Yinghui Zhang-Carraro, a Beijing resident, talked to the Clean Energy Project about organic food in China. She said most organic farming has been driven by premium prices and the “gift business”. Here is her interview.

The New York Times reports that farmers in Sanya, China’s beach resort on Hainan Island, grew their cowpeas using highly toxic banned pesticides. Once again this was done by greedy people who put their own profit above the well-being of consumers. As the newspaper reported, the banned pesticides are much cheaper than the legal ones. See the story here .

Stuffed Bitter Melon 酿苦瓜 niàng kǔguā

8 Servings

How to make it :

1 TBS dried fermented black beans: soak in tepid water, drained and finely chopped and set aside for later use.

Blend 1/2 lb (225g or half jin) ground pork with the following seasonings:

• 1/4 c coriander, finely chopped
• 2 whole spring onion, finely chopped
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 1 TBS light soy sauce (l.s.s.)
• 1 TBS oil
• 2 tsp cornstarch
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp pepper

4 medium bitter melon: cut melon in 1 1/2 inch rings, and scoop out pith and seeds on each slice, then stuff each ring  with meat mixture.

Heat 4 TBS oil: pan-fried the stuffed melon on both sides until slightly brown. Then add 1 tsp. minced garlic and throw in the mashed soaked fermented black bean, and add 1/2 cup water or stock. Bring to a boil and simmer with lid covering the frying pan over low medium heat till liquid reduced to a nice sauce.

Bitter Melon 苦瓜 kǔguā

A professor of pathology at Saint Louis University recently discovered that the extract from bitter melon may kill breast cancer cells. Professor Ratna Ray does not believe that the extract can cure cancer, but professor Ray says it could delay or prevent it.

Bitter melon is a direct translation from the Chinese name ku (苦 bitter) gua (瓜 melon), an edible fruit of the plant Momordica Charantia. The long and warty bitter melon is a member of the gourd family and native to tropic areas. It’s eaten widely in China, India, and Southeast Asia. However, most westerners shun eating bitter melon because of its slightly bitter taste.

There are many ways to turn this humble vegetable into an appealing dishes–stuffed with minced meat; blanched and tossed with sesame oil to make a cold dish; paired with fatty pork and steam with preserved vegetables; stir-fried with duck egg yolk; steamed with black beans and red chillies.

Here’s one suggested recipe for Scallion Scented Bitter Melon 葱油苦瓜 cōngyóu kǔguā

adopted from Shi Guanghua’s My Life Cooking Sichuanese （我的川菜生活）

Ingredients:

300g bitter melon

15g scallion to make the scented scallion

Seasonings: 1/2 tsp salt, 1/4 cup stock, 1tsp sesame oil, 1 1/2 TBS cornstarch-and-water mixture

Method:

Split a bitter melon and scoop out the seeds with a spoon. Cut the melon into pieces 8cm in length and 1.5cm in width.

Blanch the bitter melon in boiling water until cooked and then drain. Rinse with cold water to keep the color green.

Put some oil in the wok, and heat to 40ºC. Then throw  in the scallion into the heated oil untill the fragrance comes out; then remove scallion.

Add the bitter melon and seasonings into the wok, and stir fry a few seconds. Take out when the liquid has reduced to a thick sauce.

In the midst of the growing concern about food safety and the quality of the food we’re eating here in China, there are a few bright spots.

The following articles introduce a few food growers that can be role models for farmers in China; although the road to natural and healthy food is still very long, you have to start somewhere:

An Long Natural Farming Co-Op came about as a result of the Chengdu Urban Rivers Association (CURA)  The preceding is a pollution study of the city’s waterways conducted by a locally-run nonprofit organization and a Sichuan University professor of environmental science in 2003.

果园香猪 Fragrant Pig Orchard spearheaded by Luo Yu

Little Donkey Green Farm organized by Shi Yan.

