Chutzpah and other stuff

Where to begin? Let's start with poor Liu Xiaojing. She was sentenced to seven years in prison for poisoning her ex lover by putting mercury in his Sprite drink. Not nice you say. Well just three weeks ago, the courts upheld a one-year prison sentence against Ma Sai, her ex lover and the victim in the Sprite poisoning. Talk about Chutzpah, he was convicted of damaging Sprite's reputation after fabricating a story blaming the popular soft drink for his being poisoned with mercury. Ma, 22, learned Liu had intentionally put the toxic chemical into his drink but he collaborated with Liu to keep the poisoning secret and blamed the beverage company for the poisoning, even though he knew it was not responsible. Isn't love wonderful?

Finally to close out the week I think after reading this you'll understand why we will probably lose weight during our adventure here. It's all about understanding what you can and cannot eat. In this case ham which neither of us eat but is indicative of what's happening here. Seems a five-star hotel claimed it found old packaging material in ham it was using.

China Yurun Food Group Ltd said a rare malfunction in its mechanized packaging process was to blame for the incident in which plastic film and metal buckles were found in the ham purchased by the hotel in Hefei City, capital of east China's Anhui Province. The company said it had suspended a flawed assembly line of its subsidiary, Ma'anshan Yurun Food Co Ltd, which produced the ham, and started a recall of products of the same batch.

The hotel chef thinks otherwise and some food industry analysts agree that the material had been used previously and mixed with the ham before the new batch was packaged. They accuse the company of unwrapping expired ham, mixing it with fresh meat and relabeling it as new. A food industry insider supported the chef, saying the company might have failed to remove the used packaging before throwing old ham into the mixer.

The story again triggered concerns over China's food quality, and especially its meat industry. In March, a banned additive was found in frozen meat from a subsidiary of the Shuanghui Group, a major rival of Yurun Food. Clenbuterol, a chemical that can boost lean meat, was found in products from the Jiyuan Shuanghui Food Co Ltd in Henan Province.

So there you have it. We just might become vegetarians.