There was the steroid-pumped pork, the egg yolks tinged with cancer-causing red dye and the dairy products tainted with the industrial chemical melamine. Then there were the diseases linked to animal-borne viruses _ SARS and bird flu.

Yet the lure of China's cuisine never dimmed for me _ I love eating too much _ and discovering new dishes while enjoying old favorites has been a bigger part of my seven years here than I would like to admit.

"What should we be worried about?" said a 50-year-old man as he crunched on a deep-fried chunk of pork at a neighborhood eatery during an outbreak of Streptococcus suis, a potentially fatal pig-borne disease.

Life is too short.

No way I can resist Shanghai's famed red braised pork, a simply named dish that belies a seductive combination of fatty, salty, sweet, soft and meaty sensations. Nor give up the joy of discovering "double-skin" milk, a creme brulee-like dessert, in a Beijing alley. Nor forgo addictively numbing Sichuan favorites _ twice-fried beans, enlivened with mini taste explosions from the region's peppercorns, and "mouthwatering chicken," chopped bird marinated in chili oil, served cold.

But most importantly, food has been key in some of my most human experiences. As my time in this country draws to a close, I'm realizing that those inspiring memories have sustained me through endless work hours and left a lump in my throat because, however briefly, I got to see life through the eyes of someone else.

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MY MOST MEMORABLE MEAL

I met farmer Tu Xiongzi in August 2002 on my first assignment outside of Beijing and my second month in China. I had been roaming around Hunan's rain-bloated Dongting lake, trying to track damage by summer flooding. The worst-hit areas were expanses of water dotted with floating furniture, the tips of rooftops and people huddled on makeshift rafts.

At first glance, it looked like Tu had a comfortable life. Ducklings wandered in the yard of his waterfront home and he had a close-knit family in a village of full of friends.

Then he told me that the murky green water lapping near the edges of his two-story concrete house was actually from a flood that had broken through nearby dikes and swallowed up the year's rice crop.

"My heart aches. I have five mouths to feed and no way to do it," said Tu, a skinny man with high cheekbones and sun-browned skin. He rowed his boat as he spoke, zigzagging across his submerged padi fields and recounting the villagers' ultimately futile fight to shore up the dikes.

Please, he said at the end of the afternoon, join us for dinner.

The Tu family served a whole fish, greens right out of the garden, tender stewed pork, a freshly slaughtered chicken _ the last one _ and its eggs, scrambled. Despite the disaster, they shared their limited provisions without a thought. They sat down at the table only after I insisted I wouldn't touch a mouthful unless they ate with us.

The food was delicious but it was the gentle, down-to-earth company that made it really memorable.

At the end of the meal, Tu pushed away my clumsy attempts to give him some money, saying with a smile, "We are just grateful you are telling our story."

___

TEA

China's most ubiquitous beverage, steeped in thousands of years of history, has colored many of my experiences. I've learned a cup of tea can signify many things _ hospitality, a cure, an unbreakable habit with a pull as strong as coffee.

In Xiahe, a town in Gansu province famous for its historic Tibetan Buddhist monastery, I sneaked a meeting with a young monk shortly after anti-government riots triggered a military crackdown last year. He ordered the traditional Tibetan concoction of tea thickened with yak butter, while I chose a leaf that smelled and tasted of the green of the surrounding mountains. We chatted for more than an hour, enjoying the rare glimpse into each other's lives. In the end, we discovered a mutual love of horror movies and potatoes.

Strangest of all are the brews I've had while being detained by police and government officials. The friendly gesture is at odds with the tension of being held against your will, questioned and lectured sometimes for hours about your activities and interviews.

"Have some tea," said an officer who questioned me one night in a Tibetan part of Sichuan after I had been escorted from a checkpoint to a police station.

He refilled my paper cup several times during our conversation. Then he fined me 200 yuan ($28) for failing to register at the hotel I had stayed at.

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EASTER 2004

The wooden table was laden with mashed tofu, vegetable fritters and stir-fried pork and celery piled high on plates. Around it, seven men and one woman bowed their heads, clasped hands and did something risky in communist-ruled China _ they prayed.

It was an extraordinary Easter lunch not only because open worship outside of government-sanctioned churches is perilous, but also because some of the country's most vocal activists were present. Collectively, they had been detained hundreds of times, beaten by police or put under house arrest for criticizing the government.

Among them were Ren Wanding, imprisoned 11 years for advocating democracy, and Ye Guozhu, who later spent more than four years in prison for advocating on behalf of residents who lost their homes to make way for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

"Our people have suffered so much," host Wang Meiru, an underground church activist, said, her eyes squeezed shut in prayer. "So many of them are in prison. So many of them are in pain. Please, God, be with them."

The setting was idyllic: the breezy courtyard of Wang's squat brick home, tucked in a maze of fruit trees and farmland in Beijing's suburbs. The guests caught up over beer as Wang brought out more dishes _ green chilies blistered in hot oil, rib and seaweed soup, pork belly stewed with hard-boiled eggs.

But soon, they lower their voices and the talk turns jarring _ of arrests, tortures and deaths of fellow dissidents.

___

BOTTLED WATER

Bottled water makes me think of earthquakes _ one in Sichuan in the southwest in 2008, the other in the far western region of Xinjiang in 2003.

The bottles were always warm in Sichuan, where the powerful magnitude-7.9 temblor shook apart villages in the muggy spring heat. Almost 90,000 people died or went missing.

Exhausted soldiers and volunteers sat in the shadows of broken buildings and next to piles of rubble, sipping water as they stared off into space. At a stadium where homeless families took shelter, leftover cardboard from donated cases of bottled water littered the floor. An hour away, "Have some water!" residents shouted as they handed out precious bottles to villagers rushing up a mountain to see if their loved ones had survived.

Then there's Qongkurqak (pronounced CHONG-cur-chak), the Xinjiang town at the western edge of the vast Taklamakan Desert hardest-hit by a magnitude-6.8 quake that killed almost 300 people.

I remember the ochre-colored ground that residents slept on after their homes collapsed. I hear the sobs of a group of women as the body of a 90-year-old man is carried down a street. The winter air is filled with smoke from cooking fires.

One afternoon, I walk by a man who had set up a makeshift stall on the sidewalk. I pick up three waters, wanting to give him some business. His home was damaged, his family was sleeping outdoors, and yet he refuses my money. "This must be tiring for you," he says without irony or sarcasm.