M Dash 27 – Blog by Hecko X

Yaaaaay, I got Chinese candy in the mail today! =D I was originally supposed to get some Chinese candy from Kaiki upon her return from China, but after having waited a month and a half for a promised phone call that never came, I told her she could just send it in the mail if she was too busy to give it to me in person, but alas, a month later it still hadn’t even been sent. So in the end, I figured I would just go “screw it” (though I appreciate the gesture of Kaiki buying it at all) and ask someone I could actually count on instead; enter Yuan-chan! =D

I like that when a guy (this would be me), whom she’s never met and who lives practically other side of the planet, asks her to buy him some Chinese candy, she actually goes out and does it! That is pretty friggin’ awesome, in my opinion XD She bought almost an entire kilogram (!!! pictured on the right) and payed for everything, even the shipping, herself, and then told me to not worry about it and just consider it an early birthday present =O SO THANK YOUZ, YUAN-CHAN, WITH HEARTZ!! <3 I will be sending you a little, corny gift as a token of my appreciation and brotherly lubz XD

Also, I unfortunately haven’t had the chance to try any of it yet, since I am like super tired from not having slept for two days because I had to finish my year 1 project, so I will update this post once I wake up from my minor coma and have a taste of the goods :P Hearts to you all <3

EDIT 1: So far, I’ve only tried the Sweet Plums, which are dried up plums with sugar added. They’re kinda like oversized raisins XD We have a sweet very similar to this in Serbia, but the skin is a bit more moist and thus softer compared to the Chinese version. It’s not bad though, once you get used to the harder skin. I want to try the Candied Lotus Rhizone next, but the packaging says “To keep the freshness, desiccant inside, please do not eat it“, so I’m a bit D= on what to do and what exactly the ‘it’ is.

EDIT 2: Out of fear that ninjas have poisoned the Candied Lotus Rhizone, and the put a disclaimer in ambiguous English so they could go “We warned him, it’s his own responsibility!” in court (right before assassinating the judges and the bailifs), I opted to try the Peanut Crisp Logs instead. The packaging says 酥心糖 in Chinese, which I think means something along the lines of “crisp filled candy” (the heart/mind/spirit character [心] threw me off a bit at first, but can apparently mean “centre” as well, here probably refering to that they have fillings); a name that also appears on all the small individually coloured wrappers. I noticed, when opening the bag, that it had already been opened before and resealed with tape. At first I thought it was an odd thing to do, but then I noticed all the pink-wrapper candies were GONE and I only had one yellow!! =O Ninja Yuan strikes again, or what? XP Maybe they are just randomly packed or something

Anywho, the wrappers and text, excluding the 酥心糖 on all of them, are (sorry if my translations are off), in the order of best to worst:
•Gold: Peanut (落花生); odd taste when you bite into it, but pretty good aftertaste actually.
•Orange: Nut/kernel (果仁); Same as the peanut, but not as sticky on your soft palette.
•Yellow: Cream (奶油); it wasn’t really bad, but luke-warm, dry cream just isn’t really my thing, I prefer creams that are below room temperature or at the very least more moist.
•Red: Black sesame (黑芝麻); it tasted like a wafer with ground hazelnut skins inside. I think that’s a bad thing… O.o
•Purple: Cocoa (可可) [thank youz, South Korea, for help on that one]; nice taste when you bite into it and start chewing, absolutely horrible aftertaste. It tasted like when you chew on a wooden pencil for far too long (which I have a bad habit of doing, so I *can* make this comparison). It was the only one I had to spit out. CHINA, YOU HAVE DEFILED THE COLOUR PURPLE!!
•(unranked) Pink: Coffee (咖啡); I really dislike coffee, so it would would probably have ended up at the bottom anyway.

All in all, not bad, I just wish they weren’t wrapped in wafers, I hate wafers, they dry out my mouth so bad and turn to dust when you bite into them, leaving crumbs everywhere >_<

EDIT 3: Finally got to trying the last two candies Yuan-chan sent me. The Candied Lotus, I wasn’t too fond of. Somehow, the taste just didn’t sit well with me considering it’s supposed to be a sweet/snack. The green Wax Gourd was however better; the taste reminded me of a Serbian ‘cake’ called Košnica (“beehive“, named after the shape), though my mom didn’t seem to agree XD