Southern Good Eats

One of my colleagues just got an email from her daughter last night saying that there's one Chinese restaurants in New Jersey that got closed up because they were found cooking rats. And with her personality where everything in her life has to be dramatized, she starts to feel quite upset and asking me whether that is a norm in MY Chinese culture.

Not knowing the back story and knowing how she can get, I thought maybe they just found rats in a restaurant, or maybe they just accidentally fried up a rat, like they did in KFC or Jack in the Box. Until she produced an email detailing how "the Chinese" prepares the rat. "Step 1. Burning the hair off with a blow torch", "Step 2. Washing them before cooking", "Step 3. Cutting them into bits to simulate chicken parts", etc...

Then my dear colleague proceed to ask others whether they know about how the Chinese do this in their restaurant. Of course, at some point I should really feel highly offended and probably should speak up with this over the top generalization and borderline blasphemy. But I didn't, because it was just too funny and then she proceed to tell everyone how she and her sister found some dead skinned dogs behind the alley one night. "Who would do things like that?" She says.

And "No, bitch! It's not the norm in the Chinese community! At home, we boiled the rats before we skin them and make them into stir-fries!"