liuzhou

These are, I suppose, fairly normal. A sort of breadstick. In this case, "vegetable flavoured". According to the ingredients list, the vegetables in question include crab and chicken bones. Otherwise only scallions are listed. Alongside the usual chemistry set. For some reason, the 56g box contains three separate bags, each containing 18.666666666666... grams of sticks (?). They are crisp but taste stale and not the least bit vegetal. Not nice.

Still going through the snack selection box, I find these. Garlic Peas In fact, the peas and garlic slices are separate and accompanied by small balls crispy dough. Most strange. They have a strong but not unpleasant garlic flavour. At least, they're not sweet.

The idea that people eat the relevant animal on its New Year celebrations is a myth. For a start, of the 12 animals of the Chinese year cycle, one is mythical, two are illegal to eat and three unacceptable to most people. Mythical: Dragon Illegal to eat: Tiger, Monkey Unacceptable; Rat, Snake, Dog This weekend will be my 29th CNY in China and I have been served the same food every one of those years. The only one of the 12 to maybe appear regularly has been chicken but never to my knowledge rooster. I have eaten everything on the list except the dragon, tiger and monkey but not at CNY.

Still in slightly savoury territory, 海苔花生 (hǎi tái huā shēng), seaweed peanuts. These coated peanuts come in many guises, this one being nori. Unfortunately, somewhat marred by the over-sweet coating.

These are more to my liking. 蚕豆 (cán dòu), broad beans (Vicia faba) aka fava beans. These are beef flavoured. The beans are cooked then roasted with flavourings and a bucket of preservatives and the like. I used to eat them, but they aren't kind to my teeth. Oddly addictive. If I were to buy them now, I'd buy them in the supermarkets where they sell them freshly roasted without the overload of science lab supplies.

Next random snack. 超QQ嚼劲软糖 Super QQ Chewy Gummies - Cola Flavor. Predictably disgusting. Additives added to additives and dusted with sugar. Chewy maybe. Super? No. Binned.

Lard is often used in Chinese baking. Not always appropriately. I remember one particularly disgusting birthday cake which smelled of farmyard. Just recently they have discovered butter. Don't know if it'll catch on, though.

... and finally I come to the largest box. 大吉大旺 (dà jí dà wàng) means something like 'great luck; great prosperity' and is a typical CNY greeting. 旺旺集团 (wàng wàng jí tuán), Wang Wang Group Corporation is a Shanghai company, established in 1962, which makes and distributes all kinds of snack products, both sweet and savoury. This is their CNY selection box. I tip it out. I'll take these one by one at random. First up is these shrimp rice crackers. They're OK for the genre. Over salted and with that universal unidentifiable 'chip' flavour. Edible but I wouldn't go looking for them. More to come. Lots more.

Please tell me it was steak tartare!

I said the nuts were the only thing among the gifts that I've actually bought. That, I now realise, was incorrect. I have bought half of these in the past. This box contains two 300 grams tins of wafer biscuits: one cheese flavoured; the other vanilla. I've bought the cheese type before - once. I've never previously seen the vanilla version. These too, are imported; this time from Indonesia. The cheese ones aren't bad although any real cheese flavour is masked by their sweetness.

The one gift in my cornucopia of gifts that I do buy regularly is to be found in one of the two large bags like this. Nuts. Each large bag contains 15 x 23 gram bags of mixed nuts and dried fruit - walnuts,almonds,cashews, hazelnuts, cranberries, blueberries, blackcurrant and raisins. There are also two 240ml cans of nut milk, which I pass on to a friend. I often have a small pack or two in my camera bag for emergencies.

Lobster would be more appropriate. The Chinese for lobster, 龙虾, literally means 'dragon shrimp'.

No. No more than adding salt to different dishes does.

Actually, I'm not sure they chose that tea with dragons in mind. It is just one of the most popular teas here.

Yes. 龙井茶 (lóng jǐng chá) means Dragon Well Tea and is from Hangzhou.

