The End of Copycat China: The Rise of Creativity, Innovation, and Individualism in Asia

9Food SafetyFrom Chicken to Coffee

When I first moved to Tianjin, China's fourth-largest city, brimming with 10 million people, in the mid-1990s, one of my favorite things was trying local delicacies. I would ride my rusty fourth-hand Pigeon bike and stop at frequent street-side stalls, eating pork-filled buns and deep-fried tofu. My Chinese friends warned me to be careful where I ate, but I did not heed them enough.

One warm summer night, I took a gigantic bite of fatty barbeque lamb from a Xinjiang-style kebab place. As soon as I swallowed I realized I had made a mistake. A decaying, rotten taste exploded in my mouth. Sure enough, 15 minutes later I rushed home in a fit of pain. Within an hour I started running a 103-degree fever. I did not leave the house for the next week, although I probably should have made it to an emergency room. When I emerged, I had dropped three inches from my waistline and become smarter about where I ate.

As I showed in my previous book, The End of Cheap China, food safety is one of the major themes driving consumer spending in food and beverages. By the turn of the millennium, Chinese were less worried about just filling their bellies like in the 1970s to 1990s but were worried about bad-quality food. In the drive for profits, many unscrupulous businesspeople emerged. They would bottle untreated tap water, dye vegetables with harmful chemicals, or ...