REFLECTIONS IN A CHINESE EYE

China's Corrupt Food Chain

An April report by China’s national broadcaster CCTV detailed the manufacturing process followed by 16 companies that sell preserved fruit. It made the meat-packing methods described by Upton Sinclair in “The Jungle” a century ago seem pale by comparison.

Enlarge This Image

\

Qilai Shen/European Pressphoto Agency

Shoppers look at packs of fresh milk at a supermarket in Shanghai in April 2011

For Op-Ed, follow @nytopinion and to hear from the editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, follow @andyrNYT.

Rotten peaches pickled in outdoor pools surrounded by garbage are spiked with sodium metabisulfite to keep the fruit looking fresh and with bleaching agents and additives harmful to the human liver and kidneys. The peaches are packed in uncleaned bags that previously held animal feed and then shipped off to big-brands stores.

read more The New York Times

Food festival in China celebrates canine culinary culture - with 15,000 dogs on the menu

WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT

The delicacies on offer might not be to everyone's taste, but that didn't stop thousands of visitors attending a food festival in Yulin, eastern China.

For the town is recognised throughout the region for producing some of the most flavoursome dog meat in the world.

More than 15,000 dogs were slaughtered to feed connoisseurs of canine flesh at the week-long festival, which kicked off at the weekend.

                    Slaughtered: A trader in Yulin transports several dog carcasses on his motorbike

Farmers in the region are highly respected for raising different breeds of dog specifically for the table.

Local Lu Hin explained: 'It is just like other meat. Smaller animals tend to be more delicate and sweeter while very big dogs have a strong, muscular taste.

On the menu: A butcher prepares dog meat carcasses. More than 15,000 of the animals were butchered for this week's festival

'Dog is popular as a dish in China but we are the home of it. We proved that when we started the festival a few years ago and everybody accepts that the best dog meat dishes come from Yulin.

'That was why we created the festival and the number of visitors we get is a testimony to the fact that everybody recognises how good the dog meat is from the region.'

Final journey: Dogs look out of their cages from a truck on a motorway on the outskirts of China's capital Beijing. Dog meat is a delicacy in China, especially in the southern provinces (File photo)

Dog flesh - or 'fragrant meat' as it is known in the region - has been a popular food source in China for thousands of years and is believed to provide medicinal benefits.

However, the industry has come under fire in recent years over concerns about cruelty. Authorities are now proposing to draw up legislation banning the consumption of dog meet.

During the 2008 Olympic games, dog meat was taken off the menus of official Olympic restaurants in order to avoid offending foreign visitors.

Mail Online
 

 

China’s Cheap Vegetables Problem

A Chinese vegetable vendor waits for customers at a market in Hefei, east China’s Anhui province on April 14, 2011.

David Gray/Reuters

When China suffers inflation, food prices are always a significant part of the problem. But the conundrum China’s leaders face with this latest round of inflation is somewhat bizarre: While the country’s consumer price index is running at a near three-year high, vegetables are so cheap that tons and tons of them are being left to rot away in the fields.

Of course, vegetables are still expensive in the cities, and only in the cities, and that’s exactly where the problem is. According to the official Xinhua News Agency (in Chinese), fat, juicy Chinese cabbages are selling at one yuan per 500 grams in city markets — ten times the price the cabbage growers can fetch in the countryside.

Why, with urbanites paying such princely sums, are farmers leaving their cabbages on the ground? Because middlemen, transportation companies and the government itself are pocketing the bulk of the price differential.

Logistics-induced costs accounts for two thirds of the total cost for vegetables nationwide, Zhou Wangjun, vice director of the National Development and Reform Commission’s price section, is quoted by Xinhua saying.

Read more at ChinaRealTimeReport

 

Beer Drinking and What It Says About China’s Economy

The average Chinese adult drank about a half a bottle of beer in 1961, less than the average resident of Iran. By 1991, consumption topped 27 bottles a year, but still lagged behind 117 other nations, according to the World Health Organization.

By 2007, the Chinese were drinking almost 103 beers per adult a year. While that’s still considerably less per capita than in beer gardens like the Czech Republic (where the average adult drinks about 471 beers a year) it’s enough to make China by far the world’s largest market for beer.

