Hello all! I've been rather busy with a new job and haven’t been around lately. The new project I joined at work has taken me to China for six weeks to learn a new operations process. This morning some of the Chinese Nationals from the plant took me on a fishing trip to a local fishing lake. The place is set up with covered tables around the edge along with cabins for rent that have deck access for fishing. You pay for what you catch (about 3 bucks a kg). We used wet fish food made into a tight ball about the size of a tennis ball fished on the bottom. It's not my normal idea of fishing but when in Rome, do as the Romans do. They look like Asian Carp but surprisingly taste pretty good even though I'm a deep fried in peanut oil kind of guy. Here's some pictures of my excellent adventure.

That's amazing. My sister-in-law is Chinese, and that looks exactly like the delicious meals I've seen her prepare.

That looks like grass carp, and one common carp to me. I'd like to know for certain if those are vegetarian type grassies, and if so, what exactly that bait was. Who knows, maybe it would work here...

Bruce, the feed was in a Purina bag with lots of Chinese writing. The pellets were very small cylinder shaped of the sinking type. We used a rig that had a bell shaped brass spring to form the bait around that had about six small hooks like the fly type George uses for his pellet flies hanging down on individual lines that you mashed into the outside of the bait ball. I'll try to post a picture of the rig later. I'm pretty sure these guys were a type of grass carp.

F-T, great story and glad you're doing well.

In that first picture of the soup/stew, I don't know if I could eat that with the face staring back at me!

very cool stuff indeed.

+1

a few chicken feet floating around in that 1st pot would make a real delicacy.

thanks for checking in fam trad

The first night I was here in Zhangjiagang my big welcome to China dinner had chicken feet, pig ears and about everything else we consider dog treats in the U.S. so the fish head soup was pretty mild by what I've already been exposed to. I hope everyone affected by Ike is OK, was able to fly out of Bush at 0700 the Friday the storm hit.

I had the same experience a few years back FT. I had some clients that are Chinese that threw an annual party at a fancy Chinese restaurant here in Sandy Eggo. The invitied me so I went. One of the courses was boiled chicken. They carried out this whole chicken that was posed on this plate (it looked like it was just sitting there on the serving platter). They set it down in the middle of the table facing me. I could feel it's eyes on me watching my every move. I found it quite unnerving. An unfortunate incindent followed that neither myself, the former client or the Chinese Restaurant will discuss to this day. Suffice it to say that was my first and last dinner there.

JHAP wrote: "They invitied me so I went."

...as opposed to just showing up without being invited.

I find the later works better.

What Happened?

I won't get into the entire explanation but I will mention this. Picture yourself sitting a formal dinner. You have brought your 10 year old daughter with you (my client had previously met my daughter and mentioned that their kids would be there so I should bring her along). The boiled chicken was only one of the, how shall I put this, less than appetizing, courses of dinner. The others included Sea Cucumber (very, very nasty stuff), Uni (the edible goo inside of a Sea Urchin - actually a Japanese delicacy - husband is Japanese, wife and family are Chinese), Eel (actually one of the better tasting parts of the meal but still not so much fun to look at), whole shrimp, and various other foodstuffs that I found less that palatable.

That's not enough detail JHAP. I am sure that our creative juices are wandering but we want to cringe over the gory details as we chow on our safe but tasty corn flakes and toast. Give it up....

Yea; how many threw up?

LOL, you guys crack me up. Fortunately there was no projectile vomiting or chain reaction vomiting.

There was a lot of whimpering, which turned to crying, which turned into hysterics and finally little girl screams.

Thankfully my ten year old daughter was able to calm me down before I made a real scene.