Secretary Yellen accidentally eats ‘magic’ mushrooms during official visit to China
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U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s recent visit to China was per usual, as she attended meetings with leaders to strengthen relations between the two countries. But she said one dinner, where she accidentally ate magic mushrooms, stood out.
“I went with this large group of people, and the person who had arranged our dinner did the ordering. There was a delicious mushroom dish. I was not aware that these mushrooms had hallucinogenic properties. I learned that later,” Yellen told CNN of her four-day July trip to China.
She said that no one at the dinner party was affected by the mushrooms.
“I read that if the mushrooms are cooked properly, which I’m sure they were at this very good restaurant, that they have no impact,” she said. “But all of us enjoyed the mushrooms, the restaurant, and none of us felt any ill effects from having eaten them.”
Yellen ate dinner at a restaurant called Yi Zuo Yi Wang, or In and Out, in Beijing, which serves Yunnan food, inspired by the cuisine from the province in southwestern China.
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Her recent trip was part of a larger effort to smooth over tensions between the two governments. In June, Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Beijing to meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping, marking the highest-level U.S. visit in five years.
“The best you can hope for this time around would be if the Chinese agree to some kind of structure for continuing economic conversations,” Blinken said at the time.
Yellen described the conversations during this visit as “direct, substantive, and productive.”
“No one visit will solve our challenges overnight. But I expect that this trip will help build a resilient and productive channel of communication with China’s new economic team,” she said at a press conference in Beijing.
“Navigating the contours of the relationship between the United States and China is no easy task,” she said. “But we must never forget that, despite the challenges, our path is not predestined.”
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