An ox forehead a day keeps the doctor away - food in China

Tired of dining out on noodles, fried rice and French food? There are lots of sources for information on food in China but this one gives a pretty good run-down on 'alternative' menu selections.

WEIRD FOODS IN CHINA

Duck blood Sparrows are a common street and snack food. They are skewered, roasted and fried and served on sticks. They are often eaten bones and all between sips of beer in streetside stalls. In Beijing, you can get silkworms, grasshoppers, seahorses, and scorpions—with their stingers intact. Other weird food favorites include snakehead soup, duck feet marinated in blood, solidified duck blood, pork lungs, peacock and pig face. The latter is made by pouring hot tar in a pig head to remove the hair put not the skin.

Banquet specialties include cow’s lung soaked in chili sauce, goose stomachs, fish lips with celery, goat’s feet tendons in wheat noodles, shark’s stomach soup, chicken-feet soup, monkey’s head, ox forehead, turtle casserole, pigeon brain, deer ligament and snake venon, lily bulbs and deer’s penis.

A typical menu offers things like “goat genitals soup,” “pig hoof gruel,” “old vinegar jelly fish,” “fried goose intestines,” “know taste pork meat pie,” “chicken without sexual life,” “pockmarked old-lady’s tofu.” “fish smell like pork.” “spicy ducks heads” and “lover’s lung.” Some restaurant serve donkey and the entree “Explodes the Stomach, Slides the Tendon and Fires the Sheep’s Internal Organs.”

Some people in China eat dirt as a "famine food." Analysis of samples of eating soil shows that it contains large amounts of iron, calcium, vanadium, magnesium, manganese and potassium—essential nutrients that are in short supply in times of famine.

Huangshan Stone Frog is a speciality of Anhui province. The black-skinned frogs found there are quite large and bear quite a bit of meat. The meat is said to have a light, sweet flavor. Frog fat is enjoyed as a desert. Eating frog is supposed to strengthen your bones and improve your eyesight.


drunken shrimp Weird fish and seafood dishes include fish lips and eyeballs and drunken shrimp, a delicacy in which live shrimp are dipped in alcohol, and their head is pinched off and eaten. Sweet-and-sour Yellow River fish is cooked while it is still alive and served while still breathing. Jellyfish is squeeze dried, processed with diluted acid and the dried in the sun. It can be kept for months without spoiling. Not all jellyfish can be eaten. Some lack the texture to be appetizing when dried.

Thousand-year-old eggs, a Guangdong delicacy, are made from duck eggs coated with lime, ashes and mud and soaked in horse urine for 100 days until the yolks turns green and the whites become gelatinous and dark brown. The eggs have a creamy, cheese-like flavor and a strong smell. Some are aged in black mud. These become partially hardened and are sold in markets as a seasoning for pork products. Thousand-year-old eggs are often served with rice congee or cut in chunks and eaten with slices of pickled ginger to soften the taste. Chinese also eat duck eggs that are packed in a pot and buried in the ground.

The Chinese considered many foods eaten by non-Chinese to be strange. They consider eating a plain cooked steak as primitive and unappetizing. Many regard eating cheese or butter as disgusting and find the French custom of eating snails to be strange.[/li][/list]

Regional Weird Foods in China

Hunan dishes include spicy frogs' legs, tripe and sea cucumbers. People from Sichuan eat duck intestines, pig brains, frog's thighs, green bean seeds and rabbit ears. In Qinghai you can find sheep vein, yak vein, caterpillar fungus, a seaweed-like black moss known as "hair grass," and stir-fried camel's foot.

Among the dishes one can find in Harbin are "yellow flower" (chopped lily stalks), grilled bear paw, stewed moose nose with mushrooms, white fungus soup, and monkey-leg mushrooms. In Manchuria, frog oil taken from frog ovaries is often added to soups and stews served at expensive restaurants.


bugs and maggots from Yunnan Yunnan favorites include live goat fetus, caterpillar fungus, pseudo-ginseng or gastrodia, three-year cured ham, fried goat cheese, and deep fried bee larvae. Delicacies from Hubei Province include snake meat, venison from spotted deer, soft-shell turtle and crocodile claw. Cobra-bile wine is consumed in Canton. People in Beijing like ant soup.

Dogs as Food in China

Dog, known as "fragrant meat," has long been a popular food in northeast and southern China and in recent years has become popular in other places. It is regarded as both a wintertime food and a health food although some Chinese say eating dog meat causes nose bleeds. One dog farmer told AFP, "Dogs have nutritional value, and their meat is tender and has a beneficial effect on kidney and spleen disease," The breed of dog is not that important in terms of the taste of the meat. It is said that all species taste pretty much the same.