That story can be repeated for any number of consumer goods, of course. But what’s interesting about beer is that the trend is not likely to last. A paper by two economists at the University of Leuven, in beer-loving Belgium, finds that people drink more beer as their incomes rise, until they make about $22,000 a year.

Then they start drinking less beer.

Read more at The New York Times

Famous Chinese Teas

In China there is the legendary list of the 10 Famous Chinese Teas. Most people have heard of it and it is a topic of debate. The problem is that there is no steadfast and official list. Every person seems to have their own list and no two are exactly the same. There are some however which appear on virtually every list. Here you will find our list. We have created it after years of studying the Chinese Tea Market. If you wish to debate our list,or send us your own, we'd be more than happy to hear from you. We'll also put your list on our website to show the lists of different people.

1) Dragon Well Tea
The Chinese name for Dragon Well Tea is Long Jing. This tea originated in Dragon Well Village near the city of Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province. The rarest and most expensive still come from the Village. A Green Tea, Dragon Well Tea the most famous of all of the famous Chinese teas.Click the link below to go to our Green Tea page and learn more about this wonderful tea and the legends that surround it.
Click here to go to our Dragon Well Tea page

2) Bi Luo Chun Tea
The Literal translation of Bi Luo Chun Tea is Green Snail Spring Tea. This tea is grown around the city of Suzhou in Jiangsu Province. Bi Luo Chun Tea is a type of Green Tea. Click the link below to go to our Bi Luo Chun Tea page and learn more about its imperial history and wonderful legends.

Read more at Chinese Tea Culture

China's cup overflows for fine wine

Hundreds of bidders pack the ballroom of the posh Mandarin Oriental hotel in Hong Kong, armed with paddles, heaping plates of gourmet food and glasses of wine.

Lot after lot of French Bordeaux and burgundy comes up for auction. Each time, a bidding war breaks out. A case of 1982 Chateau Lafite Roths child sells for more than $71,000 U.S., about $6,000 a bottle, well above the estimated price.

"This is exceeding our expectations," says Jeff Zacharia, president of Zachys, the New York wine auction house that held the event this month. "We have a lot of people from mainland China here today, and they feel the Lafite is the wine to have."

The scene has become increasingly familiar in Hong Kong as record wine prices, surging imports and sales make this city the high-end wine capital of Asia.

In 2010, Hong Kong overtook New York as the world's biggest locale for wine auctions. (At a Sotheby's Hong Kong auction in October 2010, three 1869 bottles of Chateau Lafite Rothschild sold for a record-breaking $232,692 apiece.) Wine imports to Hong Kong - a gateway for the region - are also setting records. And sales of mid- and low-end wines have been rising since the Hong Kong government eliminated wine taxes in 2008.

Read more at APP

Colonel Sanders’ Secret Ingredient: China

Colonel Sanders is storming through the nation that gave us General Tso’s Chicken.

In the U.S., Yum Brands (YUM), which owns fast-food chains KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, has long been an also-ran to industry rival McDonald’s (MCD). But in stark contrast to its lackluster stateside performance, Yum’s offshore fortunes are booming, thanks to a remarkable expansion in China and other emerging nations.

As Yum’s overseas surge grows more eye-catching, investors have become increasingly intrigued.

In the past year, YUM shares (which, let’s be honest, had lots of room for improvement) have significantly outperformed MCD on a percentage basis.

Read more at FORBES

What Inflation In China Feels Like

Inflation according to the KFC Index.

Investors are worried about the latest headlines reporting inflation in China, but average people here have felt the effects of unreported inflation for the last two years, and especially the last 12 months.

You have already heard of a few items in China whose prices have spiraled out of control — houses, for one; garlic, for another — but at least not everyone needs to buy a house, and not everyone absolutely needs to eat garlic. But you’d like to eat eggs and pork, right, and cook them using some oil? (Maybe with some garlic). Or you’d like your restaurant to do that for you without raising its prices.