Gao Shengjian, one of the four households that has taken up organic farming, says: ”Life is precious. Land is precious. We shouldn’t hurt it. We shouldn’t waste it.”

For a better understanding of China’s alternative agriculture, listen to Chang Tianle.

Leslie Marie Grothaus, a student of Pomona College,  fell severely ill from a food-borne parasite a few months after completing her six month study abroad program in China in 2007, which led to her discovery of Zhou Qing’s What kind of Heaven, an in-depth and unsettling look at food safety problems in China, as well as reports on numerous food scandals that broke out in 2006 that received international media attention: Chinese crabs shipped to Taiwan containing nitrofuran, a carcinogenic antibiotic, Chinese duck farmers feeding their ducks a carcinogenic dye to make their eggs appear fresher.

Ms. Grothaus’s goal in writing her senior thesis in December 2007 was “to explore what needs to change here in order for meaningful food safety reform to take place.”

She suggests the following steps for China to improve both its food safety record and public awareness of the problem:

The Chinese government must increase access to books like Zhou Qing’s and  stop relying on censorship to ensure social stability. There needs to be stronger links among the public, allowing them to communicate about food safety problems and to organize protests. This includes increasing public access to the internet and other forums for discussion.

The Chinese government must take a strong and consistent stand against corruption. It also needs to operate more transparently and institute review systems that will force government officials and agencies to be responsible for their actions.

China must form a clearer legal structure relating to food safety. This includes implementing a system for passing food safety laws, which will ease some of the confusion currently surrounding the issue. The legal system must also institute fines or penalties that will successfully deter potential offenders from committing crimes that endanger public health.

China must see an increase in the number of grassroots organizations dealing with food safety and public health. These organizations are important because they function independently of the government and are more attuned to the needs of local people.

China’s trade partners need to maintain their resolve and continue to strictly monitor food imported from China. This includes consistently rejecting unsafe foods and reporting these rejections to consumers.

China is very sensitive to any scandals that may cause international embarrassment. The international community needs to use China’s desire to have a good reputation to pressure them into improving food safety standards.

Zhou Qing wrote in his book that people have lost their sense of morality, allowing the number of the scandals involving food safety to rocket. Zhou Qing points to Lin Biao’s old maxim that “if don’t lie, you can’t achieve great things.”  No wonder the country has entered this vicious downward cycle of greed among food manufacturers who want to make money at any cost to the public. “What future is there for a society which has been reduced to a such a state of numbness and despair?” asked  the author.

The problem is partially due to the fact that the public seems to have a short memory. A food scandal erupts, there’s a public outcry, and in some cases, the government steps in to deal with the problem. Soon after, however, a new problem emerges and the same cycle begins.

A new political novel about China titled The Golden Age: China 2013 (盛世 中国，2013年) describes the mood of the Chinese people, which seems bent on forgetting. “We can’t bear to reflect on the sufferings of the past, so we move forward, making money and spending money,” says He Dongsheng, an officials in the novel.

“The Party has been lucky,” says He. “I would say it’s Heaven’s wish to let the Party continue to rule. God bless my Party.”

In his book, Zhou Qing calls for the public to be better educated about the food they’re eating: “The people regard food as their Heaven, so food safety must be our top priority!” he says.

Zhou Qing’s What kind of Heaven unfortunately did not have the same impact as Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, a novel about conditions in the U.S. meat packing industry in the early 20th century, which caused a public uproar that partly contributed to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act in 1906.

