We at Projects Abroad would like to wish all of our hard working staff members and current and future volunteers in China a happy and prosperous Chinese New year!

We welcome the Year of the Pig, which will complete one cycle of the Chinese zodiac which started on Feb. 19, 1996 with the Year of the Rat.

This year is also very auspicious as it is also regarded as the Year of the Golden Pig, or jin zhu, which only occurs once every 60 years. Consequently since it is such an auspicious year China is bracing for a baby boom with parents hoping their children will be blessed with good fortune and wealth. It should be a very busy time for our Medical volunteers working in any Ob-Gyn department this year!

Did you do anything special to celebrate the New Year?

In response to my foreign food question, I received the most feed back about Asian food from my fellow staff members who recalled stories of eating every part of a goat on the Mongolian steppe to eating fried batwings in Indonesia. But the best reply by far was from Sarah, a Programme Advisor and design aficionado at our UK office. Here are her varied culinary memories of China:

Having lived in China for a while, I have a few interesting ‘food’ stories. I was fortunate enough to attend lots of amazing banquets and tried some fantastic food, one of the best things I ate was a special soup made from ‘hairy crab’. These are a certain special type of crab that are found around Shanghai only a couple of months a year. They have a special yellow bit of meat and the soup was made just from this - absolutely delicious!

Now onto the slightly more dubious……

There is a food market in Beijing which has stall after stall selling only various kinds of fried insects on sticks - everything from grasshopper to moth larvae! I didn’t personally try these but I have eaten several weird and wonderful things: several toads and frogs (which actually taste ok - a cross between fish and chicken!), snake (a real delicacy), various internal organs of animals (not sure exactly what!), chicken and goose feet (when you eat these in a restaurant they give everyone a plastic glove and you sit there gnawing at your fried foot then spitting out the bones, never really saw the appeal in it). They seem to try and eat every part of each animal possible, so you want to watch out when you order chicken soup in China, you are likely to find the head, neck and feet floating around in there!

One a had on my plate but couldn’t bring myself to eat was a fish eye, which I helped myself to off a buffet thinking it was just a piece of fish till I turned it over and the eye was staring right at me! I have also had sparrow in a restaurant where you have a small BBQ in the middle of the table and they bring all the food to you and you cook it yourself. There wasn’t much meat on it I have to say!

The best one though is a ‘live prawn’ dish (see the picture above), another Shanghai specialty. The chef takes a glass bowl, half fills it with a dark red wine sauce. Lots of live prawns are then put in and a lid put on. The prawns start off splashing around but then get gradually more and more drunk so become sedated. At this point the lid is taken off and everyone dives in with chopsticks and eats them all whole (spitting out any bits of shell they don’t want to eat). I found this terrifying and did try one but made a real mess of it! Naturally once the prawns feel you grabbing them, they start to wiggle around!!

I was actually a demi- (fish-eating) vegetarian when I went out there but gave up trying to figure out what I did and don’t eat!

For those of you have called the North American Office of Projects Abroad you have probably been lucky enough to speak to my desk mate and traveler extraordinaire Jessye, a Program Advisor here in New York. She returned from an exciting trip to Shanghai last month and was kind enougth to send along this post without any arm twisting!

Ni hao from China!

Shanghai is an amazing city. Coming from New York I thought nothing could possibly seem more crowded or bigger but I was wrong! Going to the top of the Jin Mao Tower on the first day was quite an experience, as the views of the city were amazing and I could really see how it goes on forever! There is constant building going on all around you, and with so many new shopping malls and office buildings you can really see the city’s amazing growth.

Besides the obvious sights there are loads of amazingly trendy outfits and haircuts to check out, and outrageous Christmas decorations everywhere which are surprising considering it’s not so much of a holiday here. Exploring the city by subway is really easy as the subway system is new and clean with all the stops listed in English and Chinese. Despite its sprawling size Shanghai is relatively easy to navigate with a good map, and it is extremely safe.
The food has been great but volunteers should definitely practice their chopstick skills before arriving! I haven’t tried the chicken feet or other surprising menu items, but everything that I have had has been delicious! Though Chinese food is obviously the main thing available, there are many other options in Shanghai for those times that you are desperate for variety. I even found a real Western breakfast on Sunday morning with eggs and toast!

It has been so much fun visiting our placements and meeting our staff and volunteers. Shanghai is a great place to live and work, and our volunteers are always busy with the huge variety of things to do on their time off! Many volunteers also take advantage of the amazing travel opportunities within China, and a trip to the countryside is definitely worth it as it offers a startling difference from modern, urban Shanghai.