To make this picture clearer, the valuable blog China Hush gives a visual rundown of how much less of this stuff you can buy for 100 yuan ($15) compared to the same time last year. The most eye-popping number: 30 fewer apples. See their whole list, with price changes included.

Read more at Forbes

Scotch whisky to get brand boost in China

A waiter offers whiskey during a Venezuelan-American Chamber of Commerce party in Caracas October 11, 2007.

Credit: Reuters/Jorge Silva/Files

LONDON | Sat Nov 6, 2010 5:50am IST

Scotch Whisky will get special brand protection in China in a move expected to boost sales of the spirit at the expense of counterfeit versions, the British government said on Saturday.

Business Secretary Vince Cable will sign an agreement on Monday during a visit to Beijing so that the name Scotch Whisky is restricted to the drink produced in Scotland.

The Scotch Whisky Association has been lobbying for such a step for three years. The group estimates that exports to China could double over the next five years from an annual figure of 80 million pounds ($130 million).

Chinese producers have jumped in to take advantage of the boom in sales, with at least 200 imitation products identified in the past two years, according to media reports.

"Scotch Whisky is a brand recognised worldwide so it is important all consumers should have confidence that the product they are buying is genuine," Cable said in a statement.

"This agreement means greater legal protection in China, which will only help strengthen export sales of this successful Scottish product," he added.

Google Hosted News

Food lovers feel the pinch as China bans barbecues

Beijing, Nov 6 (IANS) Barbecue food lovers are getting a little agitated as major barbecue venues in China's southern Guangzhou city were closed down to ensure good air quality for the upcoming 2010 Asian Games and Asian Para Games.

'I enjoy going out for barbecues, but now I can't,' Feng Daiyan, a Guangzhou resident, told China Daily Friday.

 Feng, 30, said he usually goes to a barbecue with friends, colleagues or family members every month.

'Barbecues are my favourite food in the autumn and winter, and I hope Guangzhou's outdoor barbecue business will re-open soon after the Games,' he added.

Authorities in the Guangzhou provincial capital issued a special notice last month banning outdoor barbecues from Nov 1 to Dec 20.

The Asian Games will open next Friday and end Nov 27, while the first-ever Asian Para Games run Dec 12-19.

Read more at Sify

Three things you didn't know about Sichuan peppers

If you live in Chengdu, you might feel like your tongue has become well acquainted with Sichuan peppers (known in Chinese as hua jiao), but the beloved tongue anesthetic has its secrets. For one, the Sichuan "pepper" isn't actually a pepper; it's a berry. Here are some other facts to keep you distracted the next time you're gulping water like a fish after a mouthful of the berries of doom.

1. Apart from "a tingling numbness," there is a scientific name for the sensation that Sichuan peppers inflicts on your tongue: paresthesia. You may have heard of it before -– the sensation is commonly known as "pins and needles." While capsaicin is responsible for the spiciness of chili peppers, the active ingredient in Sichuan peppers is "hydroxyl alpha sanshool," or sanshool for short. How sanshool induces pins and needles on your tongue has remained a matter of debate, but one theory states that sanshool induces sensitivity on nonsensitive nerves, causing a neurological confusion. Simply put, a confused tongue equals a numb tongue.

Read more at gochengdoo

Video: Hard Sell for China Vending Machine?

Ever walk through a subway station and find yourself gripped with a sudden, irrepressible desire for live crab? A company in China has you covered.

Twin Lakes Crab Co., based in Gaoshun County roughly an hour-and-a-half drive south of the southern Chinese city of Nanjing, recently unveiled what appears to be the world’s first live crab vending machine.

The machine, installed in the Nanjing subway and first reported in English by Shanghaiist (see Chinese report here), sells crabs at prices ranging from 15 to 50 yuan, or roughly two to seven dollars, depending on size. The crustaceans in question are hairy crabs, a regional specialty treasured throughout China and elsewhere for their roe. And since no one would dare eat hairy crab without ginger-infused vinegar, the bottom shelf offers bottles of that as well.

