Street food (?) in Beijing
In the penultimate episode of the Amazing Race the teams had to go to the Donghuamen street market. The contestants had to eat various fried animals -- starfish, scorpions, and some kind of larvae. It all looked gross.
On the way to Beijing I thought that I'd try to eat some of this stuff, but when I was actually at the market I kind of chickened out. My friend Karen suspects that the "weird" stuff wasn't actually there for consumption, but was a draw to get people in to eat the "real" stuff, various dumplings, stir fried vegetables, Northern-style pancakes, and candied fruit. I think she might be right -- one vendor yelled "You want balls?" before taking two skewers of some kind of animal testicles and slapping them on a grill. When I said no, he took them off and put them back where they came from, presumably for the next person who happened by.
Here are my pictures:
Crabs (ok, these were tame)
Starfish, and various squid bits.
That's snake on the left. The noodles on the middle seem to be the "real food."
Larvae, various bugs, starfish, baby shark.
Scorpions
Giant crickets
Sea horses.
More larvae. And enoki mushrooms.
More of the "real food." THere seemed to be a lot of this noodle vegetable thing around.
Who wants snake on a stick?
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Comments
What does scorpion taste like? Love the photos Chan..unbelievable what people eat..I've tried kangaroo and echidna, but crickets, seahorses and scorpions..no thanks!!
Street food can be really dangerous unless you've grown up with it. Noob foreigners think it's charming until they get a bout of some dread disease. If you buy it ALWAYS microwave it before eating, as that nukes most of the germs.
Tricks they try:
Vendors often inject strawberries and sugar cane with sugar water to bulk up the profit as well as make them sweet. There's no clean groundwater in China and sometimes they don't bother boiling the water they use so again, if your immune system isn't up to it expect at least the runs and at worst intestinal bugs, dysentery, etc. I lost count of the number of noobs I warned who were sure they'd be fine and then needed a few weeks and a hospital visit to recover.
Food is often partially cooked a few times until it's sold.
Food is rarely thrown away even when it should be. It's regurgitated for sale for a few days, usually without refrigeration for hours on end, before being broken down into other things like beef and seafood balls.
China: The Wild West of the East.
Wow this was really interesting. Are you still in China?
When I was in Cambodia I ordered a bowl of pho from a little stand at the side of the road. I remember thinking, this probably isn't a good idea, but I ate it anyway.
Of the sixty or so long-termers I know I'm the only one I know who didn't descend into hatred, although the Tian'an'men massacre still makes me sour for a few days every year and I saw way too many severe human rights violations, which no one over there even attempts to hide because human rights don't have a lot of meaning over there. I think if you don't like a place just leave it alone and move on. I also think it's wrong to go to someone else's country and try to change it to be like your own. The Chinese like their country the way it is; they made it that way so if it changes it's up to them to do it. I know it bugs me when people come to Australia and try to turn it into wherever they came from. I always reckon that if you really want to overthrow a culture or a government, start with your own. :)
I learned about the perils of street food while living in Malaysia - I travelled a lot for work - so by the time the China posting came up I was wise enough never to trust a poor person on the side of the road to be so high-minded they'd throw it before trying to kill someone with it. And the rich food peddlars are even worse; totally unscrupulous, which is how they got rich. While I was over there I read a headline about a food stall guy who deliberately poisoned a competitor's food and killed 40 schoolkids as a result. He showed no remorse; they just don't. He blamed the other guy for being 'too greedy', so he felt justified in poisoning innocent people to punish the other guy.
Anyone who goes to a developing country thinking it's just like home but with different faces is just begging for a painful education in reality. It wasn't all bad. It's just difficult to remember the good bits because they were so vastly outnumbered by the bad. I have 5&1/2 years of horror stories but I'll let you have your blog back instead. =]
P.S. The first time I ate dog was in Guangzhou and it was minced and put on a pizza. True. Beef is inferior to dog in taste.