I actually requested the tea; it isn't particularly traditional as a New Year gift but they asked me if there was anything I needed and when they called I had just used my last of what I had. The sweets and snacks (which I'll detail tomorrow) are traditional though. People load up on those just as we do at Christmas in the UK and I guess you do at Thanksgiving etc. And yes they aren't something most people buy normally, at least not in bulk.

Of course, no one wants a cheap looking gift, so presentation and perceived value is important. Luxury imported goods are an obvious choice. Something like this box of chocolates from Britain, perhaps. The only Chinese text on the packaging is on a paper ribbon wrapped around the English only box front. The reverse has marketing waffle in English, French, Italian, Spanish and Russian, all adding to the allure. And there is the message: Distributed by Codex Chocolate Limited in UK. The revealing word is, of course, "Distributed". Further investigation of the paper ribbon and its Chinese small print reveals the chocolates are made in, you've guessed, China. Kudos Chocolates (Suzhou) Company Ltd. The website www.icodex.co.uk is inaccessible. The company may be just a paper company. I don't know but registering a company in the UK is simple and cheap. Opening the tin reveals a cheap plastic liner filled with tiny individually wrapped chocolates. They're edible but nothing to write home about. All in all, there is about 20 times more pricy packaging material than chocolate. By weight, of the total package weighing half a kilo, there is only 168 grams of edible confectionery. Hmmm. Coming next something more honest.

Of course, a good British Danish Malaysian biscuit (to use the correct term) requires a nice cup of tea. I have a choice from my gifts. First up we have a 高山绿茶, a Yunnan Alpine Green Tea. Then, perhaps more appropriately for The Year of The Dragon, a couple of packs of 铁观音茶 (tiě guān yīn chá) a type of oolong tea, also from Yunnan province. The dragon connection comes from oolong being a corruption of 乌龙 (wū lóng), as it's actually called in China, and which means 'black dragon'. More later. Why the formatting changes part way through a word is a mystery.

I'll start with the strangest. For some reason which evades me, these are very popular here in China. They also display a fascinating glimpse into European geography. Danish cookies plastered with the UK Union Flag and pictures of what they doubtless call Big Ben, something very few people have ever seen. It's the Elizabeth Tower. The actual cookies (a term that further removes them from being British) are made in that famous Danish suburb, Malaysia and imported via Shanghai. The box contains actually contains a 908 gram tin of the butter cookies and a separate box containing 100 grams of the vanilla rolls. Neither are my favourites. Too sweet but they are considered to be a high value gift here.

Saturday 10th February 2024 is Chinese New Year's Day and the start of the 15-day-long Spring Festival. Food gifts are a big part of the festivities and the supermarkets in China and elsewhere fill up with crap no one normally buys the rest of the year. Today, I was visited by two representatives of Liuzhou Municipal Government bearing gifts. I would have put them in the Unexpected Gifts topic but a) they were expected b) I thought you might want to know the details so, I think they merit a topic of their own. I'm putting this here rather than the China forums as CNY is now observed worldwide. That said, for obvious reasons, my contributions will be China specific; others' may not be. First though an overview. Some of these obviously need explaining. Hold on to your rickshaw. It could get bumpy.

Nothing wrong with the 太太乐 (tototle (sic)) powder, but the 百家鲜, if you can find it, is the acme of chicken powders. Happy hunting.

I vaguely remember seeing chicken granules here but I just searched my online shopping options and the only chicken granules I can find are cat food! The Bahasa to ask the difference between powder and granules is something like "Apa perbedaan antara bubuk ayam dan butiran ayam?" but then you have to figure out the answer for yourself. I suppose the granules are just bigger grains but that wouldn't account for using both, unless they are bits of dried chicken flesh like you get in some chicken flavour instant noodles, but I'm really guessing now.

Squid stir fried with snow peas, garlic, ginger, fermented black soy beans, soy sauce, Shaoxing wine and coriander leaf.