China first trip-Food

 I was working for a large store chain when I made my first trip to Asia it was in the mid to late 80's and at that time China was just opening it's doors to businessmen. My trip was 4 weeks long and started in Beijing then Ningbo, Shanghai, Canton, Hong Kong and then Taiwain.   Now if you know me you know I am pretty much a meat and Potatos guy and don't eat sea food.  To prepair for this trip I packed a Large jar of peanut butter and a box of crackers..........they were all gone before i hit Hong Kong!   

On this early trip us westeners were still uncommon and everyplace we went was a cause of excitment on most nights we would have a big dinner with local business and goverment dignatarys, big round tables with a huge lazy susan on it and the waiters would keep bringing out "delicacy"      all sorts of stuff i wouldn't eat,,ie deep fried frogs (not legs frogs) squid, baby chickes any fish you could imagine....I found out right away two very important things. One if you don't eat you will be offending some very important and useful people secound if your plates empty someone will put something on it.  I would make sure I keeped green vegis on my plates at all times and then eat peanut butter in my room later.   back then was before bottle water and the water was not clean so was best not to drink it or eat salads or things that were just rinsed off,  some of the hotels had Coke but not all of them and i would order Coke and keep one in my room too, when it wasnt available would drink beer which was imported and of course Green Tea, it was my first experiance with green tea and it has became a staple for my diet everysince then.

after about 10 days I was dieing for some "red' meat, I was walking the streets of old shanghi and went in this old hotel with a resraunt and was looking at a burger on the menu, couldnt read so i found a waitress that spoke little english and inquired what it was the best translation I got was "domistic animal" to this day i not sure what it was but can honestly say its the best dog/cat i ever ate, and not the last LOL

After over 2 weeks it was off to Hong Kong, getting off the train in HK was like a jump in time from  a very communist behind the times china to one of the most capitalisic mondern cities   WOW   Back then China was way behind but it didnt last long, in the 80's Shanghi was a old dark city in the 90's it has became one of the brightest most modern cities I ever been to, in less than 10 years it progressed 10 fold.    Anyway when we arrived in Hong Kong we ate, there was every kind of food you could dream of, great steak houses, Itilan,etc...

While in China the first week I went to the Great Wall, walked on it long before millions of other people, went though the Forbiden City two of they great historical sites in the world  then in a matter of days I was in my hotel room looking over the harbour and hi rises of the most mondern city in the world.  I laid there the first night just looking out my window and being thankful for all i had and looking forward to many more trips to come.

In all I think I been to close to 50 times and each time was exciting in it's own way,  I think my next few post i will focus on diffrent trips and experiances.