Vegetarian's adventure in China

China is so different from in India though we have been neighbors and have few thousands of years civilization. It has been parallel development. Food is a prime example of it. Before going there a few years back I had heard it was tough for Indian non veggies and tougher for veggies. My company with Customer Company had arranged for Chinese cooks for cooking Indian food. I will reserve my writing on that food now. Well my adventure in hotels was great.

I am basically a vegetarian by choice for 23 years. But I like eggs.

The very first day, I was taken by my colleagues to Mac Donald’s. They had warned me that the Chinese will feed us anything and everything. Being an egg eater, I ordered egg burger. The first Mac burger was good but something was not alright at after first few chews. I thought it was a
different taste in China and my colleagues scare. With next bite I was pretty sure that there was some meat in it. I opened it and found a thin layer of meat. We went back and asked what it was, luckily the manager knew English and he told me it was Cow's meat. For me it dint matter
which animal I just did not want to eat any of them. My new colleagues were outraged that an Hindu was made to eat beef. One of them starting fighting saying why was it mentioned as egg burger when it had beef in it. Manager said by default burger came with beef and egg was he
additional thing. The manager took it back and offered only eggs burger. I said no thanks and made it only "Vegetables" burger.

Next morning I went to the English speaking secretary asked her to write vegetarian. But I discovered that there was not equivalent word for Vegetarian in Chinese. So she wrote "only vegetables" on chit of paper, which I carried for rest of my china trip.

One of the English speaking Chinese cooks told me that they eat anything
that moves on land, air and in water except humans. Amazing guys.

My next adventure was in a zoo. We went to restaurant in the zoo. We chose Singapore noodles for lunch, with help of a friendly English speaking engineer we told the waiter we waiter noodles without cow, lamb, fish, chicken, etc. We got the noodles which was quite tasty it had salt, some
spice and lots of carrots. After a tiring walk around the zoo we relished the noodles initially after some time someday mentioned the carrots were stale. Then we realized it was somehow not OK. So we asked the English speaking Chinese to ask the waiter what it was. The answer was pig's meat. Oh shit we were outraged. We the guy why this was put in spite of telling him not put those things. Waiter told the English Chinese that we had not mentioned to him about pork, so he had not put only pork and not any other meat. We did not know how to explain we did not eat any meat.

One more time was when after explaining to English speaking Pizza hut waiter I wanted vegetarian pizza, he still brought me a pizza with chicken topping. This time I ate one slice and then sent it back through manager for veg one. Pizza hut used to be a regular haunt.

Late in my stay after 3 1/2 months we discovered that there was a vegetarian Chinese restaurant in Shenzhen. The concept of vegetarian was there after all. Either it was forgotten or not at all popular or they did not know humans could exist eating vegetables.

Looking back probably was the only time in life I could are will taste beef and pork. It was an experience to remember.