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.