In China, you can find eateries and restaurants everywhere. Where they don't exist, there's probably nothing left, the Gobi Desert of some sort. It is hard to imagine that this nation was once, quite recently by historical standards, starving or, in any case, malnourished.

Orthodox CCP officials credit Chairman Mao with feeding the Chinese. But it was under Mao Zedong, during the Great Leap Forward and the Great Helmsman's Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and early 1970s, that an estimated 250 million Chinese were malnourished.

It turns out that only after the reforms of Deng Xiaoping and the elimination of the "people's communes" did the majority of the people finally start to eat well, and the small restaurant business quickly became one of the most widespread in the country. More numerous, probably, are only roadside shops with their almost identical set of goods.

It should be noted that restaurants are mainly designed for local residents, and in cities they are also designed for migrant workers. Of course, there are five-star hotels for rich foreigners with fashionable restaurants, where there are various intricate gilded stands for ebony chopsticks, exquisite cups for tea and sauces, where the waiters are dressed in traditional costumes and where you can't get away with fifty dollars (i.e. 400 yuan) for a dinner for two. There are also just specialty restaurants with local cuisine, such as the Sichuan hot pot, where Peking duck is served, or the cuisine of Guangdong province, with exotic dishes of dogs, cats and snakes, and there you can also expect a solid bill. However, visits to such places are rare even for a foreigner, and besides, shark fins, crabs, frogs, turtles or Obolon fish can not be eaten as much as noodles with meat for 5 yuan in a roadside eatery.

The vast majority of restaurants, where you can meet 5 yuan for lunch, are slightly dirty and do not do without flies, but this is tolerable. Of course, they are far from Swiss hygiene standards. But after all, a big mac in China costs not more than 5 dollars, as in Geneva, but only 1.23. However, I did not notice a gross violation of sanitary standards. Wash the plates in two basins, one with dishwashing liquid for pre-washing and scraping food residues, and the other with clean water for rinsing.

There is no special control over compliance with hygiene standards. According to the owners of one restaurant, they do not even pay taxes: once they gave money for a license, and since then no one from the authorities has come to them for taxes, the institution is too small. There are, of course, poisonings, and even in school canteens, with hospitalization and subsequent publications in newspapers. But they are rare. Apparently, in China, pragmatic calculation prevails, just as much work is spent so that there are no mass poisonings and that customers do not run to the next food hall.

The basis of Chinese cuisine at the level of a small eatery is vigorous frying in a pan with a concave bottom (vok), while vegetable oil is poured mercilessly a lot. Therefore, you need to eat a decent amount of rice to compensate for the oiliness of the food. In most places, rice is served for free and as much as it will fit in the same way as Chinese-either green or yellow-tea is poured without restrictions. The more elegant the restaurant, the more ceremoniously this tea is poured. In the most expensive one, somewhere in the center of Shenzhen, the waiters made it from copper kettles with long spouts, so that they themselves stood almost one and a half meters from the cup and effectively filled it from afar, without pouring boiling water over the customers.

Usually, the teapots are plain porcelain, especially in ordinary restaurants, so you can't run away with special effects, but the waiters are trained to appear exactly at the moment when

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the customer drained his cup. In small eateries, where one waiter can serve ten or more tables, the cup is filled once and the kettle is left on the table until it is empty.

Evening street restaurants are ubiquitous, which open at nightfall after seven in the evening near shops, workshops, offices and work well after midnight. Such eateries consist of a dozen quickly arranged light tables and, so to speak, a center of attraction. Actually, there is no kitchen as such. As a rule, this is a table for cutting food, a burner, and most importantly - a table on which all sorts of things are displayed fresh. This is especially convenient for a non-Chinese speaking foreigner: you don't need to read the menu and poke your finger at incomprehensible characters, but just indicate what you need, and that's it. In your presence, they will prepare it and serve it immediately. From technical means - a refrigerator for drinks, a gas cylinder from which the burner works, and a nearby tap where dishes are washed in cold water. Amenities around the nearest corner. Everything is prepared on two pans, the products are basically the same as in daytime restaurants with a permanent kitchen, which slightly capture evening visitors, but close earlier, around nine or ten in the evening. They just don't have the energy to work hard from morning to sixteen hours, because the restaurant is usually served by the same group of people.

For some reason, in such outdoor restaurants, beggars and homeless people do not bother, although they graze around, despite the darkness. A person is not disturbed while eating here and, in the worst case, they reach out their hand already outside the door.

The closest open-air night restaurant to the university where I teach serves a mini-clan of five relatives; they work seven nights a week, get enough sleep in the morning, and earn between 2,500 and 3,000 yuan a month for all of them, which is about the average monthly salary of service workers in the city. You can't get away with paying ten yuan here. Any dish costs so much, although if you don't order anything else, and tea is free, rice is free, and you will eat your fill.

They don't give you invoices here. What are they worth if you don't have to pay taxes? Usually, the more expensive the restaurant, the more careful the approach to issuing invoices. Tips in such restaurants will not be taken, otherwise they will scrupulously count out at least half a yuan.

All our clients are employees of the nearest institutions, firms, and stores. Along the street, similar restaurants are found every two or three hundred meters. The work is not dusty and quiet. The influx of customers is rare, except on weekends, so the waiters have time to sit up and talk enough with regular customers.

In this restaurant atmosphere, there is no competition and no enticement of customers due to better service or lower prices. Everywhere there is approximately the same set of products and services, and employees have a tolerable average income. It turns out that this is not so much a business as a lifestyle and part of the collectivist culture. Everyone has their own place under the moon, lives by themselves and gives money to neighbors two hundred meters down the street.

UNEXPECTED "ATTACK" ON CAIRO

Recently, the capital of Egypt-Cairo was subjected to an unprecedented invasion of pink locusts. Millions of insects darkened the sky over the city. Insects flew high above multi-story buildings, causing panic among residents. Locusts arrived in Egypt from Lebanon. Eyewitnesses of the invasion said that locusts crashed into office buildings and fell down. There was a real rain of insects, some of them reaching 7.6 cm in length. The greatest inconvenience locusts brought to the airport administration.

ELEPHANT ARTISTS

The National Zoological Garden of the capital of Sri Lanka, Colombo, once a week organizes elephant demonstrations for the public. An artistic troupe consisting of tamed Sri Lankan and African elephants surprises the audience with circus performances.

Elephants - the largest land animals-are protected by the state.

Once there were about 20 thousand of them on the island. Currently, their number has been reduced to 2,500.