Rio de Emocion

There's nothing like a ride on a Chinese train. As soon as you enter the smell of hundreds of smoking, spitting and drinking Chinese people enters your nostrils and your first thought might be to just throw up. Though with the prospects of riding this smoking red dragon for two and a half hours (standing places too - the trains are filled to the brim with people), it's a good idea to start adapting to this place!

And adapting is easy in China. I'm crossing traffic at random, spitting and throwing my dirty napkins and food leftovers on restaurant floors, employing peer pressure to get everyone at the table drunk and even occasionally smoking their disgusting cigarettes now, because it's not like anyone gets a free pass on lung cancer in this coal-mining region.

One thing I found a bit hard to get used to is the thought of eating cat ('mao' in Chinese, as I learned). This morning I went to a place that apparently serves 'Donkey Flire' in a pastry-like bun. Later I went back to the place with my colleague for our favourite pasttime in China, sippin' beers and watching the busy people of this People's Republic going about their daily lives. At one point this guy rides in on a scooter with a kitten in the basket with a rope leash around its neck. He gets off the bike, puts the kitten on the ground and kinda drags it into the restaurant with the cat squealing like a pig.

We've all heard the stories - they eat cats and dogs in China. So we're sitting there and talking about what's going to happen - are they really gonna kill and eat it? A minute later the guy leaves the restaurant with no cat. No more squealing to be heard either.

When we tried to ask the place's fry cook about what happened with the 'meow-meow' - nobody speaks English in this country and we speak about 5 words of Mandarin - he seems rather happy and makes some eating gestures while preparing a single pastry in his oven for himself. The implications seem obvious.

Later, a Chinese colleague from the company assured me they "never eat mao" in China - just 'gao', or dog. I'm not entirely convinced.