Not surprisingly, the machine has caught the interest of Japanese media, with one Japanese TV station producing a video that details how it all works (h/t: Dailymotion):

Read more at The Wall Street Journal - Japan RealTime

Archaeologists discover seafood on menu of ancient emperor who lived 1,000 miles from the sea

XI'AN, Oct. 30 (Xinhua) -- Ancient Chinese emperors in inland China may have dined on seafood that came from the eastern China coast more than one thousand miles away, archaeologists said Friday, after investigating an imperial mausoleum that dates back 2,000 years.

"We discovered the remains of sea snails and clams among the animal bone fossils in a burial pit," said Hu Songmei, a Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology researcher.

"Since the burial pit appears to be that of the official in charge of the emperor's diet, we conclude that seafood must have been part of the imperial menu," Hu said.

The discovery was made in the Hanyang Mausoleum in the ancient capital of Chang'an, today's Xi'an City in northwest China's Shaanxi Province.

The monument is the joint tomb of Western Han Dynasty (202 BC-8 AD) Emperor Jing and his empress. Archaeology at the mausoleum began in the 1980s.

Since 1998, researchers from the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology have been excavating the burial pit east of the mausoleum.

Read more at XINHUANET

Obesity in China

Obesity is on the rise in China. Photo: healthhabits.ca

American Junk Food: Why So Popular in China?

Spreading like wildfire

Fast food's popularity in China is no secret. Take a walk down the street of any major city and you are sure to pass countless signs for KFC, McDonald's, and Pizza Hut – sometimes within fifty meters of one another. Lest you think this is only a “big city” problem, consider the fact that, as of 2010, there are fast food restaurants in over 650 cities throughout China. In this day and age, consuming junk food on a daily basis is becoming the norm, not the exception.

Last year, the only industry to grow within the food sector was fast food, a fact that is largely due to China's rapidly increasing consumption. According to online newspaper The Independent, the fast food industry in China grew 13%, compared to just 2.9% in the U.S. It is easy to see why this growth is so high when you consider that Yum Brands (the parent company of KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell) is opening, on average, one new KFC a day. As of earlier this year, there were over 560 Pizza Hut's, 1,200 McDonald's, and 3,000 KFC's throughout the country (www.money.cnn.com). But at one new KFC per day, even statistics that are a couple of months old can not paint the full picture of what is happening in China.

So what is happening in China? Obesity rates are rising at unprecedented rates, causing great concern among both local and international doctors. While a large part of China was suffering from starvation less than fifty years ago, nowadays it is overeating that is killing the population. The Education of Ministry reports that 15% of Chinese children ages ten to twelve years old are overweight, while another 8% are considered medically obese. These statistics are shocking, even when compared with other countries that have more of a reputation for being overweight. USA Today cites Yang Qing, the director of the Health Ministry, as saying that "The speed of the [weight] increase greatly exceeds the growth trends found in Western developed countries.” Perhaps the most amazing part of this situation is that it has all happened in the last decade or so.

Rare tea proves to be flavour of month for China's investors

New market ... Chinese tea. Photo: Marina Oliphant

Chinese financial speculators are caught in a buying frenzy for a variety of tea that has seen its prices soar to levels only rivalled by the finest wines.

The rare tea, picked from bushes in the tea gardens of the Ming Dynasty emperors, has become the latest craze for wealthy investors with their sights on a quick profit.

Prices for the Dahongpao tea - which is grown only in a small mountainous area of eastern coastal province of Fujian - have increased tenfold since the middle of last year, with online tea traders selling a single kilo for more than £1000 ($1624), the country's state media has reported.

"I never thought it would get so expensive," a tea producer, Wu Zongyan, said. "It's one price one day, another price another day. Between when we pick the leaves and when it's ready to sell, the price has already gone up."

Chinese traditionally prize tea as the symbolic heart of national culture and believe that in terms of varieties and taste differentials, it is a rival to wine.

China is prone to extreme speculative bubbles as opportunity-starved investors seek a home for their cash outside the traditional stock and property markets, which are themselves notoriously volatile and speculative.

Read more at The Sydney Morning Herald

Chinese acquire taste for French wine

China has overtaken the UK and Germany to become the top export market for Bordeaux wines in value for the first time this year – and the Chinese are increasingly learning how to savour good wine, not just how to buy it, according to the Conseil Interprofessionnel du Vin de Bordeaux.