Dog has been consumed in China for at least 2000 years. Liu Bang, the first emperor of the Han dynasty, among others, had a taste for dog meat. The custom almost died out in the Cultural Revolution when Red Guards killed dogs all over the country because of their perceived association with the bourgeois. Dog is also eaten in Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines and other countries.

Dogs are sometimes kept in cages outside restaurants to show the meat is fresh. Many have lowered heads, sad eyes and flattened ears and look as if they now their fate. After they are slaughtered their meat is soaked in cold water for about an hour before cooking. Some restaurants slaughter 30 to 40 dogs a day.

Dog stew served at restaurants in Peixian, a town in Jiangsu province famous for dog, is made in big galvanized caldrons. Heads, paws, tails and other parts are all thrown in and seasoned with a mixture of spices that is a family secret. Intestines are stuffed into the stomach and stewed into something that resembles balls of smoked mozzarella. Sometimes other animals, such as turtles, are thrown in for flavoring. [Source: Craig S. Smith, New York Times, July 7, 2001]

Peixian is located in the heart of the dog-eating region of China. People there regularly eat dog soup, pulled dog meat sandwiches and dog stew and are particularly fond of starting their day with a breakfast of hot soy milk and a pieces of oily, red dog wrapped in a pita-like flat bread. About 300,000 dogs are raised for food. About half are for local consumption. The other are exported to other parts of China and to Korea. Turtle-flavored, hand-pulled dog meat is a local specialty. It can be purchased in boxes or vacuum-sealed plastic bags in gift shops and at the airport in nearby Xuzhou. Portraits of collies, spaniels and beagles are found throughout the town.

Dog meat was banned in Beijing during the duration of the Olympics in 2008. Officially-designated Olympics restaurants were required to take it off the menus and waiters were told to politely suggest alternatives to customers that insisted on having it.

Dog Farms in China

Dog meat is one of the most expensive meats in China, selling for around $2 a kilogram. Raising dogs is generally about twice as profitable as raising pigs. Many farmers switched from pigs to dogs when the price of pork declined.

A typical dog farm houses about 1,000 dogs, mostly crossbreeds, locked in small cages under poor hygienic conditions. The dogs are generally slaughtered when they reach the age of six months. A dog that weighs a five pounds at this age is sold for around $10, about half of that profit. Dog hides are sold to factories that make them into dog-fur hats, fur-lined pants and and blanket used by peasants.


St. Bernards as Food in China

In some parts of China it is becoming increasingly popular to use St. Bernard in the dogs-for-food industry. The dogs are not raised to be eaten but rather as breeding stock for dogs that grow large quickly and can be slaughtered for food. Many are crossbred with Mongolian dogs, which are prized for the leanness of their meat.

One dog farmer told AFP, "This kind of dog grows really fast, even though it eats less than two yuan (24 cents) worth of food every day, and even less if it is crossbred. And the female can give birth to 10 or 12 puppies every year." When the dogs are slaughtered at six months they weigh 100 pounds. Dog farmers are also experimenting with Newfoundlands, Great Dames and even Dalmatians.

It is not known exactly how the Chinese obtain the St. Bernards, which cost up to $1,200 a piece. Many believe they are originate in Switzerland and are purchased through Russian middlemen. Some dog farms import the frozen sperm of St. Bernards.

SOS St. Bernards International is a Geneva-based organization committed to rescuing St. Bernards in dog farms by pressuring the Chinese government. The Swiss government has expressed sympathy for their causes but has resisted taking any action on the grounds that the custom of dog-eating is a cultural matter.

Cats as Food in China

Cats are only eaten in Guangdong but not elsewhere in China. They are considered a delicacy in southern China and are sold live in markets and slaughtered fresh for customers. In Guangzhou markets you can find them in stacked metal cages alongside cages with rabbits ducks and quails and buckets with live turtles and scorpions. One cat seller told the Los Angeles Times, “You just to have to boil the cat a long time. It has a very nice, fresh taste.” [Source: Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times , October 2009]

Cat meat is said to give one a lively spirit, ward off rheumatism and be good for a man's health and libido. It is also regarded as a food that will keep you warm in winter. When asked why she eats cat meat one woman told the Los Angeles Times, “Winter is coming I need to eat something furry.”

A local government office worker told the Los Angeles Times, “Cat meat is good for women. You can eat it in the summer or winter. It is very light. Men usually prefer dog. It is like yin and yang. Cat is yin and dog is yang.” One Guangdong resident recommended the dish “Dragon Fighting Tiger,” made with snake and cat.

Most of the cats eaten in Guangdong are shipped in from the north. So many have been caught it is now rare to see strays wandering the street anywhere in China. One single group of catchers is said to be responsible for capturing 10,000 cats a day, The cat snatchers are typically former unemployed men who use large fishing nets and earn $1.50 per cat. Not surprisingly cat owners in places where the catchers are active don’t want to let their pets outside the house.

