon"] and is the same profile of a pregnant woman, but this time with a child, 子 [Zi - "Zeh"].

奶 can also be used as a term of respect for a married woman similar to "Misses" or as a derogatory term for a mistress of a married man 二奶 [Èrnǎi - "'R' Nye", Literally: 2nd Milk]. Doubled as 奶奶, it is the name you would use for your paternal grandmother.

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Milk in China is a somewhat more rare commodity than in the US. Dairy departments in general are rather smaller than you would be used to, and most if not all of the butter and cheese are imported from Europe. A normal amount and price for milk is 15元/qt. (or more) corresponding to around $10/gal. As you can imagine, with 1,370,536,875 people the ratio of cows to people becomes quite low and most of this production goes towards infant formula.

The reason there isn't more market for adult dairy is...

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Lactase persistence. This is the continued activity of the enzyme lactase, which processes lactose, into adulthood. This is also known as lactose intolerance. Lactose is a protein prevalent in milk and the ability to digest it is essential to mammal infants.

The ability to consume and digest lactose into adulthood is a recent evolution in few human populations. Only after animal domestication was there positive pressure for a lactase persistence mutation, and it arose in significant frequencies around 7,500 years ago in the Balkan Peninsula and Central Europe. It arose separately in the Near East, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Asian Steppes.

In general, most of the world is unable to digest lactose with estimates at around 75% of world adults. Those without lactase persistence may be able to consume small quantities of milk products, but in general will experience digestive problems if larger quantities are consumed.

Northern European populations have around 95% lactase persistence in adults. Chinese populations have the opposite, around 5% lactase persistence in adults. This has led to a culture that has developed without dairy products for most of its history, and therefore has low modern consumption outside of infancy.

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However, the Chinese dairy market in general has also taken a fairly recent hit in sales caused by mistrust of quality.

In late 2008, nearly 300,000 babies were sickened with 6 confirmed deaths as a result of milk tainted with the chemical melamine. Melamine causes kidney and urinary problems in humans and is universally banned in food production. Milk adulterated with melamine will have higher test levels of protein, which is how milk products are generally graded on quality.

These two are from the same
brand, but the one on the right
assures no added chemicals
for twice the price.

In most cases, dairy farmers were sold "protein powder" by salespersons which will increase the protein levels of their milk production to ensure their milk was not rejected by collection stations, but were unwittingly tainting the milk. One company, Sanlu [三鹿, Literally: Three Deer], was complacent in the adulteration and unresponsive to complaints. Eventually, several top executives of Sanlu were charged and imprisoned and a few producers of melamine were executed.

You can get more details from Wikipedia:

2008 Chinese milk scandal

Sanlu Group

Suffice to say that the average Chinese citizen had their faith in dairy severely wracked after this. Searching for alternatives...

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Or Walnut milk?

Soybean milk received a surge in interest. Now, you may be familiar with Soymilk, but this is a different product than you may be used to. Soybean milk is made by griding dry soybeans with water to create an emulsion similar to cow milk. Soymilk as usually known in the US, is soybean milk that contains additives to make it taste as indistinguishable from cow milk as possible. Soymilk attempts to recreate everything about cow milk for consumers that for health or personal reasons can not consume cow milk. Soybean milk only has a visual similarity and vague taste similarity to cow milk. I mean, it obviously tastes just like soybeans.

~$66

You can buy soybean milk pretty readily almost any store or restaurant, or buy a machine to make your own at home. To use a soybean milk maker, you only need to wash and (optionally) soak the beans then add them to the machine and start. The machine will cycle through heating and blending the beans and the final product will be a hot, frothy, delicious[?] batch of soybean milk.

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Expensive in the US?
Try $4.⁶⁵ for 9 oz.

Now if you are looking for something to consume your milk (soy or cow) with, you may be thinking of products fairly ubiquitous in the western world. However, cereal has been relegated to a pittance of a presence next to oatmeal and other porridge, likely at great cost to the companies attempting to break into the Chinese market, and ingredients for PB&J are in no better a situation.

Both peanut butter and jams (sorry, no jelly) are shoehorned in next to the mighty presence of honey. There are no less than 6 varieties, not brands, of honey, but only two brands of peanut butter. Skippy and Great Value, crunchy and smooth. Jams at least have a few surprising varieties; e.g. pineapple. Sliced white bread is equally hard to locate, and appears to be only available in groups of six to eight slices for roughly a dollar.

If you thought instead about cookies, you're in luck. Specifically about...

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Oreos. A slogan of Oreos was once "Milk's favorite cookie", but an apt slogan today would be "China's favorite cookie" because, well, it is. After a rough start and almost giving up, Oreo reformulated it's cookies for China and is now the leading seller in the country. The chocolate cookies taste less terrible and actually nice, and the creme is less waxy and unfortunately less sweet. I also felt they were more crispy and had a lot less tendency to cake on every surface of my teeth. 

The presence of Oreos here is really quite surprising, and constitutes a majority of the aisle-space of Wal-mart, the remaining products majority imitators. However in a local snack store, I don't recall seeing them at all.

I'm a bit out of touch on Oreo varieties available in the US, but I would bet that the selection in China exceeds it. There's original, chocolate, strawberry, raspberry, bananna, whipped tea, whipped vanilla, birthday cake, raspberry/blueberry, grape/peach, orange/mango, vanilla cookie, vanilla cookie chocolate, vanilla cookie strawberry, as well as 3 types of soft cookies and 8 types of wafer cookies. 

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Perhaps next I can write about something outside of the grocery...

鸡 - Chicken

[Jī - as in the letter "G"]

 

You may not have realized this, but many people within China will tell you:

China looks like a chicken.