Sales of Bordeaux wines in China have doubled every year for the past five years but, in the first half of this year, China and Hong Kong surpassed the UK to take top position for exports of Bordeaux wine by volume – and by value, now totalling €90m ($118m), according to Thomas Jullien, Asia marketing director of the CIVB.

Germany was relegated to second place, in terms of volume, and the UK to second place in terms of value. China and Hong Kong – where many sales are also destined for the mainland – were fourth in terms of volume last year.

But wine consumption habits in China are becoming more sophisticated, says Mr Jullien.

“Five or six years ago, importers did not even want to taste the wines, they just wanted to look at the price list,” he says.

“Now when you go to a wine fair, people are tasting the wines, and they realise wine is not just about brand and price.”

Read more at FT

Is A High-End “Mooncake Bubble” Forming In China?

Lack Of Clear Standards For Delicacy-Stuffed Mooncakes Worry Some Consumers

Mooncakes are traditionally consumed during the Mid-Autumn Festival

The Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋節, also known as the Moon Festival) is just around the corner, falling on September 22 this year. Along with a litany of other traditions, which differ depending on location and family, that take place on this day, perhaps the best-known is the sharing of mooncakes — dense pastries generally filled with lotus seed paste and containing anything from red bean to preserved duck egg yolks and ham. Nothing if not an acquired taste, a box of mooncakes usually runs for the equivalent of US$5-10 to “the sky’s the limit,” as — like any product on the market nowadays — even the humble mooncake has gotten a high-end makeover in mainland China.

Though the concept of the “luxury mooncake” isn’t all that new, with mooncakes stuffed with rare and expensive delicacies having existed in Hong Kong and elsewhere in the Greater China region for years, only in the last 10 or 15 years have they really hit the scene in the mainland. Growing in popularity along with the number of middle- and upper-middle class Chinese, pricey mooncakes — selling for as much as 5-10x more than those made by local bakeries — have even been created by foreign brands like Haagen-Dazs, Starbucks, and hoteliers like the St. Regis, Hilton and Mandarin Oriental. As Luxuo reports today, this year the Swiss chocolatier Lindt has gotten in on the action as well this year, producing a line of luxury mooncakes for Coco at the Mira in Hong Kong.

Not everyone is convinced that the high-end mooncake is always such a good thing, however. With prices for mooncakes with exotic fillings like abalone skyrocketing this year, and unclear safety and price standards in place, some in China are worried that we might be seeing something of a “mooncake bubble” forming. While this is — of course — less important than potential housing or financial bubbles, the discussion going on in the Chinese-language media sheds interesting light on a phenomenon completely alien to most people outside of China.

“I have no way of knowing whether you've got real ingredients, so how can I know whether you'll be delicious?" (Image via Southern Daily)

Read more at Jing Daily

Expo Gives International Chefs a Foothold in Shanghai

6SENS at the French Pavilion has been a Shanghai World Expo sensation

Aside from crowds, hours-long lines, and foreign brands hoping to make a splash with Chinese consumers, the Shanghai Expo has brought an impressive array of cuisines to a city that previously had few such options. Several of the pavilions are hosting restaurants run by internationally renowned chefs. Will these bastions of haute cuisine serve as celebrity-chef stepping-stones into China? Here are a few of the contenders.

6SENS offers Mediterranean fare in a luxurious 1,200-square-foot space in the roof garden of the French pavilion. Created by twin chefs Jacques and Laurent Pourcel, the menu offers their trademark “contrasting tastes,” with items like sea scallops carpaccio and rack of lamb with bouillon emulsion and squid-ink risotto, as well as an Asian-influenced Pavilion Dessert: a cream of green matcha tea with a crunchy center of Jivara chocolate served on a hazelnut biscuit. With furniture from French luxury design house Ligne Roset and a state-of-the-art kitchen displaying chefs in action on plasma screens, 6SENS is as much about the experience as the food. The menu runs between 300 and 600 yuan (US$44-88)—not the price range of French dining abroad, but it’s still expensive, even extravagant, to locals. With a customer base that runs 650-850 guests a day and 80 percent Chinese, 6SENS is setting the standard for refined taste in Shanghai this season.

