Cardboard Meat In China
I’m not sure if this got much media coverage in other countries, but one of the top stories on almost every Japanese network’s evening news was a scandal in China involving steamed meat buns (nikuman) that contained cardboard:
China’s CCTV had snuck a hidden camera into a place in Beijing where the meat buns were being produced, and discovered that 60% of the meat in their buns was actually cardboard! When mixed at such a ratio, it is very difficult for customers to realize that they are eating paper instead of meat. The folks caught making cardboard buns were shut down by the police, but this scandal could make Chinese consumers a bit worried about trusting meat buns. Other Chinese producers of meat buns, when asked to comment about this case, understandibly answered that they were very angry that someone would do such a disgraceful thing.
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I wouldn’t eat it if it was real meat. What’s with the guy cooking in his drawers?
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Chinese food stuffs have always been shady, my girlfriend that’s from HK and her parents don’t eat pretty much anything made on the chinese mainland..
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Wheres the connection to japan with this?
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Japanese media coverage of foreigners is a major topic on this site.
Guess you would have to make an entry every time the broadcast about something in the world, while your entries seem only to be about something scandalous that happend in this crazy china country?
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I would, but I’d probably be simply repeating stories that the mostly North American readers of this site have already seen covered in their mainstream media. I find that the Japanese media provides in depth and interesting coverage of strange events in nearby countries, the kind of news I never heard about when I lived in America. There also seems to be a bit of obsession in the Japanese media about covering bad news about China, which I try to give an accurate picture of by including clips taken from Japanese TV and mentioning how the amount of weight put on coverage of such stories.
However, the bottom line is that I mainly blog about interesting stuff on Japanese TV, with a focus on strange stuff westerners usually don’t hear about. I’m not on a mission to drag China through the mud, but I’m also not about to stop posting interesting stories because a few visitors from the People’s Republic of China complain about it.
Theres no way in hell I would defend certain aspects about the PRC, but I prefer a blog titled japan probe staying on focus. Well, I guess the Disneyland story attracted a fair number of hits and its your blog after all. Take it as feedback not a complaint.
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I love nikumon, in the winter (November, December) I pretty much have a diet of convience store nikumon when I’m not eating at American restaurants.
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CNN also did a report about this.
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At least it’s not made of human.
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dirty filthy people. What a dirty dirty smelly man. Still looking of that CHeap meal anyone?
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James,
Thanks for posting stuff like this. I think sharing how Japanese media looks at the world is really important and I always appreciate posts like this.
My opinion is that people in Japan use bad stories about foreigners, especially those in Africa or China to feel good about themselves. There are several problems with such an attitude, however, I probably don’t need to tell you about that as you already know.
As it turns out, while this story generated a lot of media attention in Japan, it wasn’t even true!
Here’s a link:
http:// http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/PEK90856.htm
I’ve blogged my opinion about this here;
http:// japan.shadowofiris.com/racism/chinese-cardboard-dumplings-story-a-fake/
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> My opinion is that people in Japan use bad stories about foreigners, especially those in Africa or China to feel good about themselves.
Is that really true? I see a lot Japanese media coverage about how good the Chinese economy is and how successful they are now.
Cardboard meat stuff was made up by Chinese media, not Japanese.
China is a major neighboring country for Japan, so what happens in China is a big concern of Japanese, I guess.
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>Cardboard meat stuff was made up by Chinese media, not Japanese.
Yeah, in fact the footage from the Japanese news report was from China’s CCTV, which had also reported it before any Japanese TV stations did.
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