It Came From Chinatown: Liquids, Part 2

Well, I think we all know why we're here. Time waits for no man, nor do pictures of a fat guy drinking unfortunate beverages from a strange and distant world. But before we get started, I want to point out something that's a little different about today's post... quite by accident, each of the drinks ended up acting as a perfect representation of one of the three most common traits found in food from Chinatown. The three traits are Bizarreness, Sneakiness, and flat-out Grossness. I love it when a theme presents itself like that (thus creating less work for me!).

So let's get on with it, shall we? Kids, I give you... from Team Bizarre... Yogu Time:



You know the commercials for Yogu Time have got to be just insane. Like, talking fish and screaming Sumo wrestlers that fart moonbeams at a unicorn. You can tell by the packaging that this is a drink marketed to the young and the young at heart. I also noticed, because I'm basically thirteen, that it's kinda sorta jizz colored. Not exactly, you know, but close enough to where I feel somewhat uncomfortable chugging it for the camera. Like I should be doing so in a cheap motel room for $50 or something. Well, a guy can dream...

Anyway, here's me taking a sip, trying not to get it in my eyes:



Is "huh?" a flavor? If you licked the Gordian Knot, is this what it would taste like? Have the drink purveyors of Asia perfected the bottling of Genesis songs, because this drink has left me in a Land of Confusion:



That is the face of man who has no fucking clue what he just drank. But, as it's my job (that I don't get paid for), I'll do the best I can to describe the indescribable. Okay, so first off, the drink's label is no help; "original" flavor? Original compared to what? The word "yogurt" also appears on the packaging, so maybe that's what they mean, but it certainly wasn't like any yogurt that I've ever experienced. It sort of tastes like melted Starburst candies, but with about 80% of the fruitiness removed and replaced by ground-up Smarties that have been mixed with the juice from a lightly-salted lemon and had their tartness turned up to 11 by the latest techno-science. It wasn't bad, exactly... I drank more of it than than any of the other drinks, save for the Aloe... but it was definitely a long walk across some unfamiliar taste terrain. If you've ever woken up in the icy-cold wastelands of the Ukraine and had to pick your way back to civilization with only a pocketful of American candy for sustenance, then you've pretty much experienced what it's like to drink a Yogu Time.

Next up... flying the flag for Team Sneaky... it's Wong Lo Kat:



Gotta love a drink that sounds like a Mortal Kombat character. One who's Finishing Move is, apparently, ripping out your tongue and beating you with it until your head resembles the warehouse floor at the end of Reservoir Dogs. Don't let the cheerful yellow lettering and perky red can fool you... Wong Lo Kat will fucking destroy you.

It comes across all innocent, proclaiming on it's label that it's a healthy mixture of herbal tea and whatnot, like a handsome young man in a sharp suit who shows up at your door just wanting to use the phone and, if it's not too much trouble, have a glass of ice water to cool himself off on this bright, hot day. Sure, you think, he looks like a fine, upstanding citizen... and does the Bible not say that we should be charitable to those in need? So you let him in, all smiles and open hearts:



And that's when he pulls out the meat cleaver from inside his jacket. Suddenly, you're running through your own house, blood streaming into your eyes, blinding you as you stumble over furniture and try not to pass out from the fear that wraps around your throat like a reticulated python. As the blade severs your spine, you think to yourself, "Why? Why was I so trusting? Why is life so cruel." Then the young man in the sharp suit has sex with your corpse:

Wong Lo Kat, I'm sure, was once something that resembled tea. Perhaps when it was put into it's can, which was sometime during the fourth or fifth season of Saturday Night Live by my estimation. But now... oh sweet lordy... now... it is no longer what it once was. Now, it's like something that leaked out of a rock brought back from Mars. If you took a bottle of iced tea and left it in the trunk of a car during an entire Texas summer, then boiled it, then added a two-pound brick of artificial sweetener, then dipped an old man's whithered nutsack into it for "extra flavoring," you'd have something that was almost... almost... as gross as Wong Lo Kat. It's a drink that tastes like murder, disguised as an innocuous canned whatever that couldn't possibly hurt a fly, much less your feelings. But it lies, my friends... it lies with it's forked tongue.

Which leads us to the hard, mean brick wall that is the rep from Team Gross... it's written really small on the label, so you're just going to have to trust me... Olive Juice:

Typing those words makes my skin crawl like I just found the undead bodies of a hundred mutilated children in a haunted house in Transylvania. Olive juice... let that run a few laps in your mind. Snuggle up to that concept and try to keep your gag reflex from spazzing out like a Pixie Stix breakdancer from Toon Town. Behold, a beverage the same color as a Vietnam vet's jacket:

There is no reason for this to exist. No one likes this; I'm positive this is true. Even Chinese people, whom I understand have different palates and taste sensibilities... there's just no way that they would drink this on purpose. Other than the durian, Olive juice is the worst thing I've tasted during the course of ICFC:

It's name is literal; someone... some mad fool who's more than likely locked away in an Arkham-esque asylum... tried to make a fruit juice out of olives. The result is shocking in it's brutality; a thousand Italian horror films couldn't match the gruesomeness, the horror, the thirst for technicolor evil that I found within it's plastic-y bottle. Powerfully salty, thick like waffle batter, and with a deeply disturbing undertone of dried fish that's best not considered... and let us not forget this: it's sweet, too. Like a shot of fructose went into the mix right before it was sealed up and blessed by Satan himself. Honestly, I'm not even sure that this drink was real... my consuming it had to be a fever dream brought on by the hallucinatory effects of the Wong Lo Kat. Because what Olive juice is, what it represents, doesn't make any sense. It's a nightmare made liquid and poured into a hateful glass. It has to be. I don't want to live in a world where Olive juice is a real thing:

Southern Comfort (rather, the overindulgence of same) is the only liquid to ever bring me this close to tears. Awful, awful, and again, awful. Never drink this... as if you would.

So it's on that note that we close the book on the liquids of Chinatown. And, given the circumstances, I vote for setting the book on fire, burying the ashes, and then salting the earth above it's grave so nothing will ever grow there again. Seems only fitting. Fucking Olive juice. What the fuck man... seriously... what the fuck...

Anyway, see y'all next time!