Read more at Jing Daily

Changing diet can save lives and money

— This column continues a coverage of a 2006 book by T. Colin Campbell and Thomas Campbell II on nutrition and disease.

In an earlier column, those mammals following a plant based diet, particularly with regard to protein showed big reductions in the Cancer rate. For rats fed Aflatoxin (a carcinogen) each day, cancers progressed rapidly with animal protein diet; shifting to a plant protein diet with the Aflatoxin caused a regression of cancer in these same rats.

While cancer in the U.S. kills 400,000 a year, heart disease fells 700,000 Americans each year (about 2,000 a day).

 The Campbells had access to nutrition and disease data from rural and semi-rural China and were able to compare their data with studies of the nutrition and diseases of Americans. Chinese living in their cities are adopting western style eating (fast food, much more meat) and are less physically active than their rural counterparts.

The average American gets over 30 percent of their calories in fat, twice as much as the rural Chinese. The American diet is about 15 percent of protein by calories, with over 90 percent of this protein from animals.

Read more at Times News

Unsafe at Any Meal

Monterey, Calif.

EVERY day, about 200,000 Americans are sickened by contaminated food. Every year, about 325,000 are hospitalized by a food-borne illness. And the number who are killed annually by something they ate is roughly the same as the number of Americans who’ve been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2003.

Those estimates, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suggest the scale of the problem. But they fail to convey the human toll. The elderly and people with compromised immune systems face an elevated risk from food-borne pathogens like listeria, campylobacter and salmonella. By far the most vulnerable group, however, are children under the age of 4. Our food will never be perfectly safe — and yet if the Senate fails to pass the food safety legislation now awaiting a vote, tens of thousands of American children will become needlessly and sometimes fatally ill.

Almost one year ago, the House of Representatives passed the Food Safety Enhancement Act with bipartisan support. A similar bill, the F.D.A. Food Safety Modernization Act, was unanimously approved by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee in November. This legislation would grant the Food and Drug Administration, which has oversight over 80 percent of the nation’s food, the authority to test widely for dangerous pathogens and improve the agency’s ability to trace outbreaks back to their source. Most important, it would finally give the agency the power to order the recall of contaminated foods — and to punish companies that knowingly sell them.

This bill is supported by an unusual set of advocacy groups: the American Public Health Association, Consumers Union, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the United States Chamber of Commerce and the Grocery Manufacturers Association, among others. Last week, a poll for Consumers Union found that 80 percent of Americans want Congress to empower the F.D.A. to recall tainted foods.

You’d think that a bill with such broad support, on a public health issue of such fundamental importance, would easily reach the floor of the Senate for a vote. But it has been languishing, stuck in some legislative limbo. If it fails to gain passage by the end of this session, Congress will have to start from scratch again next year.

Food processors reluctant to oppose the bill openly will be delighted if it dies a quiet death. That’s because, right now, very few cases of food poisoning are ever actually linked to what the person ate, and companies that sell contaminated products routinely avoid liability. The economic cost is instead imposed on society. And it’s a huge cost. According to a recent study sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts, the annual health-related cost of food-borne illness in the United States is about $152 billion.

Read more at The New York Times

Food exporters hungry for China's big market

A billion multiplied by just about any figure, no matter how small, is still a big number. For centuries, salesmen have done the math and dreamed about how much they could sell if everyone in China could buy just one of whatever they had to sell.

But as we've found out, the Chinese are pretty keen on making things themselves. That includes food. The Chinese have demonstrated time and time again they are unwilling to place their nation's food security in the hands of foreign powers.

That's unlikely to change.

However, recent signs that China's agricultural production may not be keeping up with its rapidly growing economy are once again fuelling speculation and boundless optimism over how much it will buy, and from whom.

It has politicians and trade envoys, including Canadian Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz, beating a path to its door hoping to help out.

Ritz has been to China three times within the past year in a bid to free up market access for canola and beef and put his stamp of approval on the latest wheat deal.

