I'm exploring what seems to be an Asian neighborhood (perhaps São Paulo's Liberdade?) with some friends. We enter a strange, dirty-looking shop that supposedly sold "Energy Food" from several places from Asia. The shopkeeper, a thin Chinese woman with a thick accent, showed us several kinds of snacks and foods. Apparently, the place specialized in products from China, Japan and Korea, all of which were sold in bright-colored boxes. I could see mostly green and red boxes on the shelves behind the counter. I recognize some Japanese and Korean characters written on some of the products, and as I was unsure, I ask her which were the Chinese ones. She grabs a box from a shelf full of long, red ones. She says its Chinese - it's a delicacy that supposedly "made children grow fat, strong and tan". I had the mental image of a little boy with a funny haircut and strange clothes becoming tan and growing (apparently, the mental image of the boy came from some old illustrations I once saw for Journey to the West). She opens the box and lets me check out the product. It turned out to be several large shitake-like mushrooms on a stick. They were covered with a sweet-looking sauce that looked like the Japanese Tare sauce.