Light, tasty and simple to make, egg fried rice has long been a beloved dish in China and one of most recognizable icons of Chinese cuisine around the world.
But in recent years, the popular stir-fry has become a highly sensitive subject for China’s online nationalists, especially around the months of October and November.
Emotions are running so high this week that one of the country’s most famous chefs has been forced to apologize – for making a video on how to cook the dish.
“As a chef, I will never make egg fried rice again,” Wang Gang, a celebrity chef with more than 10 million online fans, pledged in a video message on Monday.
Wang’s “solemn apology” attempted to tame a frothing torrent of criticism about the video, which was posted on Chinese social media site Weibo on November 27.
Angry nationalists accused Wang of using the video to mock the death of Mao Zedong’s eldest son, Mao Anying, who was killed in an American air strike during the Korean War on November 25, 1950.
Chef Wang’s Youtube channel is so awesome. His video “Making ‘Buddha Jumps Over the Wall’ for my uncle, and he is loving it!” is one of the most fascinating cooking videos I have ever seen (and I’ve seen a lot).
The whole thing is done in an outdoor kitchen over the space of something like three days, with many ingredients (most of which I’ve never even seen before), elbows and pig’s feet and chicken and who knows what else, over mostly direct fire heat, in vats that take two people to lift. It’s masterful. Cooking, straining, recooking, chilling, combining, mixing, separating, you lose track. And somehow at the end it all makes sense and they’re sitting around eating a feast.
It’s the kind of video that just sucks you in and you end up spending way more time than you ever intended to watching the whole thing. He has many more much shorter ones, and they’re all good, usually English subbed pretty well. I’ve never left one of his videos without having seen something I didn’t know before.
I honestly wonder if this isn’t just regime goons harassing him because his videos are popular worldwide.
Shark fin… I have no regrets whatsoever eating meat… But shark fin is animal cruelty on a quite high level.
My sole experience with shark parts is a necklace I had in the 70s along with every other teen, lol. As I said above, I’ve never even seen a number of the ingredients he uses, so this is kind of lost on me. It’s his culture, and for myself I have never had, and likely will never have, any part of a shark as food. It’s just not appealing to me. But maybe your post will inform those for whom it is. Thank you for letting us know.
The problem with shark fin as an ingredient is that the fishermen normally catch a shark, cut off the fin and throw it back alive… and it slowly dies in agony.
If we’re going to kill to eat we could at least try to let the animal suffer as little as possible and use as much of the animal we can.
Why do they keep the sharks alive? I imagine its harder to cut the fins when its alive and thrashing than to kill it first. Whats up with that?
Cheaper, they catch them and hang them upside down, cut the fins and drop them back in the ocean. No disposal, and quicker.
That make sense and paints a horrible picture. I imagine the sharks can’t swim without the fin? Just float until it starves to death? Fuck. Ruins my day.
I’d rather they cut an artery or something before dropping them so it can atleast die quicker.
If I would write about this topic as I feel about it this would end in extreme hate-speech about the demographics who eat them and those who do those unbelievable deeds. It’s a beyond vile, absolute devoid of any value, twisted & sick industry. Just read the wikipedia entry for shark-finning.
In addition to causing immeasurable suffering and death to a mindboggling number of sharks, with up to 70-80% reduction within a lot of shark-species, they’re setting the fate of other marine ecosystems too…
The main task of sharks is to balance out those systems by hunting too numerous species. A Sea-Wolf. Now there’s a constant flow of rotting shark carcasses which will possibly let the wrong species thrive which won’t be regulated anymore. But those 400 million years old species time has come anyway in the very near future because it won’t have anything to regulate anymore.
Look up what happened in Yellowstone with the reintroduction of the wolf (that was killed off previously in 1930) and the resulting self-regulating system. In the adjacent Montana they shoot up to half of the wolf population and in surrounding states the “game” is coyotes and foxes. With cruel traps like sadistic trappers do. Now they have to mow down super-boar herds with MGs. Instead of finding better ways to co-exist with natures ranger-creatures which are doing a way better job in Yellowstone than hunters.
It’s the wolfs merit that beavers, foxes, songbirds and willows came back just by regulating elk and deer populations. But in a completely different way than hunters. Disclaimer: I’m from Europe and only read up on that so I may have recited a few things incorrect.
Don’t wanted to discuss this topic and I don’t expect an answer. Just wanted to vent.
I can’t answer your question and wikipedia doesn’t as well. I guess it has something to do with speed. Would fit those pieces of walking excrements who run that industry.
Thanks for the recommendation. I just watched it and it’s so wholesome.
I know, right? I have to go watch it again, lol.