Pass the bacon salt, please.

July 19, 2007 9:29 AM

Update: Bejing's counterfeit pork dumplings [referenced in a prior food thread] have been discredited as byproducts of the monkeyfishing industry.
posted by Smart Dalek to MetaFilter-Related at 9:29 AM (18 comments total)

"The Beijing Public Security Bureau has taken the criminal suspect, Zi, into custody and he will be severely dealt with according to law."

I'm not sure that the Beijing Public Security Bureau is more trustworthy than a Chinese reporter. It's just as easy for me to believe that this response is a noisy way for Chinese officials to calm the fears of Olympic tourists.
posted by oneirodynia at 9:54 AM on July 19, 2007

I'm not sure that the Beijing Public Security Bureau is more trustworthy than a Chinese reporter. It's just as easy for me to believe that this response is a noisy way for Chinese officials to calm the fears of Olympic tourists.

This bears repeating. I trust the Chinese government about as far as I can throw it.
posted by loquacious at 10:00 AM on July 19, 2007

That may be true, but so could the opposite if they didn't retract the story. They fabricated the story to show how they're cracking down on tainted food and medicine, which is starting to hurt China's image.
posted by ALongDecember at 10:00 AM on July 19, 2007

It's kind of sad though. If they really could make pork dumplings out of cardboard all my fiber eating problems would be over.

Making cardboard taste like meat would be the greatest food invention since the sausage
posted by uandt at 10:04 AM on July 19, 2007

I'm shocked by the monkey-fishing thing. I'd never heard of that.
posted by agregoli at 10:05 AM on July 19, 2007

This bears repeating. I trust the Chinese government about as far as I can throw it.

The Chinese will use the full might of the state police apparatus to suppress rumours of dodgy street food.

Thank god it wasn't monkey-fisting.
posted by KokuRyu at 10:19 AM on July 19, 2007

I usually try to stay away from Whorfing in threads - by which I mean sharing gee-whiz vocabulary factoids from language X which are often ultimately only really amusing to speakers of language X anyway - but here I find it worth noting that in Dutch, the common term for "urban legend", or really any story presented and accepted as truth but later debunked, is "Monkey Sandwich story".
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 10:30 AM on July 19, 2007 [1 favorite]

Doesn't anyone bother to check out sources anymore? WTF?
posted by Mister_A at 10:39 AM on July 19, 2007

FWIW, when in Beijing, my wife refuses to eat any food sold on the street. She is a native of the place, and grew to adulthood there. She does like baozi, but not from street vendors.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 10:49 AM on July 19, 2007

Cormorant fishing, sure. Monkey fishing, not so much.
posted by dreamsign at 10:57 AM on July 19, 2007

MetaMetaTalk: I'm only seeing a very tangential reference to this in the original thread, and even if it was the central theme, the original thread is still open. Shouldn't such followups be posted there? This is not a snark; I'm just wondering.
posted by hoverboards don't work on water at 11:27 AM on July 19, 2007

I have baozi for breakfast from the hole-in-the-wall shop over the road most mornings. Very tasty. Smoked tofu and spinach are my top tip.
posted by Abiezer at 11:37 AM on July 19, 2007

Let me fix that for you:
I trust the Chines government about as far as I trust the current US government.
No charge, public service.
posted by Cranberry at 1:46 PM on July 19, 2007

alas, someone should fix Chinese
posted by Cranberry at 1:46 PM on July 19, 2007

Here's the People's Daily article.
posted by Pollomacho at 2:19 PM on July 19, 2007

From the Slate piece:

"Murder is acknowledged as a sport in hunting, so long as you eat the victim and don't merely kill him. This is not the case, however, in war, which is government-sanctioned murder where you do not eat the victim."

How barbaric. We should eat the victims in war too. Waste not!
posted by davy at 2:43 PM on July 19, 2007

I like Chinese.
I like Chinese.
There's nine hundred million of them in the world today.
You'd better learn to like them; that's what I say.
posted by blue_beetle at 9:46 PM on July 19, 2007

Danwei has a round-up of local commentary.
posted by Abiezer at 11:07 PM on July 19, 2007