However, his admirable and courageous work has unveiled a comprehensive string of food-related incidents. A chronology of incidents through 2004, when the Chinese edition of his book was published, follows:

• Between December 1987 and February 1988, 300,000 people in Shanghai contracted Hepatitis A during an outbreak of the disease in the city.
• In June 1996, 157 people were harmed and 36 people died after drinking fake wine produced by Yunnnan’s Huaize Industrial Alcohol Company.
• From 27 June to 21 July 1996, 192 people were poisoned, 6 were seriously injured, and 35 people died after consuming rice wine produced in Huaize County in Yunnan Province, which contained dangerous levels of formaldehyde.
• From early June to mid-July 1997, 255 people were poisoned and 73 people died after eating wild mushrooms in Yunnan’s Simao region.
• In February 1998, more than 200 people were poisoned and 7 people died after drinking fake alcohol sold in Shanxi’s Suozhou, Zhanshou and Datong regions.
• In 1998, 200 people were poisoned and three people died after consuming pork oil which had been stored in vats that had previously contained mechanical oil.
• In January 1999, 46 students were poisoned in Guangdong; and in June of the same year, a hospital treated 34 people who had been poisoned by eating vegetables that contained traces of dangerous pesticides.
• In 1999, 51 athletes competing in the National Urban Games were poisoned by food bacteria.
• In August 1999, 700 people n Guangdong’s Qiqing city were poisoned after eating cooking oil that contained liquid paraffin.
• In 2001, 5,000 people were poisoned and two people died after eating wild mushrooms in Jiangxi’s Yongxiu County.
• In 2001, 20 people were poisoned and two people died after eating Hemai fish in Guangxi’s Luchuan County.
• From 1 to 7 November 2001, 484 people were poisoned by lean meat powder in Heyuan in Guangdong Province.
• On 4 September 2001, 6,000 students were poisoned by contaminated bean curd milk in Jilin.
• In 2002, 100 people were poisoned and five people died after eating wild mushrooms in Tuanjie Village in Hunan Province.
• In 2002, 3,000 students were poisoned in Changchun after eating bean curd milk that had gone bad.
• In May 2002, 37 students aged eight to fourteen were poisoned after unintentionally eating muskmelon that contained jiaji 1605 and miewulin pesticides. They all recovered after receiving emergency medical care.
• On 13 June 2002, 78 people were poisoned after eating tongxin green vegetables that had traces of the jilin pesticide.
• On 8 July 2002, 80 tourists in Haikou developed blood poisoning.
• In February 2003, a woman died after being poisoned by red dates in Shenyang, Liaoning.
• On 19 March 2003, 3,000 students were poisoned and 3 died in Haicheng, Liaoning, after drinking poisoned bean curd milk.
• In April 2003, SARS broke out in China, but was played down by the government. SARS caused economic losses of billions of yuan.
• On 6 June 2003, 87 people were poisoned in Guangxi colleges and high schools after eating rice noodles that contained the illegal additive diaobaikuai.
• On 3 July 2003, some illegal factories made a form of soy sauce from human hair. 76 tonnes of it were sold to the public, the remaining 9 tonnes were seized by the police. It was found that the human hair soy sauce contained lead and other harmful substances, and the colouring they used contained 4-methylimidazole, which can give people convulsions or even epilepsy.
• On 28 July 2003, rice in Guangzhou was found to contain dangerous levels of huangqumeisu B1 bacteria. Three illegal rice processing workshops were found, and 300 tonnes of substandard rice was confiscated from them.
• In February 2004, the Department of Hygiene received reports of 21 serious cases of poisoning, in which 448 people were poisoned, and 14 people died. Of these, nine cases occurred in the home, involving 40 people being poisoned, and 9 deaths; 10 cases took place in work canteens, in which 403 people were poisoned and 3 died; the remaining two cases poisoned five people and killed two. Nine cases took place in schools, causing 399 children to be poisoned, and one to die.
• In April 2004, 100 small children were harmed and more than 10 died in the Fuyang substandard milk powder case.

I like to add to the list with the latest scandal:

• September 2008, milk contaminated with melamine killed 6 children and causes kidney stones in more than 6,200 infants. Melamine, a chemical normally used in making plastics and fertilizer, to watered-down milk to increase volume and deceive inspectors testing for protein.
• February 2010, tainted milk products resurface in the stores, despite government promises to stop the practice.
• February 27, 2010, cowpeas grown in Sanya, detected to be contaminated with isocarbophos, highly toxic banned pesticide.

