A Street food question in Beijing
 

Hi all
I am not sure whether the following topic had been mentioned
It is with regards of the safety of street food in Beijing
According to my observation I have seen a lot of food stand on the street where they sell boiled corn;:) I can smell the aroma whenever I walk past there

But I found that most all the vendors place the boiled corn in a pot on stove and keep heating meanwhile with a kind of plastic wrapping the top in the hope of shielding the corn from dust or impurities out of the open air I guess
but the issue I have is that whether the plastic is safe ,is it for possible for the plastic to produce any hazards when heating and affecting the safety of the corn
I know there is boilable plastic bag for food, but how to make a judgment if what the vendors applied is one for food thickness maybe?
Any experts or savvy travelers shed a light

Hope the topic is not to trivial too bring up

Thank for you in advance for any tips or education

Two issues, and really not meaning to trivialize your question in any way:

a) Chinese boiled corn is tasteless and really quite awful -- it's boiled for hours, and what little flavour it had died a long, long time ago.

b) In terms of 'food safety' in China, there are much bigger fish to fry. I can't relate whether there are some trace plastics residual on the corn, but I'm sure any visitor to China will have to deal with far worse, on a daily basis, such as re-used 'gutter oil', heavy metal toxicity, aflotoxin etc. Having said all that, we try not to worry too much, and eat away!

tb

Such as 地沟油 (google has some pretty exciting images for it).

What is truly terrifying is that google translate translates 地沟油 as "cooking oil"!! So it seems google has given up in the fight against the gutter oil...

tb

roasted corn is quite good, as TB said boiled corn is soggy and tasteless.

http://odlco.com/images/uploads/dalien-roastcorn.jpg

While I realize that we're vearing off topic, I've also noticed that while google does a decent job of English to Chinese (it's not perfect because some English words don't have Chinese equivalents), they can be painfully bad in the reverse direction.

The funny thing is that they ask the following question:

"Would you mind answering some questions to help improve translation quality?"

But, when you click on the link, this their answer:

"Sorry, we don't have any questions in that language pair for you to answer right now."

On a similar note, watch out for “吧” in your Chinese-to-English translations, or else your readers will think that you are obsessed with bars.

If you just arrived in China and are planning to stay only a few days then avoid the street food whenever possible. Your stomach is not used to it.

After saying that, boiled corn is awful to taste but is a safer alternative than some of the stuff they are selling.

As for the saran wrap they have on top. My question always has been `how often do they change it?' I doubt there is any toxic leakage from the wrap to the corn but the bacteria from not changing the wrap for days at a time sometimes worry me.

What the other posters are talking about is `ditch oil'. It is recycling at its worst, they take whatever used oil they can find (at times motor, dirty cooking oil etc) clean it up and sell it cheap.

All I know is that I ate literally everything when I visited in April and didn't have an issue. However, I was pretty careful with water and only had bottled water.

Not sure if I was lucky but we ate at a wide range of places, including street vendors to high end restaurants.

There are indeed 'bigger fish to fry' in this regard
Especially the oil issue but seemed it had been seriously addressed by some departments I really really hope the crack down on those who use the gutter or ditch oil will be a success and cleans the dinning table for all of us travelers or residents
Roasted corn is pretty good but the picture makes me confused in the first place, never seen it in Beijing ,good to see ...

So my worry about the heating wrap seemed not as serious as I expected
Almost everyone thought it is a kind of minor

I heard from one of my friends “youdao” is a decent translate engine but I am not knowledgeable enough to judge it

Wish everybody health and joyful

To go to Beijing and not try it would be a travesty. I have to think the popular places in SLT are fairly legit; otherwise, they wouldn't always be so packed with locals.

Bottled water could be just as dicey.

I'd always try to get one directly from a new container/package or at a hypermart such as Carrefour.

Also, I'm not sure how real estate agencies are in the rest of the country, but in Shenzhen, they usually have water coolers, in case you're looking to "rent." Hunan 木桶饭 (mutongfan) restaurants do too.

Met at the gate by uniformed officials, escorted through a labyrinth to an awaiting black car. An evening of Louis XIII, fine champagne, shark fin, the finest delicacies the state has to offer, serenaded by beauties.

Welcome to my world. 我爱中国 ^

I wouldn't touch most street food in the Summer heat and humidity...I hope FT'ers concerned realize it might have been stored at outside temperatures all day?

From Autumn to Spring, the BBQ skewer stalls should be quite ok. And breakfast most Chinese I know prefer to buy from street vendors all year round...

Echo this. Food poisoning (bacterial) sky rockets in summer everywhere, but very much so in BJ.

tb

For some reason I don't usually get sick in China. However, every 2 weeks I travel to Amsterdam and usually have hotpot or some other Chinese food....usually a bad ending.