Many, many Chinese eat rice at every meal, and for breakfast it could be a slurry of ground- up rice. But I – growing up on Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, South African Pronutro and my all-time favorite : when mom made Maizena with cinnamon sugar for a special treat- I still want my cereal for breakfast. The box of Cheerios in the picture, made by the giant food corporation General Mills in the USA, is interestingly marketed by arch-rival Nestlé in China. The explanation is that General Mills operates internationally mainly through joint ventures.
And those three Chinese characters on the Nestlé box? Let ‘s see :
脆 is crisp, 谷 is grain or corn and 乐 is .. wait for it! .. happy! yes! Cheerios are crispy and makes me happy in the morning. I will try the muesli from Switzerland tomorrow, and the local product Goldroast ‘instant nutritious cereal’ when I have run out of the other stuff.
Finally, it’s a little obscure, the connection, but the ‘Breakfast in China’ title of today’s post reminds me of the song from Supertramp’s ‘Breakfast in America’ (1979). I can hear the song in my head now! Take a look at my girlfriend/ she’s the only one I got/ not much of a girlfriend/ never seem to get a lot/ take a Jumbo, across the water/ like to see America/ see the girls in California/ I’m hoping it’s going to come true/ but there’s not a lot I can do/ could we have kippers for breakfast/ mummy dear, mummy dear/ they got to have ’em in Texas/’cos everyone’s a millionaire ..