With a growing population of 1.3 billion, China represents tremendous market potential for Canadian agriculture and food products, a federal release said earlier this month. China is Canada's third-largest trading partner after the United States and European Union, with two-way trade of over $50 billion, including $3.1 billion in agriculture and food.

Canada has had a long trading relationship with China, after the Canadian Wheat Board first agreed to sell wheat into that market 50 years ago. The historic deal, penned at a time when trade with the Communist country was taboo, is credited with saving thousands of people from famine caused by drought.

Rread more at the Winnipeg Free Press

Dreaming of Mung Beans and Health Insurance

Posted by Evan Osnos

 

The hot new health book in China this spring wouldn’t have sounded out of place on U.S. best-seller lists: “Eat Away the Diseases You Get from Eating.” That was the mantra of Zhang Wuben, a forty-seven-year-old Chinese nutritional guru who leapt to national prominence after his charismatic appearance on a popular talk show. Before long, hopeful patients were travelling from around the country, crowding into his clinics for coveted appointments—ten minutes for three hundred yuan, with a waiting list that stretched until 2012. (Well-heeled devotees could get in for an emergency session by paying five thousand yuan, or more than seven hundred dollars.) More often than not, the great man’s advice was consistent and easy to remember: eat mung beans—bushels and bushels of them, sometimes more than five pounds a day.

His techniques were so popular that the price for mung beans tripled across the country. And, as fast as he emerged, Zhang and his mung beans lost their magic. By May, Chinese newspapers were full of stories about his rise and fall. As Eric Mu writes on Danwei this week, in a terrific look back at the Zhang Wuben story, Zhang’s capacity for self-invention would have ranked him among the finest of American hucksters:

He claimed his family to be “aristocrats” of Chinese medicine and that he started to study Chinese medicine with his father from the age of six…. As if this Chinese medicine family background is not convincing enough, the bio page of Zhang’s website claims that he graduated in 1981 from China’s then most prestigious medical school, Beijing Medical University, the predecessor of Peking University Medical School…. Then Zhang’s critics discovered that both he and his father were workers in Beijing Weaving Factory and his experience with Beijing Medical University was limited to a short-term night course. His purported possession of an “advanced level nutritionist” license was denounced by the Ministry of Health. On one occasion, Zhang’s father claimed that he had no idea where his son learned his trade.

There is, of course, a tragic and volatile subtext to this farce. With the Chinese health-insurance net in tatters, patients are increasingly desperate. In the hutongs of Beijing, and in small towns across China, I’ve watched crowds of older citizens huddled around silk-tongued sidewalk heath-tonic vendors, with headsets and merchandise that can be hustled away when the cops arrive. It is a familiar story to us in the U.S., after all, but in China, where the numbers are larger, and the income is smaller, the costs can be catastrophic. China is working on a new health-insurance scheme, and it’s not a moment too soon

Read more at The New Yorker http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/evanosnos/2010/06/dreaming-of-mung-beans-and-health-insurance.html

What are China’s consumers eating? Yum! Brands - One Company, Three Pillars of Success (Part II)

This is the second article in a series of posts on Yum! Brands’ success in China. For part one please click on “What are China’s consumers eating? Yum! Brands - One Company, Three Pillars of Success (Part I).”

Pillar III: East Dawning & Little Sheep Hot Pot - Trusted Local Chinese Dining

In 2005 Yum! Brands launched its East Dawning (Chinese: Dong Fang Ji Bai) chain of restaurants, focusing on local Chinese fast food. The Yum! Brands executives found that despite the success of KFC, most Chinese people will only eat Western food at most two times per week. They saw a need for a Chinese fast food chain – an opportunity to leverage their robust supply chain in China, to offer quality Chinese food at convenient and affordable prices. The chain is not widespread, but there are outlets in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and Xiamen. East Dawning is an on-going project for Yum! Brands and it will be interesting to observe how it will fare against other Chinese fast food chains like the popular Zhen Gongfu.

