Honey, I'm (soon to be) home!

To my very thoroughly vegan friends, I apologize for the following entry's praise of a product resulting from the subjugation of bees for the sake of satiating the global human sweet tooth, but as I down a tall glass of cold longan honey tea... well, I just hope that the bees take as much pride in their work as I would if I could spit out such sweet tonic.

That said,

I love honey. I love love love honey. I adore honey. I was never much of a honey fan before. I don't think that I had tried good honey, or not in the right ways. But here I have tried almost a dozen varieties of honey, and each is so uniquely delectable that I am very seriously considering keeping bees of my own and seeing what splendid flavors they can concoct. I have heard that, with the recent depletion of bee colonies (domestic and wild), there is ample state funding available to those willing to house a hive.
But that is an issue of the future. Right here and now I am enjoying, as I said, longan (龙眼) honey, which is a bit more particular in its flavor than most of the honeys I have tried. Some honeys just taste like the generic honey I am used to, even though they claim to come from a single flower variety (such as 桂花 (osmanthus) or 荞麦蜜 (buckwheat). These particular monofloral honeys may be common in the States or the flowers may be commonly used in polyfloral honeys and hence do not excite my taste buds in quite the same way as longan honey does.
I have wanted very badly to try the honey sold on the streets – combs intact. But, typically, I only buy things off the street that I can cook or wash relatively thoroughly. It is eating honey raw that brings so much joy, so I stick to store-bought varieties for now. When I get home, though, I am going to be looking up local beekeepers to continue my honey adventures.

That reminds me, we have our first local case of swine flu down the street. I heard it was an American (whoever it is, he is said to be at the hospital, so attempts to contain the disease have been made), but I heard that from someone who heard it from someone who heard it from someone who... was nowhere near the source. So who knows? I will just do my best to stay away from live pigs (which I have never seen in China, unlike its rampant poultry) and let everyone around me keep their germs to themselves as much as possible.

Sorry, again, for the lack of colorful visuals. =)