White Bear
Imagine a Klondike Bar without the chocolate shell. Just a nice thick square of vanilla ice cream. That’s basically what White Bear (白熊) Ice Cream is.
The picture shows a spoon, but who needs that? The wrappered slab of vanilla fits in your hand comfortably, no utensil required. The ice cream is pretty good… rather creamy for a Chinese brand. It costs 5 rmb. I think I still prefer 大块头 ice cream at only 1 rmb, but I don’t have a scan for that.
Apparently in Chinese you can say either 白熊 (literally, “white bear”) or 北极熊 (literally, “North Pole bear”) for “polar bear.” My dictionaries don’t indicate a distinction between the two terms. Based on my own experience, 北极熊 is more common, but I can’t say I’ve really had many conversations about arctic animals in Chinese.
Klondike Bar folks use a white bear as a spokesanimal for their brown ice cream project, and in China they use a brown bear for their white ice cream product.
Balance of energy. Both Chinese and American companies respect the balance and contrast needed to maintain the Tao.
Haha, Wades-Giles rules. =) Just kidding. I’ll shut up now.
Doesn’t the bar melt rather quickly in your hands without an outer coating? I believe the chocolate on the multitude of ice cream bars in the market are there for a reason: a) taste b) preventing the ice cream from melting too fast c) looks.
Suggestion: Take the White Bear bar and sandwich it between two fatty Oatmeal cookies. Then you can drip chocolate syrup all over it. Enjoy. What you get is an It’s-It straight out of San Francisco.
Never had the White Bear, but I remember The Magnum bars from my days in Romania. I thought they were indigenous to Eastern Europe, but then I found them in America so they weren’t so special anymore. 🙁
And polar bears are by far the cutest bears, much cuter than pandas. The cutest teddy bear I’ve ever seen was this soft polar bear at FAO Schwarz. I was going to buy it, but that bastard cost like $50, and he was like small! Damned overprized toy store!!! 🙁
Wilson,
No, not really. The last bit is just getting soft as I finish it off.
DXC,
Pandas aren’t bears.
John,
Not everything you learn in high-school biology (or any other subject for that matter) is true. Pandas are bears:
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Carnivora
Family: Ursidae
Genus: Ailuropoda
Species: melanoleuca
Brad,
Oops. I stand corrected. Interesting how “scientific fact” changes.
From Wikipedia: “For many decades the precise taxonomic classification of the panda was under debate as both the Giant Panda and the distantly related Red Panda share characteristics of both bears and raccoons. However, genetic testing has revealed that Giant Pandas are true bears and part of the Ursidae family. Its closest bear relative is the Spectacled Bear of South America. Disagreement remains about whether or not the Red Panda belongs in Ursidae or the raccoon family, Procyonidae.”
John,
🙂