5-star fly in the soup

A Hong Kong gentleman named Holman Lau got pretty upset three months ago when he discovered a fly in his bowl of Vietnam beef soup noodles, the South China Morning Post reports today.

The incident happened at the 5-star China Hotel in Guangzhou. A 5-star fly is still a fly of course. Mr Lau demanded an apology from hotel staff and compensation of any medical costs should the-fly-in-the-soup make him ill.

The problem is restaurant waiters have seen these kind of incidents all too often. Who knows? Maybe some crooks are running around with a packet of death flies in their pockets to drop them in the soup and claim compensation? That also happens…

Anyway, Lau go not apology, took a picture of the offending soup with his mobile and went to court claiming 3,466 yuan in compensation. But the court of first instance only granted him 88 yuan because he missed his bus back to Hong Kong following the incident. Still the hotel didn’t pay up and didn’t apologize.

Come back soon for episode two at the Guangzhou Intermediate People’s Court. 

Mooncakes - The Day After

Mooncakes are round pastries (to resemble a round moon) with a dizzying array of possible fillings: lotus seed paste, egg yolk and different kinds of nuts are the more traditional ones. I like the nutty ones, but try to stay away from other kinds.

There has been a lively trade in mooncakes in the past two or three weeks. Everybody is giving everybody mooncakes. Mooncakes you receive from friend A can be recycled and offered to friend B. Nearly nobody is buying mooncakes to eat, it’s just a trading object and sometimes the packaging is more expensive than the mooncakes it contains.

There has been a proliferation of mooncake flavors: chocolate, jasmine tea, champagne, bird’s nest, durian, coffee, cheese, chocolate and cheese combined; you name an edible substance and it will have found its way into a mooncake. Some hotel restaurants even organized mooncake buffets, so every possible and a few impossible flavors could be savored in one sitting.

Or an inedible substance, like gold and diamonds! The venerable mooncake has been turned into a bribery vehicle. Of course the authorities know this. To combat corruption, strict rules were issued about what an (edible) mooncake may contain and how it may or may not be packaged. But the rules do not apply to inedible mooncakes. And so you have mooncakes made of solid gold, encrusted with precious diamonds and so on.

Well, today, the morning after, everybody is happy the mooncake madness is over. Any leftovers are sold at steeply discounted prices. Some are even kept in storage till next year.

Mid-autumn has passed and it is still 21 degrees at noon in Beijing. Climate change and global warming?