Friends in Beijing were split over the story about cardboard-stuffed pork buns that was broadcast on BTV in the summer of 2007. After all, could someone really stuff a baozi with chemically-soaked cardboard and so easily fool consumers? The journalist was arrested and sentenced to a one year prison sentence within weeks of the story appearing. There was no news of the trial and so the story quietly disappeared.

However, given some of the latest media findings that I’ve come across, I’m no longer so sure that the story was a hoax.

Most shocking has been recent reports that milk contaminated with melamine is still being found on the shelves in Shanghai shops as well as several provinces, Hebei, Liaoning, Shandong and Shaanxi. This despite the government promises that it would crackdown on the practice that took the lives of six children two years ago, and which made several hundred thousand sick.

Also troubling is the recent news about the excessive use of fertilizers and pesticides on the vegetables we eat.

I was naive and thought that food safety in China was not that severe. But after recently stumbling across Zhou Qing’s What kind of Heaven?, published in English in 2007, I started to lose my appetite and became a lot more cynical.

Zhou Qing, an investigative reporter, quotes Zhong Nanshan,  a very outspoken doctor during the SARS epidemic, as saying that “The Chinese people are committing a form of slow mass suicide.”

Zhou said uncontrolled greed had caused a food disaster of unimaginable proportions. “I can only warn you never to go in a restaurant.,” he warned.

The true extent of China’s food safety problem exposed by Zhou Qing is terrifying and alarming:

Amino acids that are made from human hair and not fermented beans or grain. These amino acids made with human hair are not only cheap, they also comply with the superficial quality standards set for the production of soy sauce.

Chinese butchers who inject pork with mercury, which is highly toxic and very difficult to detect, in order to make it heavier and to earn more profits.

Some pig, chicken, and fish farmers who are in the habit of feeding their animals chemically-treated scrap leather from tanneries.

Red powder, a carcinogenic wood dye, added to prawns during the cooking process to give them a “healthy” red color that appeals to consumers.

Fish soaked in malachite green. Malachite green is a chemical that makes fish scales appear shiny, disguising the fact that the fish are old or sickly.

Seafood contaminated with high levels of hormones and antibiotics as a result of lining the bottoms of growth pools with crushed contraceptive pills.

Fruits and vegetables treated with chemical pesticides and growth enhancers.

Chinese produce is often subjected to harsh chemical treatments such as DDVP, as a fumigant to control household pests, and industrial salt, before being canned or otherwise processed for sale.

The death of six infants may seem insignificant to some in the government–it’s a known fact that the occupants of Zhongnanhai have their own food supply, and that they don’t eat what the rest of us eat here?

I wonder how many more Chinese lives will have to be lost and how many more lies will we have swallow before China safeguards the food we eat every day?

Global Times

February 11, 2009

By Eileen Wen Mooney

The arrival of Lunar New Year for me was never about red envelopes or new clothing. In my family, delicious food marked the occasion.

Most exciting was the roasted suckling pig, which was first offered to the Jade Emperor at the temple on the morning of the first day of the lunar new year.

My memories of those days begin in the morning at the temple, which was crowded with people burning incense and paper money.  The loud sound of gongs signaling when it was time for temple-goers to bow. While this was going on, friends shook joss sticks while others tossed the crescent shaped wood on the floor to ask for approval for some personal wish.

temple goers

We children happily chased each other around the temple grounds, at the same time, feeling anxious to finish the ceremony so we could go home and eat the suckling pig.

My mother chopped up the pork with a big cleaver, making several gift portions  to give to relatives. I could not resist snatching a piece of crispy skin, with a little layer of fat underneath, and quickly stuffing it into my mouth. It was out-of-this world. And so every year, I looked forward to this moment.

