In the Danger Zone

by Stefan Gates

  I ask the chef if he thinks it strange to deal exclusively in genitalia, but he shrugs and doesn't know what to say. He's just happy to have a good job, really. His friends don't take the mickey, his parents are proud of him, and he does what he's told. OK.

  Less taciturn is the female manager of the place, who says that Chinese history is one of famine, poverty, drought and disaster, which is why the Chinese have become used to eating every part of the animal – they have to extract every edible morsel from the food they have. I ask if this is good communist food, and she proudly says that most of her customers are male Communist party members. Their meal costs an average of two months' wages for a dumpling factory worker, and I ask how a conscientious communist can be seen here (up to £250 for the rarer penises) when the average peasant is on the poverty line. She holds her hands up in the air and tells me that they come for the virility benefits that genital-eating offers. Apparently you can go for hours after eating a good portion of penis.

  We try the water buffalo penis first, in thin shavings. It started long and thin, but someone has shredded this noble old chap on a mandolin. It has the texture of squid, and tastes of the mild chilli stock it's been poached in. We are given three sauces to dip the penis into – lemon and soy, chilli and soy and a sesame seed paste. It's good, and the penile nature of the meat lends an undeniable frisson of excitement to the meal. I tell the boss that 'it's the first time I've had penis in my mouth, but I like it and I'm going to do more of it'. Well, someone had to say it.

  She seems pleased and pours me some deer penis juice, which I'm delighted to say is the vilest concoction I've ever had the privilege to imbibe. It's as sour as a smacked lemon and as bitter as neat quinine. My face freezes in an agonizing spasm and Lord knows how I manage to keep from throwing up. Mr Hoo, the driver, asks if I want any more, and when I shake my spasming head, he grins and downs it in one. I pity Mrs Hoo – she's going to have a busy night.

  We try goat's penis, chicken feet, bull's penis tip (that'll keep you up all night too, the boss warns), terrapin leg and all manner of radishes. I'm offered dog's penis ('the only one with a bone in it'), and served with a glace cherry placed pointlessly on the tip, but decline. All the knobs have intriguing, delicate and bizarre textures, although the flavour is mainly of pork braised in hot stock. But my favourite dish of all is undoubtedly the bull's perineum, which is a delicate piece of flesh the size of a chicken oyster that's been poached then slow-fried. It's sweet and crispy, with a deep taste of soy and honey. Fabulous stuff.

  Yan Yan isn't too keen on penis, but she's adventurous in the face of adversity, and tries most things with a curled lip.

  Just before we go, I ask why the girls get off lightly. Why don't they serve any female genitalia?

  The boss bursts into giggly embarrassed laughter. 'That's a crazy idea – why would anyone want to do that?'

  'Well, because it's protein and you Chinese are renowned for eating everything.'

  'Don't be insane,' she says. Then she remembers that she's heard of a dish of donkey vulva but she's not sure where. She thinks it's a disgusting idea.

  The Night Market

  The next day I manage to stagger out of bed at first light in time to watch the legendary Chinese early morning workout in the park – accompanied, of course, by another two minders. Mr Chen, a local t'ai chi master, gets me up in front of hundreds of onlookers to show me some moves. Obviously I look like a tool, but doing the moves does make me feel calm and poised. As soon as I'm finished, a handsome old gent called Mr Huang comes up to practise his English on me. I tell him that I'm here to make a film about food in China and he tells me that he's a great cook, and invites me for lunch: 'I cook good Chinese food for you.' I gladly accept, take his phone number and arrange to meet him later that day.

  When my minders find out, they tell me that it can't be organized. I say that it already has been, and refuse to take no for an answer.

  Inevitably, the party minders have got to Mr Huang and grilled him before I arrive (Penny had demanded that Yan Yan give her the phone number, and then passed it onto them), although they don't risk my wrath by trying to stop me, and I refuse to let them stay inside with me whilst I'm there – they've given up on us now, which is a great relief. Mr Huang lives in a small, four-roomed worker's flat that exhibits the kind of ingrained filth that comes with decades of poverty, the kind of squalor that looks disconcertingly beautiful. He tells me he had been an important crane engineer during the early development of Beijing, and although he's an old man now (he's 75), he's fit as a fiddle, getting up at 6 a.m. every morning to do t'ai chi in the park. He's also very proud of his cooking.

