I ate at a vegetarian Indian restaurant today.

The plagues and toxins, both natural and man-made, that cast a shadow over every morsel of dead Chinese animal we consume in Hong Kong, seem to appear from every corner. The latest controversy, over eels, has now spilled over into freshwater fish. I will of course not stick to my lacto-ovo regimen for long, but it is truly frightening what lack of control exists in the Chinese food hygeine system. It seems that in addition to the appalling air, water and chemical pollution that covers most of eastern China, and the complete indifference of Chinese authorities to do much about a very deadly strain of pig flu that has frighteningly high mortality rates, that fishermen are adding a toxic carcinogen called malachite green to their eel fisheries as a cheap antibiotic. Those aforementioned pig farmers, according to today's Standard, by the way, perform home-grown 'innoculations' of their pigs against the disease by actually feeding the dead carcasses of infected pigs to the live, healthy ones.

Of course, it must come as no surprise that regulation in China is far, far behind reality in a country that has grown so fast it has far outstripped its own ability to legislate. A perfect example in another area is that of the terrible conditions in the mines that provide the natural resources needed to sustain China's growth - only now are substandard, illegal mines that have killed thousands of workers starting to be shut down for further investigations.

But living in Hong Kong, we eat China's food, we drink its water, and our lungs (along with mainlanders) are the living filters for China's relentlessly growing industrial sector. Do these experiences not make you wonder what foul things you have already consumed unknowingly? But then, I suppose one simply has to make peace with this reality - that regardless of how developed Hong Kong is, given its integration with the mainland, we are increasingly subject to the standards of China and not our own. And the food standards seem an apt metaphor for many other facets of life.

I shall conclude with a reference to a rather wicked and nihilistic satirical piece I read many moons ago in the American humor magazine, National Lampoon. It had three suggestions for doing one's bit to help the environment:

1) Drink your own urine.
2) Eat your own crap.
3) Stop breathing.

Garcon! More pork dumplings and eels over here. I've put on my blindfold.