The Chinese don’t get a lot of Western things “right.” For instance, driving and roads, or socialism. This can’t be more true when it comes to Western food. It’s hard to figure out how to mess up spaghetti with tomato sauce, or a ham and cheese sandwich, but they do it. I shall illustrate my point using bread — everyday sandwich bread.

All bread in China is sweet, which is odd, considering the Asian predisposition to dislike sweet flavors. Sure, bread is a “sweet” food, in that it’s not salty, sour (except for sourdough!), or bitter. But in China, bread is sweet. I usually buy whatever store-made wheat bread is available because if I butter it well enough, I can almost ignore the sweetness. But yesterday, for my chicken salad sandwich, I bought a foreign brand of multi-grain sliced bread … and it’s sweet! And has raisins. I just don’t understand…