Mint, not my cup of tea! « My Shanghai That’s Shanghai

Mint, not my cup of tea!

There is a good tradition in my office that is after a business travel, we usually bring a local speciality back to the office for sharing.

David, who has just back from the trip to Europe, brought a box of Mint Chocolate. And then interesting things happend!

All the foreign colleagues just loved it and told David that they had wanted the mint chocolates for a long time.

However, most Chinese colleagues were in group having a little gossips: why the mint chocolates tasted so strange. Like a gum, not a gum. Or like a toothpaste!

I guess this is the food culture differences, like Chinese love the salted egg yolk in moon cakes which foreigners absolutely hate.

Mint is not often used in Chinese cooking, even as a spice. And Chinese especially don’t like mint in sweets, such as chocolates, ice creams etc. It just reminded us the toothpaste.

Even the gums sold in China is less minty. Also lots of other flavours are added to dilute the mint flavour, such as mango, blueberry, strawberry, coffee etc. Look at the Extra ad below, green one: mint, orange one: orange, yellow one: melon

Three different flavours of Extra Gums

So when you are in China, if you see the green colored icea cream in the shop, don’t take it as granted and think it must be mint flavour. No, it is usually Green Tea flavour or Green Bean Paste flavour which most foreigner might feel strange.