New report reveals that U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen ate psychedelic mushrooms during her visit to Beijing earlier this month.
This comes after Yellen embarrassed herself in front of Vice Premier He Lifeng by bowing multiple times without reciprocation, which is a sign of diplomatic weakness.
CNN later reported that the treasury secretary dined on psychedelic mushrooms before her official meeting with Chinese officials.
Yellen, 76, ate four portions of jian shou qing, a type of wild mushroom, when she dropped in at a casual Beijing restaurant soon after she arrived there on July 6. The funky fungi, however, are known for their unpredictable psychedelic effects.
“You thought you were walking straight but you just fell sideways,” one gourmand told the Xinhua state news agency in a report about the mushroom’s potent powers.
“I have a friend who mistakenly ate them and hallucinated for three days,” said Dr. Peter Mortimer, a professor at the Kunming Institute of Botany.
Yellen’s antics during her four-day trip to China caused discussion among diplomatic experts, who criticized her repeated bowing to her Chinese counterpart.
“Never, ever, ever,” Bradley Blakeman, a senior staffer from the Bush administration, told The New York Post. “An American official does not bow. It looks like she’s been summoned to the principal’s office, and that’s exactly the optics the Chinese love.”
“Bowing is not part of the accepted protocol,” agreed Jerome A. Cohen, an emeritus professor at New York University and expert in Chinese law and government.
The treasury secretary also fumbled Lifeng’s name, calling him “Vice Premier Hu” as she opened the first official American meeting with the economic chief.
This comes just days after China abruptly announced new export restrictions on gallium and germanium, two metals essential for semiconductor manufacture. The communist nation claimed the restrictions were necessary to “safeguard national security and interests,” and the move was widely viewed as retaliation for American restrictions on Chinese technology.
Additionally, China also ratcheted up its pressure on Taiwan shortly after Yellen touched down in Beijing by sending 13 People’s Liberation Army aircraft and six boats into the airspace and waterways of the independent island democracy that the CCP claims as its own.
