2008-03-08 - 1:53 p.m.
Holy moly, I could not possibly be more sick and tired of hearing about this: http://uunet.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200802040056.html
Roy gave me a brief lesson in world economics while I was in Osaka. He taught me that anything that can be made in Japan could be made cheaper and better in China. So I can kind of understand why the Japanese government would want to make people afraid of Chinese imports. But the press on this gyoza scene has gone totally out of control, to the point that some supermarkets have decided that they will no longer stock any Chinese goods at all, which is one of the stupidest things that I've heard in a long, long time.
Fun Fact No. 1 - This year in Japan it was revealed that so many Japanese candy makers were using expired ingredients and fudging the production dates of their products that it became obvious that these practises were the industry standard. Thus, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for people think that Japanese goods are automatically safer than Chinese ones. The moral is, unless you live on a farm and make absolutely all of your food by yourself, you don't really know what you're eating, and that's kind of just something that everyone who doesn't live on a farm will have to deal with.
Fun Fact No. 2 - Chinese imports are awesome! Ginger is a good example of what I'm talking about. A 170g package of lustrous Chinese ginger costs 105 yen at my local supermarket. You have to be careful when you're cutting it up because it is so juicy that I have, more than once, had Chinese ginger juices squirted into my eye. Next to the Chinese ginger, the ginger grown in Japan looks as if it has just been recovered from an Eyptian tomb, mummified, having been preserved for a thousand years. And the Japanese ginger is 105 yen per 100 grams. I have no idea how juicy it is because I haven't, and won't, buy it.
Fun Fact No. 3 - Chinese factories are awesome! They've been showing me footage of the factory that made this gyoza on TV and it is the cleanest, shiniest factory that I've ever seen. If this factory is supposed to be scary, then Canadian factories are terrifying. This includes the Roger's Chocolate Factory in Victoria, which I have been on a tour of. Twice. And where I accidently sneezed on some chocolate and then decided not to tell anyone. (Sorry.)
Fun Fact No. 4 - Although China does indeed have its share of environmental problems, this gyoza thing is not, I suspect, one of them. Japan sent a reconnaissance team to China a month ago to try to figure out how all of this happened. And they still have no idea. Because of this, and because so much pesticide was found in so few packages of gyoza, I suspect that a crazy person working in the factory poisoned the gyoza on purpose. And crazy people happen everywhere, not just in China. Whoever did it has probably either reverted back to poisoning animals, or has moved on to killing prostitutes. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but that's just how this kind of crazy works. They probably wet the bed as a child too.
Fun Fact No. 5 - Dodgy gyoza is, according to what I've read in Outlaws of the Marsh, a long and glorious Chinese tradition. Roadside wine shops drug the wine of wealthy looking travellers, steal their luggage, and then butcher their victims and make them into gyoza. (Except for Sagacious Lu. Sagacious Lu noticed what looked like a pubic hair in his gyoza, only pretended to drink the wine and pass out, then kicked some asses when the wine shop's host came to butcher him up.)
Fun Fact No. 6 - Chinese gyoza is delicious.
