Rudy, "Of course, in Guatemala, Bananas are better" (1)

In this article, Ruby, basically distinguished the difference between culinary tourism and extended-stay eating. Tourists experience culinary tourism is more likely to explore exotic, palatable and fantastic local food. In contrast, people travel to other location for extended-stay is more likely to experience traditional food which are not necessary palatable. Ruby also talks about how food plays an important role of our lives such as our culture backgrounds, and how food changes in our life perspectives.

One of my professors in the past once told me the first time she went to China was for leisure and she loved the food there in China. She had all kinds of traditional Chinese food. She went restaurants to experience famous Peking Duck, and BBQ Pork and other exotic and palatable food in China. That was a great experience of her life.

However, when the second time my professor went to China was for work and she had some unpleasant experiences with Chinese food culture. She was teaching North American Sociology in Shanxi University in Shanxi, China. She told me Shanxi unlike Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou are very developed cities. It is still a developing city. Local people from Shanxi have stronger culture backgrounds. To the local people, inviting her to experience traditional local food even in their homes is the most important thing to do to show her their respective. Most of times, they would kill a life chicken in front of her and cook the whole chicken with bones in a large pot. The most disturbing part for her was the fact they put the whole cooked chicken in front of her with the chicken head facing her. At the end, she had to tell the host that she is a vegetarian. She also told me she went to McDonalds almost every week because she missed home-fries and cheeseburgers even though she use to hate McDonalds before she went to China the second time.





As my own story, I use to hate kiwi-fruit before my family moved to New Zealand. With the years I lived in New Zealand, I started to love kiwi-fruit. Kiwi-fruit tastes different than it is in China. It seems to be bigger, sweeter and fresher. After I moved to Canada, I really missed the real New Zealand kiwi-fruit.





As above, the way of people experiencing food is not necessarily pleasant all the time. It depends on the culture backgrounds, understanding of food, even the producing areas of a particular food.