One of the recent contaminated food scandals to appear in Chinese newspapers was the ‘cardboard baozi’ scandal. Baozi are steamed buns, usually with a savoury filling, but sometimes sweet. It was discovered that in one Chinese city a very popular vendor had been using cardboard in its baozi for six years. They bought used cardboard boxes, soaked them until soft, ground them to small pieces, boiled them and added flavouring, then used the pulp as filling for their steamed buns.
Now a food scandal has emerged in Wuhan. One of the favourite breakfast foods here is ‘hot dry noodles’. I’m relieved to say I don’t like them and never eat them but the locals love them. They are a variety of fried noodles with less water added than most noodle dishes. They get their flavour from sesame paste, or used to. The scandal is that it has now been discovered by police that many vendors are no longer using sesame paste. A while ago someone noticed that pig food was very similar in colour to ground sesame, so he added a little oil and water and scattered a few sesame seeds around it, and cooked his noodles in it. It was close enough in taste that the busy customers didn’t notice the difference. The trick caught on and became widespread throughout the city. Pig food is cheaper. It also contains nice hormones to fatten you up. Perhaps hot dry noodles will be taken off the list of ‘famous’ foods of Wuhan.