Sansheng–which literally means three sacrifices–consisted of steamed rooster, pan-fried fish and poached belly pork, fruits stacked into a pyramid, and  several rounded bowls of rice, that looked like smooth hills, lay in rows on the ancestral table, beside tiny porcelain cups of wine and tea.

I also remember the delectable deep-fried pork meatballs, thin sliced marble pork deep-fried in egg-batter, but braised sea cucumber and chicken was my favorite. The sea slugs had to be soaked in cold water for a few days.  A chicken was slaughtered to make a good stock which reduced to a thick sauce. The sea cucumber has a marvelous texture like sticky rice, words are not enough to describe the wonderful taste of this dish.

From the back of the house I could hear majiang tiles clicking, and my father’s voice declaring his win with the word “Pung!”

Each part of China has it’s own festive foods.

Ciba is a glutinous rice cake that is made a month or two prior to the lunar new year by people who live in west Hunan. The sticky rice is first cooked by steaming it in a large wooden bucket. It is then pounded into a sticky paste in a huge stone mortar with solid wooden sticks.

“My two uncles took turns pounding the rice with a musical rhythm,” explained Zhang Ying, whose family hails from Changfu village, in Hunan.

“Children loved to take some of the hot sticky rice and dip it into sesame sugar,” she said. “I loved to toast the sticky rice beside the brazier, along with water chestnuts that we dug out of the rice fields, ” said Zhang Ying. “We didn’t have central heating in the countryside then, so the brazier kept us warm in the cold winter.”

Zha mahua, deep-fried twisted pastry-strips, is one-third of a meter in length, and 4cm in diameter is a typical New Year’s snack that every family makes in Qu Wo, southern Shanxi. “My mother and the rest of the families living in the same block lined up to take turns to deep fry the twisted dough,” explained Guo Jing, a native of Shanxi, because not every family owned a deep wok. Children happily crowded around the wok and waited for the very first batch of mahua to be finished. Sweet pastries filled with red date paste, mixed nuts, red bean paste and peanuts, were also popular in every home.

Fish, whole chicken and radish cake and chives are typical New Year’s dishes with a symbolic meaning, said Dai Qianwen, whose father is from Jiangsu and her mother Taiwanese. Fish, or yu, represents a surplus, for example. Meanwhile, the word chicken in Taiwanese sounds like the word for family, so it’s important to prepare a whole chicken symbolizing family unity. The homonym for the word for radish is getting rich while the word for chives represents everlasting.

Wei Ying, who comes from Nanning, Guangxi province, recalls her mother preparing a ten-course meal, with every daughter-in-law chipping in to prepare the feast.  “My mom contributed spring rolls, because hers were the best,” Wei Ying told me.

Shangluo Diqi, in southern Shaanxi, has a tradition of slaughtering a pig for the new year. “Every family was allowed to raise one pig only, and the pig was fed with wild grass,” Father Joseph Dang, a Catholic priest, told me about his village custom.

The family usually kept half of the pig for the New Year’s feast, while the other half was bartered for other farm produce such as corn, vegetables, soy beans, and rice. Also, it was very common to dig an underground cellar to keep vegetables–carrots, turnips, cabbage and scallions–fresh for use in the Spring Festival.

Chinese Lunar New Year is a time for family reunion and also it represents the beginning of Spring. Thus it is a time of renewed fertility of the earth.

Here are the most celebrated foods eaten to mark this special occasion across China:

Niangao (年糕) New Year’s cake

Niangao is a sweet and sticky cake made of glutinous rice or millet flour. It can be steamed, pan-fried or deep-fried coated in egg batter. Eating New Year’s cake symbolizes improvement in daily life and progress and promotion at work, because the word for “cake” ( 糕 gao) is a homonym for “high” (高 gao).

Tangyuan (汤圆) Sticky rice balls.

