"...or lower the price of bread"

Whenever children find out that I lived in China, the first thing they always ask is what strange foods I ate. Did I eat monkey brains? Dog meat? Bugs?

Adults also tend to be interested in food, but the question is always how the Chinese food compares to the restaurants here. (My stock response? "Over there, they just call it food.") I always go into the same speech: that the kind of food I enjoyed the most, and ate almost every day, isn't available in America. I enjoyed the Uyghur Muslim food. The food has a strong emphasis on lamb and fresh hand-pulled noodles. The farther West you travel in China, the better this food gets (although it is available pretty much anywhere in China proper). The real center of this food universe is Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu province, which lends its name to the noodle shops in the rest of the country. When I took my trip around the country, I strongly considered taking a food pilgrimage there.

Accordingly, I was very interested to read of the economic crisis developing in Lanzhou, where a number of factors have lead from noodle prices increasing 2.2 yuan to 2.5. (Funny how economies work; even in Jinan, a bowl of noodles cost 3 yuan.)