On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 10:40 PM, Suresh Ramasubramanian <sur...@hserus.net> wrote: > Sean Doyle [23/11/10 22:02 -0500]: >> > > You made a chinese guy look ill? That's a first. > The folks in Kangding were ethnically TIbetan; in my experience they have very different eating habits than Han. For example - if we have Chinese visitors here in Boston they often want to eat at a Chinese restaurant (and they will be very picky) but Tibetans want to try everything (ribs joints, mexican food, .. ) just to try something different.
But I don't think it's hard to make a Han Chinese queasy. When I was taking Sunday Mandarin classes the school would have potluck dinners and I would make recipes from Fuchsia Dunlop's "Land of Plenty" sichuan cookbook. I would get complements from other caucasian parents but rarely could I get any of the instructors to even try what I had made because the texture would be 'wrong'. I'm sure that I hadn't cut the vegetables correctly or the wok I used couldn't get to a high enough temperature (I have an electric stove) so I cooked for longer than was specified in the recipe. Trying to get feedback was comically impossible. I don't think they were being difficult - I think it was a real visceral reaction to food that was fresh from the uncanny valley :-).
