Amir&Jeff’s Excellent China Adventure Series. 2025: Hunan, Jiangxi, Fujian and Shaanxi Provinces’ Red Tour. Short videos with transcripts, captioned photos, articles and commentary. The REAL Chinese people you don’t know!

https://radiosinoland.com/2025/07/27/amirjeffs-excellent-china-adventure-series-2025-hunan-jiangxi-fujian-and-shaanxi-provinces-red-tour-short-videos-captioned-photos-articles-and-commentary-the-real-chinese-people-you-don/

Videos

#1:

Transcript

This is a very common sight all over China, propaganda posters. But propaganda in the good sense, with positive messages about work, civility, society, taking care of each other and working hard, taking care of the environment, living the Chinese Dream. You know, not all propaganda is bad. In China, it is good. So, it is there to inspire the people to be good citizens and good workers and good family members.

#2:

Transcript (the Chinese love to have fun like people all over the world, especially children)

Well, it’s summertime. Just like everywhere around the world, the Chinese have summer camps. So, these kids are wrapping up their day. They’re wrapping up their day, having fun. Absolutely.

They can take that T-shirt home as a souvenir. Unbelievable.

#3:

Transcript

So here we are. The woman with the purple blouse on turned around, because she doesn’t want to show her face. But, they’re making brooms out of some kind of… probably broom straw. So, anyway these two ladies over here are chatting with them. Here we are in the mountains of Jiangxi Province, in Jinggangshan.

Photos by Amir

Restaurant food

#1: Of course, anyone who likes Chinese food has to like eating in China. Just look at the smile on Amir’s face. It is quite different than your typical overseas restaurant, like in France and the United States.

First, real Chinese food tends to be “home cooking”, very simple, mom and pop fare, but VERY tasty. Two-four ingredients, a mixture of veggies, eggs, tofu, mushrooms and meat, with garlic and/or spring onions, cooked in several different ways: steamed, sauteed, in a soup, slow cooked, stir/flash fried, occasionally heat-baked, for starters, with all kinds of amazing sauces and spices. Steamed and fried fish is very popular, as are shellfish, especially shrimp.

Second, the portions are big, sometimes huge, especially in the countryside. Two-three dishes for Amir and me is usually enough.

Third, depending on which part of the country, rice is on offer in unlimited quanities for free or for a token sum.

Fourth, and very importantly, it is inexpensive. The two of us eat our fill for €10-15.

Fifth, beer is very cheap. 500-640ml bottles cost less than a euro!

Sixth, no need to leave a tip, like in the USA, where the waitress might be a single mother of two not making ends meet, and you are guilt-tripped into leaving 15-20%. In France, 10% is automatically added to the bill. Not an issue in China.

Seventh, the surroundings are very down home and simple, with the most basic furniture and decor. Of course, there are more expensive restaurants and in the bigger cities, they have top-drawer, white-tablecloth fine dining. But, most of the mom and pop places are very modest.

Above on the right is a mushroom fricasee dish. China has 900 species of edible mushrooms, the most in the world, so they are all a culinary adventure. The plate on the left is pictured below.

#2: This is a scrambled egg dish with celery and garlic. Especially in Southern China, they will ask you, “吃辣吗“ (chi la ma?), which means, “Do you eat hot peppers”?. Amir and I always say yes, but if they are not for your palate, learn to say “bu chi la! In reality, we usually don’t scarf down the actual red peppers, because they are hot as hell – well maybe a few. But in the cooking, their oils impregnate the ingredients and it’s plenty flamethrowing!

#3: There is a joke that Guangdongers eat everything on two legs except people, everything on four legs except tables and everything that flies except airplanes!

That is an exaggeration, but is emblematic of the Chinese not wasting much of what is out there. They are much more adventurous than Westerners. There is a joke in the West about eating pork and everything but the oink. Well, above is sliced pig tail, with black and white mushrooms! The Chinese eat of course tripes, congealed pig/chicken blood, chicken- and pig feet, but the French also make fabulous dishes of all the above, except the chicken feet. So, it’s not that outlandish.

When they throw in green peppers, we usually eat those, since they are not nearly as spicy as their red compadres.

#4: The above dish is fatty pork with spring onions, garlic and mushrooms. The pork skin attached to the fat layer is outstanding for your body, pure gelatin, which goes straight to your hair, nails and bones joints. As hard as the Chinese work, their knees and elbows need it. 

Furthermore, in Hunan, Jiangxi and Shaanxi Provinces, fatty pork dishes are de rigueur, since the smoked version was Mao Zedong’s favorite dish. Thus, many people order fatty pork dishes, not just for the great taste, but to honor the Great Man.

#5: There are so many kinds of tofu dishes in China to make your head swim, usually as a solo dish, but also mixed with other ingredients.

This kind of tofu is air-dried in the sun on long poles, in big long strips and tossed into a dish right before serving. It turns spongy.

You can see scallions, lots of garlic and pork tenders. Chinese pork is the best in the world, including Taiwan Province. Western pork is good, but can’t compare. They know how to raise oinkers! 

#6: Above is one of China’s national strong alcohol drinks, red rice liquor. Like their beers, there are hundreds, probably thousands of brands, all distilled locally. This one was distilled eight years and branded “Jinggangshan”, which in these parts is clever marketing. The rice liquors are usually 18-35% alcohol. Maotai, the strong alcohol is 50-80%

#7: No, for you Westerners, that is not the breakfast cereal “Cocopuffs”. It is wild red rice, which is very celebrated in China’s communist-socialist revolution.The farmers in Hunan and Jiangxi Provinces always gave the Red Army soldiers red rice, because it has so much more nutrition than white rice.

Revolutionaries like Zhou Enlai and Zhu De waxed poetic about red rice and how it kept them strong.

It is often served in a hand-carved wooden cup, harking back to the days of revolution.

It is of course more expensive than polished white rice. The cup above was ¥10.00, or about €1.25. I usually get it once in a while, preferring classic white rice

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The China Trilogy has everything you want to know about the Chinese people that you will NEVER learn inside the Judeo-West’s Big Lie Propaganda Machine:

https://radiosinoland.com/2018/06/30/praise-for-the-china-trilogy-the-votes-are-in-it-r-o-c-k-s-what-are-you-waiting-for/

AND

https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B00TX0TDDI/allbooks

Connect with China Writer Amir Khan! He is your Dr. Shakespeare, who lives and works in Sinoland…

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https://www.amazon.com/Shakespeare-Hindsight-Counterfactual-Shakespearean-Philosophy/dp/1474426042/

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781003464334/death-hamlet-amir-khan

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-59894-9

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