WEIRD OLD WORLD

Unconventional Food Prep: Leaked photographs taken by an undercover health and safety officer at China’s Tongcheng Rice Noodle Factory in Dongguan city in June show workers in street clothes casually walking back and forth atop piles of vermicelli noodles about to be packaged for shipment to stores. Some workers were even seen lounging or sleeping on the mountains of noodles. In 1992, NOTW noted that health officials in South Dennis, Massachusetts, had closed the Wing Wah Chinese restaurant for various violations, including the restaurant’s habit of draining water from cabbage by putting it in cloth laundry bags, placing the bags between pieces of plywood in the parking lot and driving over them with a van.