Day 20

September 9, 2010 - Xi'an, Shaanxi Provence - China

The school arranged to take the foreign students for their medical exams today. I had already gotten mine, of course, but decided to go along in order to (finally) pick up my results. I was informed on the bus that the school would have picked up my results for me, but by that time it was already too late.

We arrived, I got my results, and then I left on my own, as it would probably take two or three hours for everyone else to finish. The results of the medical exam, in case you were curious: Perfectly healthy. Well, it said something about a slight "sinus arrhythmia," but also that I was free of any disease that would require quarantine or deportation. So, you know, that's good.

My plan was to take the bus back, but as I was walking to the bus stop, a taxi pulled up and let a lady out. So, I had my first ever taxi ride.


Taxi Driver. Only about $1 to get me all the way back to school.

The taxi dropped me off at the gates of the school, so I did a bit of walking around. Nearly three days without an appetite, I thought I'd try to find something to eat on my walk home. A street vendor was grilling up some skewers and I stopped to ask him what it was, assuming it was spiral cut potatoes. I said "这是土豆吗?" ("this is a potato?") to him, and he responded with some word I didn't understand ending in "肉" ("meat"). I thought "oh, well" and bought one. It was chewy, so "organ meat" was my first instinct. I ate the not-a-potato wondering the whole time what it might be.

((NOTE: You might not want to read the rest of this misadventure. I'm just saying, it goes to a weird place. Maybe you could just go Google "fluffy kittens." That will turn out better than this.))

I meant to ask Xiao Liu about it, but never remembered. I brought it up in class while we were on the subject of restaurants. One of my classmates, he's from Indonesia, told me that he had been told that those spiral skewers were dog meat. My teacher said "no, no, no!" emphatically. They were NOT dog meat. I was relieved, but what were they? The texture had been weird and spongy, so I suggested “豆腐" ("tofu"). She said that sounded right and the conversation ended.

Cut to the internet: I searched and searched for the answer, mostly because I wanted a picture to post on my blog. And, unfortunately, I finally found my answer:


Street Vendor. Picture stolen from http://www.livingstupidly.com/?cat=1&paged=2.

It was sheep penis. Grilled. On a skewer.

It seems weird to say this, but somehow, this was bound to happen sooner or later...

Hayden