  Mr Huang shows me how to make a strong, pungent fish-head soup ('good for your brains and nervous system), stir-fried peas (sadly, not very good), rice, pork stew and stir-fried fish. We have a rare old time. His kitchen is cramped but adequate, with a two-ring gas hob, a few pots and pans and one small, very dim light bulb. Every wall has a patina of filth that must have taken years to get to this perfect art director's vision of urban grime. The house has no carpets, and no unnecessary luxuries other than a few calligraphy banners drawn by Mr Huang's brother.

  Mr Huang doesn't need any more than he has (or at least, if he does, he isn't saying) and seems pretty happy with his life. This is the right kind of place for a retired couple, he insists. Our talk turns to communism, and although he seems happy to talk about it, his wife tells him sharply not to reveal anything to me. Oh, come on. Although he has been a party member for 50 years, he won't be drawn on what communism means to him, what modern communism is, or whether China is going through fundamental changes. It transpires that both of his daughters are now in the United States, and one is a US citizen. Hmm.

  'OK,' I say, 'if you won't talk about communism, can you tell me what being a party member means to you?'

  'You should serve the people with your heart and soul; whatever you do must conform to the wish of the people.'

  'And has communism changed, do you think?'

  'I think our main goal hasn't changed in terms of the policies. I feel it is like people walking. The destination is always the same but the style and speed of walking is different. The speed it is walking now is suitable for our development.'

  And that is as far as he would go. Shame really – he was a lovely bloke, but clearly my minders had got to him. It seems odd that they wouldn't talk about communism – presumably they are proud of China's immense achievements – the millions of people who were persecuted and slaughtered along the way shouldn't have died for nothing.

  Later that night we decide to have some fun and visit the Beijing night market where we find all manner of scorpions, squabs, weird bivalves and cockroaches. This is your basic extreme eating experience, similar to a rough sex one-night stand: unedifying and ultimately unsatisfying in retrospect but bloody great at the time. I try most things on offer: scorpions that are skewered alive and dispatched instantly in boiling oil (crispy on the outside, smooth in the middle).

  'Deleeeshoush! Very healfy,' yells the theatrical stall owner, who's clearly seen a few camera crews and tourists in his time.

  I agree; slightly disturbing, but delicious nonetheless. And as I gingerly eat its poisonous tail, I feel like I'm eating a large and dangerous Walkers crisp.

  I try all manner of bugs, kebabs and weird fish, most of which I never find out the names of. It's all fun, icky, spine-tingling and exhilarating. Tiny squabs are the only real revelation – eaten whole, heads, wings and all. They have been lightly grilled and are a remarkable combination of delicate poultry flavour and crunchy texture.

  I go on to eat, for no good reason other than a frisson of adventure, snake skin, grubs and erm . . . lamb kebab. Snake skin is a little reminiscent of crocodile: like fishy pork, pleasantly fatty.

  And then we film a beggar who happens to be going through a bin in front of us, and Penny goes nuts and stops us. 'Why are you filming him? He has nothing to do with food.'


  I am bewildered – I'm making a documentary, and if something happens in front of us, isn't it reflective of modern China? They've stopped me from meeting any of the hundreds of millions of rural poor, so they've already made sure China is depicted infinitely better than it really is.

  She goes on complaining bitterly about it until we arrive at the hotel.

  On my last day I take a deep breath and visit China's greatest, biggest, hairiest tourist fleshpot. I walk up a path of several thousand steps to get to it, which after the first kilometre, I realize is perhaps a mistake, what with the rucksacks of camera kit that I, as sole bloke on hand, foolishly offer to carry.