Tangyuan are small round dumplings made of glutinous rice flour filled with, black sesame paste, red bean paste, peanut paste, or mixed nuts. The southern style tangyuan are served without any filling and served in osmanthus-flavored soup, fermented rice wine, or a gingery syrup.  Tangyuan stands for unity and harmony for the family, because tangyuan (汤圆) sounds similar to the pronunciation of tuanyuan (团圆), which means “reunion.”

Eating tangyuan marks the end of the lunar new year’s celebration.

Nan Luogu Xiang, once dominated by coffee shops, small restaurants, bars and boutique stores, is now making a name for itself as Beijing’s leading snack street.

Custard

Wen Yu Nailao, one of the earliest snack shops on the street, specializes in a sweet custard based on a recipe dating back to the Qing dynasty. The small shop is only open on for a few hours daily, from 10:30am untill their supply is sold out, usually around 2:30pm. No worries, nearby Ju’er Renjia also makes a decent custard that resembles Wenyu’s.

Churros

47 Nanluoguxiang (next door to Wen Yu Nailao)

Delicious fried pastry drizzled with melted chocolate, sells for RMB15/five pieces; RMB20 with a dollop of soft vanilla ice cream. Could make some improvement on the melted chocolate, and it would be great if they served them with powdered cinnamon sugar.

Halal yogurt

Manufactured in Qinghai province, this yogurt sells for RMB8 for a 180g cup, which is a little steep compared to the old-fashioned Beijing yogurt in a ceramic bottle available in neighborhood grocery stores and at newspaper stands. Qinghai Lake brand yogurt, said to actually come from Qinghai in China’s far northwest, comes in several flavors, including sweet, neutral, and original, which has a thick consistency and a strong dairy flavor.

Waffles and Crepes (next to Halal yogurt)

Sells for RMB10 with a spread of Nutella or jam and an option of ice cream. I only tried their waffle and a little disappointing for two reasons: 1. mediocre batter; 2. meager portion (the waffle is of thin kind). If I were to choose between waffle and jianbing, I would go for the latter without doubt.

Ju’er Renjia 菊儿人家

63 Xiao Ju’er Hutong, Nanluoguxiang

Opens 10am-10pm Tel 6400 8117

南锣鼓巷小菊儿胡同63号

Ju’er Renjia is a little eatery that sprang out of Ms. Han’s cozy little house just down Xiao Ju’er Hutong, which cuts into Nan Luogu Xiang. The moment I stepped into the homey restaurant, which just has a couple of tables, I felt right at home as I was greeted by the beaming Ms Han.

The modest restaurant offers only one set meal for RMB20, a tasty lurou fan 卤肉饭, or rice with an aromatic ground pork topping accompanied by a braised aromatic egg. On the side is a serving of mixed pickled vegetables and a clear egg drop soup.

This is one of the best home-style lurou dishes I’ve ever had, because it has just the right saltiness, it’s MSG-free, and it’s not oily–this is genuinely honest and attentive cooking. Ms. Han, a retired worker, says she got the basic recipe from a Taiwanese friend, and then spent four months experimenting, finally coming up with a version of lurou that would appeal to Beijing tastes.

The soup is simple, but wait until you try it. This is the kind of soup that Beijing natives call xiapi tang 虾皮汤, in which the flavor of the soup is brought by the tiny dried shrimps, and enhanced with a drop of sesame oil and coriander leaves. And the scrambled eggs in the soup are as silky as bean curd.

Her home brewed red date and dried longan tea and ginger tea, which cost a modest RMB5, are excellent. I love Ms. Han’s delicate way in handling her sugar.

Finally, we tried her milk custard called shuangpi nai, RMB8/bowl which translates into double skin milk, and juxiang nai, RMB10/bowl, both of which taste a lot like imperial custard (gongting nailao), but which she says is a speciality of Shunde in Guangdong.

Although this is a modest and small restaurant, the dining experience–both food and ambience–is a memorable one.

菊儿人家 Ju'er Renjia