The Corn Cob Ice Cream Bar

Since I've been here, there are several things which I have not been able to get my hands on. A good steak, English books, breakfast foods in general, these sorts of things have apparently been declared "evil" by the Chinese government and so are not allowed within the sacred borders of the homeland. However, there are those brave souls who attempt to smuggle such contraband in, as well as the more enterprising people who attempt to badly copy these good old American values with whatever materials they have available to them here.
One of the most blatant examples of this is ice cream. The Chinese conception of ice cream is much more along the lines of what Americans call badly frozen yogurt, or more properly, total crap. However, in this dismal world where ice cream tastes bad, there still are some few points of light. Mostly these points of light consist of really cheaply made ice cream bars which one can buy from street vendors. I have no doubt that these ice cream bars are more chemical than ice cream, and the act of keeping them in a cooler is only a pretense. Such is their manufactured nature, I am convinced these ice cream bars retain their shape and temperature even after they have been consumed. And on the whole, most of these bars are pretty foul--soy seems to be a major ingredient, as well as various forms of other inedible vegetable material. For instance, one hugely popular ice cream bar is what I like to call "the Corn Bar." As you might have guessed the corn bar tastes like soy beans, but what is slightly more surprising is the corn bar's shape. It is indeed shaped like a corn cob. In America, such an ice cream bar would not make it out of the hippie food co-ops where it deserved to die anyways, but here, even children have been fooled into thinking it some form of ice cream. Sheer blasphemy!
But not all ice cream bars are bad. There are those few, those blessed few which bring back to me the wonderful taste of really fake ice cream. My personal favorite is the "Four Circle": a wonderful conception of the ice cream bar which involves no less than four layers of sugar! The Four Circles has an atmosphere, if you will, of chocolate, which is followed by a crust of vaguely coconut flavored ice cream which has been frozen into a state of paralysis. Further below there is the mantel of chocolate which finally encases the yellow custard ice cream core. In addition to all of this, some of these Four Circle bars (if you are lucky) have a chunk of chocolate floating around somewhere near the top. I say only some, for it seems that the machinery which makes the Four Circles tends to be rather spotty on its inclusion of the chocolate land mass.
Also on the list of good ice cream bars are such figures as "The Happy Guy" and "The Cake on a Stick." Both of these are good in their own ways, but cannot compare to Four Circles. But of course the real deciding factor for all of this is the price: one ice cream bar goes four something like 20 cents US. I love this country despite its corn cob ice cream bar.
Eat some real ice cream for me since I am stuck with Happy Guy and Four Circles.
Phil.