Once upon a time I blogged about a short-lived beverage experiment known as Spicy Sprite, and before that, Mint Sprite. Recently someone called to my attention the new Green Tea Sprite. Being the long-time Sprite connoisseur that I am, I had to try it.
It tasted like Sprite, but only… (wait for it) …with green tea in it.
It wasn’t altogether bad, I guess. Not nearly as bad as Mint Sprite, anyway.
The Chinese name is…
I recently stumbled across this Flickr group called Chinese Restaurant Worldwide Documentation Project. It has this intriguing description:
Chinese Restaurants – Worldwide, except China and Taiwan. Here you’ll find the culture ‘clash’ and culture ‘mash’ with all the societies they have adapted to.
Below are a few examples of photos from the group pool, taken at locations all over the world.
Genoa, Italy:
Santa Cruz, Bolivia:
Brooklyn, New York, USA:
Antwerp,…
Gustatory investigation confirms what should be obvious by a cursory visual check: the single-serving substance Guangming (光明) is selling is definitely not cheddar cheese (切达奶酪).
One of the things I love about living in China is that I just keep on discovering bizarre things. I thought I had already seen pretty much all the “alien” fruits China had to offer, and then recently a co-worker brought some “姑娘” back from China’s northeast. Apparently these are called physalis in English. (How did I miss them all this time??) Anyway, bizarre, and kinda good!
From Wikipedia on physalis:
The typical Physalis fruit is
…
It was a great trip to the States. I had been bracing myself for wacky cross-cultural antics, but nothing particularly noteworthy transpired. I didn’t have many surprises of my own, either. Rather, this time I enjoyed seeing my country through my the eyes of my in-laws.
Here are a few little notes:
…
I’ve always been good about eating my vegetables, but coming to China was a total game-changer for me, vegetable-wise. Here were veggies I’d long since written off as “nasty,” forcing me to reevaluate them in their new oriental guise. And reevaluate I did! In the end, I found myself growing to love the Chinese version of many of the vegetables I thought I didn’t like. (It’s probably more than just the effect of MSG.)
Of course, then there are also…
Happy 牛 Year and all that. I took a bit of a break from blogging this month, and I’ve got a bit of a backlog of things to write about… many just tiny observations like this one.
Last week my wife and I went to DeAll Korean restaurant in Hongqiao for the lunch buffet. The restuarant is typically full of Koreans at lunchtime.
We were amused by the “interaction” at this table of kids:
(Hey, what else…
水溶C100
In the last few weeks a new drink has appeared on the convenience store shelves of Shanghai. It’s called 水溶C100, but you probably know it as “lemonade.”
The name 水溶C100 comes from the idea of 水溶性维生素 (water-soluble vitamins). In this case, obviously, it’s vitamin C, and the drink boasts 100% of the recommended daily dose of vitamin C (the equivalent of 5.5 lemons, the bottle tells us) in each bottle… but only 12%…
Flickr photo by sadeog
At lunch with co-workers Christophe (of FrenchPod) and Marco (of ItalianPod), we noticed something interesting on the photo-laden menu. In the photo of the obligatory raw cucumber dish, the pieces were curiously arranged. In fact, they looked just like a stack of Jenga pieces. Cucumber Jenga pieces.
We had to investigate. The waitress said that yes, it looked like that. Yes, it was 6 or 7 layers high (enough for…
Prophetic words from Brad Ferguson:
I think live music in Shanghai is going to continue to suck progressively less and less over the next few years, and eventually it won’t suck. [source]
Elegantly put.
It’s too bad about Windows Underground, though. Without either live music or Brad’s presence (and music collection), I’m pretty much out of reasons to go there. (Their 10 RMB “special hamburgers” are pretty good, but not that good.)
John has lived in China for
10
years. He is a linguist focused on SLA and tech.
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