  When I finally get there, the Great Wall of China is many things: naff, cheesy, extraordinary and impressive, which is probably why it appears on Chinese visa stamps. It is, like many great things, a wild folly that could only be built in a country where rulers can force grand and utterly imbecilic gestures like these to be built at the cost of thousands of lives. It's also a bit of a metaphor for modern China: impressive, bold, paranoid and obstructive. As a defence mechanism, it was crap, and never stopped any invasions (Genghis Khan is said to have simply bribed the guards to let him in). The fact that a tool to stop people getting into China appears on my visa stamp tells you everything about modern China and its grasp of irony.

  • • • • •

  I'm on the plane on my way home, and it's a huge relief. My love affair never transpired, and I leave feeling angry and frustrated about China because of the paranoia and subterfuge. Despite the wealth and technology its mindset is still stuck in the dark ages. This is a paranoid, juvenile country and it seems out of place in the modern world.

  I think about my next trip. The behaviour of China's officials has been laughable, but hopefully it has wiped away the growing sense of normality I've begun to feel about the abject misery and desperate poverty I've seen over the last few years. I need to start over again as a functioning, rational emotional being, with my eyes open and an ability to put what I see in some sort of context. I haven't been looking forward to my last journey because I know that where I'm going hatred is probably more highly concentrated than in any other place on earth.

  ISRAEL AND

  PALESTINE

  God's Pood

  ISRAEL

  POPULATION: 7 million

  PERCENTAGE LIVING BELOW THE POVERTY LINE: 22%

  UNDP HUMAN DEVELOPMENT INDEX: 23/177

  CORRUPTION PERCEPTIONS INDEX POSITION: 34/163

  GDP (NOMINAL) PER CAPITA: $20,399 (30/179)

  FOOD AID RECIPIENTS: n/a

  MALNUTRITION: n/a

  WEST BANK

  POPULATION: 2.5 million (according to CIA World Factbook)

  PERCENTAGE LIVING BELOW THE POVERTY LINE: 46%

  UNDP HUMAN DEVELOPMENT INDEX: n/a

  CORRUPTION PERCEPTIONS INDEX POSITION: n/a

  GDP (NOMINAL) PER CAPITA: $1,500 (200/229)

  FOOD AID RECIPIENTS: 600,000 (West Bank and Gaza)

  MALNUTRITION: n/a

  Nobody tells you this before you get to the Middle East, but Israel and the Palestine territories are tiny. Israel is the size of Wales, the West Bank is the size of Cornwall, and the Gaza Strip is less than half the size of the Isle of Wight. Yet this dusty, rocky little patch of land has provided us with a conflict the bitterness and misery of which dwarfs all others. Some claim that its politico-religious conflict is the root cause of the gravest dangers facing the world right now. The fight between Israelis and Palestinians has been marked by years of atrocities and an ever-deepening spiral of hatred, misery and vengeance.

  The situation here is so bitter and complex that any journalist hoping to report on it for the BBC has to take a special course to ensure that events here are fairly reported. Both sides have accused the BBC of being biased, and newspapers in Israel frequently criticize Europeans for being 'awful' about Israel. It's the textbook case of 'one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter'.

  The Jerusalem Crowne Plaza

  I'm soaking up the atmosphere of the Jerusalem Crowne Plaza, one of those utterly miserable hotels the BBC loves its staff to stay in. In fact the only upside to the Crowne Plaza is its peculiar and highly amusing function as an orthodox Jewish dating venue, and each night the lobby is rammed with courting couples. 'Courting' may be exaggerating matters a little – they're putative, proto-couples meeting up to find out if they are suited. The guys – young Orthodox men sporting long pe'ote sideburns, large black hats firmly glued above them, and their torsos wrapped in black overcoats – sit talking to earnest young women of marriageable age. Lurking a few tables away a chaperone is viewing the proceedings to ensure a complete lack of hankipankiness, although in truth there's likely to be neither hanky nor panky between these devout boys and girls.

  My first conversation with an Israeli turns into a stand-up row after I tell the inquisitive hotel shop owner that I'm making a documentary for the BBC. 'Why are you so awful about Israel? Why do you hate us so much?'

