Dear China,

It has been a rocky start for us. It's not you, it's me. I am a sheltered American, having basked in such luxuries as no poop on the sidewalks, clean showers at the gym and … real things.

Real things, as in foods or wares that are authentic, not fake.

Thanks,

Fake things are the hottest new trend in China. Why sell real things, when you can counterfeit them at a lower impact to your wallet?

Knock-off clothing and pirated movies from this country are nothing new, nor are they something to worry about. Hollywood and big fashion houses can afford to take the hit.

But how about fake foods or even animals?

The first fake food-related product I heard about was something called “gutter oil”. In the late evening/early morning hours, men in trucks drive past restaurants after hours looking for discarded cooking oil. With giant trash bins affixed with a sort-of screen to catch all the nasty food bits, these guys sift oil from street gutters and restaurant trash cans. Some restaurants collect oil drips from over-cooktop hood vents. The collected oil is mixed with a bit of other “filler” liquids, and the concoction is bottled up and sold.

There’s a China equivalent to the FDA, but still, so I’m told, standards here are relatively low. China’s Food and Drug Administration, CFA, is a ministerial-level regulatory body, but like many of the country’s positions of power, it’s rife with corruption. Just 6 years ago, the head of the administration was ousted for taking bribes from manufacturers for licenses related to product safety.

The next fake to hit headlines was salt, then historic relics on exhibit in museums, then eggs. Apparently, someone who is smart enough to create a realistic egg, complete with a shell that cracks and a yoke separate from a white, is making a good living selling counterfeit eggs to roadside markets. Why is this person not a chemist with a real job?

A zoo was busted and shut down just last week for “fooling” visitors with a Tibetan mastiff in the lion cage, a German-shepherd mutt in the wolf cage and a fox in the leopard cage. I just edited an editorial shaming the zoo for not only profiting on fake animals, but for fooling China’s youth whose malleable intelligence has been stunted with the idea that a giant dog is actually a lion.

I’m sure the kids will recover and will one day know what a real lion looks like. I think, the larger crime to children — and to the dumbdumb laowai working for the Communist propaganda machine — is the fake food that is giving us all cancer.

Also, there've been reports of rat meat substituted for beef, chemical-soaked cardboard for steamed buns, cement-filled walnuts and plastic rice.