Out past the Gold Sand River on the Apricot Mountain Road (aren’t Chinese street names poetic?) there is a little shop that sells cured donkey meat.
You can guess that first character on the lantern 驴 (lǘ) is “donkey” because the radical is 马 (mǎ which means “horse.”) And, sure enough 肉 means meat.
And no, before you ask, donkey does not “taste like ass.” Cured donkey meat tastes a lot like chopped, low-grade corned beef and it’s served in a puffy, crispy flatbread that almost seemed like an airy taco shell. I’d eat it again, but I wouldn’t seek it out. More than anything, it made me crave a really good pastrami sandwich.See? Apricot Mountain Road.