  'I don't' doesn't seem to cut it with her. I take a look at the Jerusalem Post (take the Daily Mail and turn right, and you'll find this paper somewhere around Saturn) and it contains more discussions about how the BBC and Europeans in general are 'awful' about Israel for, amongst other things, reporting the UN's view that West Bank settlements are illegal, and its view that Jerusalem isn't strictly speaking the capital of Israel. This is clearly not going to be an easy trip.

  Efrat, my Israeli guide, picks me up and I drive to the BBC bureau. It's two months since Alan Johnston, the Gaza correspondent, was abducted, and he's still in captivity somewhere in Gaza, so they are on high alert. They ask what I'm here to do, and I tell them that I'm doing a story about food and conflict. The bureau chief looks at me as though I'm insane.

  We take a quick drive around Old Jerusalem: it's a truly beautiful city that oozes history. It's the holiest city in Judaism, the third holiest in Islam and one of the most important in Christianity. I think it's a little weird that there's a pecking order of holiness, being more of an omnipresence and omniscience kind of guy, but what do I know?

  The Palestinians say that east Jerusalem will become the Palestinian capital (if they ever get a state), but since Israel annexed it in the 1967 Six Day War, this looks unlikely to happen. Israel calls Jerusalem its capital and has located its Supreme Court and parliament here, but the UN (along with most of the rest of the world) hasn't recognized this, saying that the final status of the city is part of future negotiations on a Palestinian state. See, nothing's easy here.

  My first foray into Israel is with Gil Hovav, Israel's most famous food celebrity who's Jewish, but no BBC-hater, and who turns out to be friendly and knowledgeable. He's taking me for a guided tour of the city starting with Mahane Yehuda, the main food market. Palestinian suicide bombers have struck here six times in the last 20 years killing 24 people and wounding over 300. Yet it's your classic cultural melting pot and the range of foods on offer is extraordinary: Israel is made up of Jews from all over the world, and they have clung onto their traditional cuisines.

  'Is there such a thing as Jewish food?' I ask Gil.

  'Here you'll get Iraqi food, Egyptian food, Syrian food, Yemeni food. These arc all the Jews who came from these countries to Israel, and they brought their food with them. Then you have the Ashkenazi food. East European food, Poland, Germany, Hungary, you find it in this market as well. And, of course, Russian, Russian, Russian. We have had about a million immigrants from Russia in less then ten years so. Russian food is very strong.

  'You can buy almost everything here. You can even find non-kosher food, although it's mainly kosher. The minute you introduce a non-kosher item to a store everything in it becomes non-kosher. Since the big Russian immigration, you can even find pork and seafood in this market. It was a definite no-no before. But people demanded it so you can find it.'

  I ask if traditional Jews are offended by the fact that you can buy pork in Israel. 'Every once
in a while they very politely burn the store. But if the store survives then you can find pork here.'

  We wander towards the Orthodox areas, but Gil warns Efrat not to come. She's wearing modern, Western clothing, and this doesn't go down well around these parts. We wander into Mea Sharim, 'Eastern Europe in the 18th century. This is the main ultra-orthodox neighbourhood in Jerusalem. Its very big, very populated and very poor.'

  We pass a sign addressed to women and girls saying 'Please do not pass through our neighbourhood in immodest clothes'. Gil explains that if women come dressed inappropriately, they are likely to have urine thrown at them from the nearby houses.

  The residents of Mea Sharim mostly follow the strictly orthodox Haredi Jewish tradition. Men and women are often segregated, and modern technology often rejected. 'It's so poor that you won't find a lot of restaurants here, but if you find one it'll be European because traditionally the ultra-orthodox come from eastern Europe.'

  We stop at a small cave-like restaurant and eat kugle – a shredded potato cake that's traditionally eaten on Saturday, the Jewish day of rest (Shabbat), when no work is allowed, including cooking.

  'Kugle is baked in the oven overnight,' Gil explains. 'On Shabbat you're not supposed to operate your oven. So you can start it on Friday, and cook something in it overnight for lunch or breakfast the next day. And since on Shabbat you're supposed to eat hot food this is the best thing because it doesn't burn.'