Chinabites

Posted: Sep. 16, 2009

Many people readily admit the primacy of Chinese cuisine on the world culinary stage. Few know, however, the great debt Chinese cuisine owes not to the chefs and kitchens of the Tang dynasty - but rather the unsung legions of amateur Chinese alchemists, whose ill-fated experiments never produced lead from gold, but which did bear certain fruit, available on certain Chinese menus to this day:

Perhaps this explains the rampant deforestation over northern China.