Pizza with chopsticks

The canteens at the college serve Asian food - mostly Chinese of course, but some Korean. One new consession this semester is trying pizza's. Quite a challenge really as the 10,000 or so students and teachers are pretty keen on traditional Chinese fare, and only a few venture to the pizza place.

As well the pizza's are more than double the price of other meals, but good value for two or three students. The other drawback is the time it takes to prepare and cook the pizza. It is all freshly made. The base is rolled out, the topping added and put into an oven - 10 - 15 minutes wait, when most of the Chinese dishes take only a couple of minutes.

I decided to "take away" my pizza - in part because there is more than I can eat in one sitting, and I wanted to take the photos.

When one gets a pizza here, we also get two plastic gloves to eat the pizza with, and chopsticks too.

Actually it is a very tasty dish, but sadly the locals are not as enthusiastic about this Italian fare.

Packaging and Pizza

Packaging in China is amazing. So many products come with exquisite packaging. For example, a packet of tea bags (Liptons) - looks just like the packet we get in Australia - where the bags are inside the box - here in China they have another silverfoil package inside the box. Biscuits will have extra packaging - everything seems to have extra packaging. And this country struggles with the amount of waste it has.

I was pleased to hear on CCTV (The only English language television station in China) that there is a move to reduce packaging - as part of the program to reduce pollution.

A government deputy is giving out cane baskets to shoppers to encourage them to use the baskets and reduce plastic bags. Older people remember taking baskets with them to do shopping! Here and in Australia I am sure!

The deputy is also giving out handerchiefs - as everyone uses tissues here. So we are going back for the future. In the restaurant the other evening we asked for serviettes. They did not understand, but eventually they gave us (actually threw onto the table) a small pack of tissues.

I've not had pizza takeaway yet - it does exist - but last night 4 Aussie teachers went into the city and dined at the Pizza Hut there. Somewhat different to Pizza Hut at home - but it was good. It is expensive eating Pizza Hut meals here though.