China. The land of opportunities. If you walk around in the city of Beijing, you will find various scheming supermarkets selling fake eggs, tainted pork, expired cheese, and other dodgy things you could think off. So I resolved to purchase only organic stuff, or at least, to shop only in trustworthy store. I thought April Gourmet was one of them. But nothing could be further from the truth.

This morning I arrived at one of April Gourmet’s branch in Chaoyang Park with the intention of buying some tenderloin for my lunch. So bought, I did. Meat there are by no means cheap, but judging from my previous purchase of pork strips, I thought the quality would be the same.

So I came home, smiling happily at the thought of having some awesome steak for lunch when…

As shown above, the meat looked intact because it was squeezed inside the package. When I attempted to move it to the chopping board, it fell off into many little pieces. I was so annoyed at this point that I decided to share the smallest piece with Momo-Chan, my cat. All cats love raw meat!

Right?

Err… no.

Five minutes later Momo-Chan started puking on the sofa, then on the floor, then she made way for her toilet but couldn’t make it in time and ended up pooping on the blanket, literally a few cm from her toilet. And  surprise, surprise, what she pooped was one undigested piece of beef.

Customers, beware. Inspect the beef thoroughly before buying anything in China. Foreign supermarket or local, they’re all the same. Actually, I’ll take that back. The local meat market I go to (although they sell low-quality meat) are full of good honest butchers.

And sorry for the poop photo.