Why I ate this awful thing

After yet another doctor's appointment in the city a few days ago, I went to Philadelphia's Chinatown before taking the train back to the suburbs. It's just a few blocks from the station. In a bakery where they sell sesame seed balls I like, they also had the confectionery you see in the photo. 
I bought it and ate it for breakfast the next day.
It was huge; that's a full-size dinner plate it's on.
It looked better than it tasted, which I knew it would because I'd eaten a few before when I lived in China for a year in 1985.

A Chinese pastry.

The city I lived in, Guiyang, was considered backward even by other Chinese at the time. Even though it was the capital city of its province, Guizhou, the Lonely Planet guide's first sentence about it in the first edition of their guide to China was, "Frankly, this place is a dump."
The university I taught at wasn't in the city proper. If you didn't know where it was, you'd never see it. It was a mile or two up a hill and when you were there you felt you were in the countryside. There were rice paddies farmed by Miao farmers, hills with nothing on them but long grass, horse-drawn carts, mangy dogs, and a huge reservoir I never saw the other side of that I swam in every morning. 
On days off, I'd ride into the city on my heavy, black bicycle that had hand brakes operated by solid metal rods. Nothing in the city was like anything I'd experienced in other cities, but after some months there and thanks to the few other western teachers I knew (there were so few of us, just around seven, that we all knew each other and did things together) I found some western things I liked. Penguin Classics and chocolate bars at the Friendship Store. A grocery store that sold ground coffee and British style biscuits.
And a bakery run by an enterprising man from Hong Kong that sold pastries like the one here. They were a Chinese version of English style pastries and for all I know they're perfect, but aren't for me.
After shopping and wandering around for the day, I'd sometimes buy one and take it back with me. I'd take it into the house I shared with two other teachers. We each had our own sections of the house, with a bedroom, living room and bathroom. On chilly nights, dirty from my day in the city the long, uphill ride home, I'd take a trickle, as I'd call it because of the extremely low water pressure, and eat my pastry with a cup of tea before going to bed. 
It wasn't good but it at least resembled something I'd get back in the States, even though I rarely did (I've always been a fairly healthy eater).
It was, in other words, comfort food, and now with a terminal illness it falls into the category of food I've been eating more of lately.
I doubt I'll be eating any more of these, though. One every two decades is enough and, as I said, it didn't taste good to me.