The feet are the islands of Taiwan (Which the PRC still considers a possession) and Hainan, and they make it look a little cartoonish.

Before the early 20th century, Mongolia was also part of China and the mainland was interpreted to look more like a leaf. Imperialist Japan was extremely hostile towards China up until the end of WWII, so Japan is a worm off the east coast eating the Chinese leaf. After Mongolian independence from China and Russia, the Chinese Chicken emerges and the Chinese began successfully repelling Japanese attacks. Clearly this is because Chickens eat worms.


In elementary school, D suffered untold mental anguish because to her the Korean Peninsula was obviously the beak of the Chicken separated. Why could the Chinese and Korean governments come to an agreement to make the Chicken complete? Others may jokingly say that additional to North and South Korea, Vietnam and perhaps Laos should also be added for more realistic rendering of feet.

Adding the peninsula would make it look more like a duck anyways.

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There's a stray chicken in my building complex. 

At least I think it's stray. It has something on one of it's legs that may signify an owner, but I see it roam around pretty much everywhere without a single person interacting with it. It does not venture beyond the security gate, but I've seen it walk around pretty much everywhere else outside. In the road, in the bushes, under benches, outside of shops. Nobody seems to acknowledge it, but I think it's a pretty awesome looking chicken.

There's also three or so dogs [狗 - Gǒu - "go"] that may or may not have owners that regularly hang out outside and everywhere, too, but none of them mess with the chicken.

As you can see it's pretty fat, so I'm pretty amazed that the dogs or someone have not eaten it by now.

Which leads me to...

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If you are looking to eat some chicken in China, prepare for a bit of a cultural lesson on acceptable items when your dish is served. Deboning chicken seems completely unheard of here, so anything you order containing chicken will have bones in it. This may seem just a minor nuisance to you at first, but even dishes with smaller cuts (e.g. not a leg) will still have bones in them that have been cleaved along with the meat. Soups and stir-frys will have pieces of chicken with equal parts delicious meat and lip-poking, easily-fracturable, not-good-kind-of-crunchy bones.

I was going to get a picture for you, but I really did not want to endure through chicken bones again.

Sorry.

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So you decided instead to just buy your own chicken at the store, debone it, and cook it yourself to save your tender mouth. Great, let's go to the meat department of our local Wal-Mart! It's in the back of the store, as usual, and here's the chicken:

Hey what a deal! $1.⁵⁰/lb for chicken legs if you are willing to use tongs to grab them from on top of an open air pile of ice! Like this lady is about to do, you place them into a plastic bag like you would produce, then take them to an attendant at a scale and get them priced.

You will find all cuts of chicken at the meat department counter, including whole chickens. In the cooler area you can find package deals on meal combinations. These are for soups, and you can see the black-skinned chickens available.

I was going to get a picture of the packaged whole chickens (black and white) because they way they are packaged makes them look just like they are sleeping and featherless. The reason I did not is that there are about three attendants standing right near them that will talk your ear off about how great Tyson is, and would not get out of the way for me to take a quick sneaky-photo.

Perhaps I'll try again and post it in the comments.

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Now what about eggs [鸡蛋 - Jīdàn - "G" Dan]. You will find them in the produce department, unrefridgerated. There are a ton of different types that I have yet to figure out. Just about a third of the produce department in this store is eggs.

These eggs pictured are about $2.⁰⁰ a dozen, I think they are somehow special. You can see on the opposite side of the signs here are loose eggs. You can fill up a produce bag with eggs and, if I recall correctly, they are priced by weight. It's normal to see people walking around with a sack of around 25 eggs.

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Walking around the meat department you may have seen a food pictured and wondered what that could possibly be. Well, it is best represented in the snack aisle, actually. These are chicken feet, or as I prefer to call them, chicken claws. You can buy them fresh or, as in the snack aisle, pickled.

Pickled chicken claws taste like pickled everything. Vinegary with a bit of a snap to them, and you can get them in a variety of pickled flavors to suit your taste. There's even individually wrapped claws in snack stores to quell your craving, next to the cookies, candy, and dried fruit. Now there is almost no meat on a chicken claw, the aim is to actually just eat the skin; the pickley, pale, crunchy skin. I do not care for them.

It's a 鸡 thang.

Let's get started...

     Well, if you are reading this, you apparently have some interest in hearing what I have been and will be doing in China. Great! So, let's begin.

     If you are unfamiliar with the details leading up to this, my wife and I moved to China on 30 Dec and will be staying here de facto permanently until we decide otherwise. You will have found this blog through one of my social media profiles, so I will refer to my wife simply as "D". D is originally from central China and all of her family currently resides within the country. She came to the US to study at OSU, and this is where we met. We moved to Bentonville, AR last year about this time when she was offered a job at Wal-Mart corporate offices. We have now relocated to China for her to work at Wal-Mart China's corporate office, which was generally a good move for both us and the company. I do not speak Chinese very well, I'm 1.9m tall, and very white. My Chinese is progressing nicely, but unfortunately the other two aspects are rather immutable.

     I've went ahead and created permanent pages for the two biggest questions I've received from absolutely everybody and you can find those on the navigation pane on the right. I'm not sure how I will go about adding posts, but it will probably be topic oriented focusing on a single theme each entry rather than a chronological recap of what I have done in the last few days. If you are interested to know something please comment and I will comment back a response or put something in the next post I create if it seems like an interesting enough question. I'm definitely willing to do some investigative reporting, and currently have a fair amount of time on my hands at the moment, so I have time to go track down whatever it is you might be looking to answer; e.g. What kind of local flowers are there? How much is cab fare? What does a Chinese restaurant really look like? Can you convince somebody you are Steve Jobs?

     I'll get working on something interesting soon, and I'll let everyone know via social media.

-J