MATTER OF TASTE

A British food writer explains why sensation is important in Chinese food, Yang Yang reports.

Food might be one of the last barriers to fully immerse oneself in a foreign culture, and for British gourmet and writer Fuchsia Dunlop, that frontier for Westerners when it comes to Chinese food is kou gan (mouthfeel), or texture. "Cross it, and you're really inside."

By texture, she particularly refers to that of the food Chinese people are famously interested in, such as goose intestines, ox throat cartilage, chicken feet, sea cucumber or abalone, which Westerners usually consider pointless since they taste like "a bike's inner tube or plastic bags".