Eating the World (Part One)

New food I have tried

• Scorpion - OK
• Crab - OK
• Fried whole little fish - OK
• Aubergine - OK
• Lotus root - horrible
• Lily bulb - horrible
• Pak choi - OK
• Spinach - nice
• Mild green chillis - nice
• Crayfish - OK
• Octopus - OK
• Cockles - nice
• Sea tubes - OK
• Radish - horrible
• Water-chestnuts - horrible
• Prawns - OK
• Shrimp - OK
• "Chicken hair" (green vegetable) - nice
• Bean-sprouts - nice

Food I haven't tried

• Dog - makes me feel sick, but I wish I'd tried it
• Shrimps in wine - because they were alive, wriggling in the pot, until they got eaten, or got so drunk they died.
• Raw lobster (dipped in soya sauce and wasabi) - which I wanted to try at the big posh seafood restaurant in Jinan, but a man nicked it - he got the waitress to clear it and bag it up for him before I tried it! Mark tried it and liked it.
• Beetles on sticks - no thanks. Mark ate silkworms though.

Some favourite food

• Chips in Chilli - thin chips covered with oil in a big pile of chillies and garlic and spices
• Barbequed Fish - in a restaurant in Huairou that we drove miles to after the great wall, by a river
• Aubergines, Green Pepper and Potatoes - tasty!
• Sour "Skittles" - like English skittles sweets, but really sour and covered in sugar - they're the best!
• Chicken on sticks - 5 Yuan (40p) in the tourist market, where they try to give you the wrong change, or 1 Yuan for halal ones round the corner from our hotel in the Muslim restaurant

- Melissa