Respect To The 中国人

“Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for the rest of his life.” – Chinese Proverb (because THEY know how to eat the bastards!)

Just finished trying to put down a 1/2 mug of this instant oatmeal beverage that my co-worker Pam gave me ages ago. You might ask why, after just eating lunch, do I need to consume breakfast products. You might ask, but I doubt it. So, the reason is… fish. To put it frankly, I hate fish. I mean, I’ve got nothing against them. I’d give my seat to one on a bus, I’d say hello to it on the street. But my politeness ends there.

These little refusers of evolution were born with more bones than they could possibly know what to do with. I understand we all deserve a suitable framework by which our meat can cling to – but c’mon!

I’ve never been much of a fish eater, but I certainly don’t shy away from a nice chunk of salmon, or if I’m really lucky a properly prepared bit of ahi tuna. Notice that these are both rather meaty fish.

Sadly, meaty fish are not on my school’s lunch menu. Only scrawny, slow ones. I swear that the main reason for the serving of fish here is for the sole (pun intended?) purpose of humiliating the laowai. I sit there painfully trying to remove what little meat I can find, covering myself in fish bits and intermitantly lodging sliver-like bones in my throat… only to look around and see a room full of Chinese people (the aformentioned 中国人) sucking the meat off like it’s as easy as Paris Hilton. (ok, that pun actually wasn’t intentional… but I couldn’t change it, I just couldn’t).

Right, so fish. Bane of my esophagus. Unebater of my hunger. Killer of my pride. Swimmer of my fish tank.

4 Responses

  1. hey man..too bad you don’t like those little fish. must be a blood thing, i rather liked them, i even ate them whole (bones and all) esp if they’re deep fried…every tried that? just chomp down on the whole thing and eat it!

    although what i can’t stand is how in some parts of china they eat carp with this little bones and that earty taste..yuck!

  2. Yeah, these were deep fried with some sort of batter. I really don’t mind the taste. I’m not a person who hates that “fishy” taste… in fact, therein lies the deception of these little guys. I smell them and I really want to eat them…which always leads me to trying, and regretting trying, to eat them.

    It’s like unpeeled shrimp… they’re such a pain in the ass that largely they’re just not worth the trouble of eating – yet I do everytime.

    It all boils down to the fact that I’m a very lazy eater.

  3. Today we went to the outdoor (cheap) market and my girlfriend bought a fish there. It’s about as far from neatly packaged tuna as you can get. . the fish are flopping around in metal tubs of dirty water. . the fish regularily flop themselves out of the tubs and onto the pavement or into the adjacent tanks to meet fish of other species who face the same gloomy fate. Once she picks out a fish they pick it up and throw it down on the pavement to stun it.. then maybe wack it again with the side of their cleaver and then begin to scale and gut the poor thing. And to think I used to be vegetarian before moving to china!! Yeah I’m not crazy about eating fish. . for the same reason. I lack the a bility to seperat bones from meant. Sometimes it seems no worth the effort.

  4. Ha, I sympathize Daniel – I was a vegetarian for about 8 years not long before coming to China.

    Several times, much to my amazement, a scaled and gutted fish we bought at the market an hour or so before will continue to flop around our sink in its final neural firings. Kinda creepy to be honest.

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