While East Dawning is Yum! Brand’s local equivalent of KFC, Little Sheep Hot Pot could be viewed as its local equivalent to Pizza Hut. Instead of creating its own local casual dining restaurant, Yum! Brands invested in Little Sheep Hot Pot. I wrote about Little Sheep hot pot almost 2 years ago and have since observed it develop into one of the best standardized Chinese casual dining restaurants. In March 2009, Yum Brands! bought a 20% stake in the Little Sheep hot pot chain. By October 2010 Yum! had increased its stake by an additional 7.5% - and currently owns 27.5% of the Hong Kong stock-exchange listed hot pot chain.

Yum! Brands diversified approach to China’s many markets allows it to tap into the taste buds of all different types of Chinese consumers. For those seeking Western fast food KFC is the go-to choice, while it also hopes to develop East Dawning as the local equivalent. Casual dining for China’s emerging middle class centers on their Pizza Hut brand, and Little Sheep Hot Pot may become the go-to casual dining restaurant for those seeking a more local experience. I wouldn’t be surprised if Yum! partners with other local chains as it continues to develop; however, for now it is clear that the three pillars of success are working well for Yum! Brands in China.

THE CHINA OBSERVER

KFC Advertising in China

Okay, gotta love the misleading advertisements. In China, KFC has tried to remake its image into one representing ‘healthy’ fast food. Remember Jared and Subway? Well, KFC doesn’t have any stories to prove their point, but they still want to convince you (and anyone in China) that their fast food is healthier than the competition, and healthier even than their restaurants in America.

The information herein is translated from one of those paper menus they stick on every tray they give you in KFCs in China.

KFC: Creating New Fast Food for China

(肯得基: 为中国而改变: 打造新快餐)

Pretty nifty, huh? Well what do they mean by this “New Fast Food”? Thankfully they go on to immediately tell you (all of the following is translated from the paper menu)

KFC’s “New Fast Food” Positioning / Meaning:

• Tasty & Safe
• Balanced Nutrition
• Based in China
• Embodies High Quality
• Healthy Living
• Unlimited Creation

The emergence of a worldwide overweight and obesity phenomenon over the last ten-plus years has made a lot of people very suspicious of “traditional Western fast food.” Over the years, China’s KFC has always payed attention to new movements in the direction of the health food and beverage sphere. It has established a food health inquiry committee, continuously added new menu selections, adjusted the flavor of its food to the tastes of Chinese consumers, strengthened the dissemination of scientific education about food & beverage nutrition, encouraged the young to participate in physical activities, and has attained a noticeable achievement in promoting a healthy food policy.

Recently KFC has sublimated its overall experiences and learnings in China, breaking through the “traditional Western fast food” model and beginning the “New Fast Food” movement as its future guiding principle to face the needs of the Chinese market. KFC is willing to be the first to create a “New Fast Food” that matches the needs of human kind, and fits in with the national character of China.

“Traditional Western Fast Food” and “New Fast Food” comparison

KFC’s “Traditional Western Fast Food” Positioning

• Singular Selection, Few Choices
• Mainly Deep Fried
• Very Few Types of Vegetables, Western Tastes Don’t Suit Vegetables
• Selections Unchanged Year Round
• Overeating Encouraged
• Follows the American Model of Food Safety

KFC’s “New Fast Food” Positioning

• Abundant Selection, Chinese-Western Fusion Flavors, Many Choices
• Many Cooking Styles
• Many Types of Vegetables, Modified for Chinese Tastes
• Non-Stop New Selections
• Moderation Encouraged, Balanced Food & Drink
• Created the Chinese Model of Food Safety

KFC China Advertising Believable?

So not only is KFC much worse for you in the “West”, by its own admission (and much healthier for you in China), it has out of its own good heart decided to encourage people to moderate their eating in China, reducing its own sales. Gotta love advertising like this, and gotta wonder if people believe in it. The funny thing is my read it and completely agreed with it.

Granted, the selection of KFC is greater in China, and they do have slghtly different preparation methods for some menu items. Yet I very much doubt that overall KFC is much healthier for you in China than in the states. The fried chicken is still fried, the french fries are still fried, and the sodas are still full of sugar. It would be interesting to see what kind of reaction people would have if the same ad was run in “Western” KFCs.

The China Expat