Cats are sold to restaurants for about $7.31 a piece or around $2.80 a kilogram. The age and sex of the cats doesn’t seem to matter that much. What is most important in determining price is the weight.

Insects as Food in China

Bee larvae Some restaurants serve tiger, dragon and phoenix soup with cat for tiger, snake for dragon and chicken for phoenix. The mix is said to have more health benefits than the benefits associated with each individual animal. Chinese also eat horse sausages and kittens.

In some places Chinese still eat cicadas, crickets, giant water beetles, stinkbugs, silk worms, cockroaches and fly maggots. People that eat these things tend to be poor and have no other sources of protein.

In some places Chinese eat live scorpions doused in baijiu,a potent Chinese liquor. Giant water bugs are boiled and soaked in vinegar. Their shells are cracked open like the shells of crabs and the flesh inside is eaten.

The scorpions sold on the streets in Beijing are grabbed live by the sales people, dipped in boiling oil for second and skewered on a stick.

Grasshoppers are widely eaten in China and other places around the world. Insects are rich in protein and are a far greener way to get protein than eating chicken, cows and pigs, which produce greenhouse gases and consume much of the world’s grain.

Rats as Food in China

People in some parts of China are fond of eating rats. This custom has been around a long time. Chinese in the Zhou dynasty who ate rats, calling them "household deer." The rats that Chinese eat are not regarded as dirty animals. They don’t come from the cities but come from the countryside and are said to consume all natural foods such as fruit, grass and leaves.

Rat meat cost more than four times more than chicken or pork and twice that of beef. Eating rat is said to prevent baldness. The owners of a rat restaurant told Peter Hessler of the New Yorker, "If you have white hair and eat rat regularly, it will turn black. And if you're going bald and you eat it everyday your hair will stop falling out. A lot of the parents around here feed rat to a small child who doesn't have much hair, and the hair grows better."

Rats are regarded as a winter dish. One waitress at a restaurant in Guangzhou told the New York Times, that they “carry too many diseases in the summer.” Live rat embryos from Guizhou province are nicknamed the "three squeals" because they squeal when they are picked up (1), dipped in soy sauce (2), and popped into the mouth (3).

Most of the rats served are trapped by farmers in the nearby countryside. Many of the farmers grew crops but switched to rat catching because there was much more money in it. The rats are brought in sacks. The wriggle around and squeak as they are placed on scales to determine how much the farmers are paid.

Rat Restaurants in China

Highest Ranking Wild Flavor Restaurant in Guangdong offers simmered mountain rat, mountain rat curry, spicy and salty mountain rat, simmered mountain rat with black beans, steamed mountain rat, rat soup. During an outing there Hessler was asked. "'Do you want a big rat or a small rat?” What's the difference? "The big rat eats grass stems, and the small one eat fruit.” Which tastes better? “'Both of them taste good." [Source: Peter Hessler, New Yorker, July 24, 2000]

Customers often examine the caged rats and pick the ones they want. Describing how they were killed Hessler wrote, "Suddenly, the worker flipped his wrist, swung the rat into the air by the tail, and let go. The rat made a neat arc. There was a soft thud when is head struck the cement floor. There wasn't much blood."

Hessler order a small mountain rat with black beans, which was served in a clay pot. "I ate the beans first," he wrote. "I poked at the meat. It was clearly well done, and it was attractively garnished with onions, leeks, and ginger. Nestled in a light sauce were skinny rat thighs, short strips of rat flank, and delicate toylike rat thighs. I put a chunk of it into my mouth, and reached for a glass of beer. The beer helped...It wasn't bad. The meat was lean and white, without a hint of gaminess. Gradually, my squeamishness faded, and I tried to decide what the flavor of rat remind me of. But nothing came to mind. It simply tasted like rat."

Competition is keen in the rat restaurant business. Hessler said the Highest Ranking Wild Flavor Restaurant cost $24,000 to build. Soon after it opened another rat restaurant, the New Eight Sceneries of Wild Flavor Food Restaurant, which cost $50,000, opened and third massive three-story air-conditioned rat restaurant was under construction. But that doesn't mean they don’t make money. Each of them serve 3,000 rat dishes a day on the weekends and attract customers from all over China.

Turtles as Food in China

Turtles have long been associated with longevity and health. Widely consumed in soups and stews, the Chinese believe they provide lots of nutrition and replenish energy.

The Chinese fondness for turtle soup and turtle stew has caused turtle population across Asia to decline. In recent years the Chinese have begun importing hundreds of thousands of turtles—mostly softshells and snappers—from the southern United States and now there are worried the large number of wild turtles captured could have disastrous impact on turtle populations there.

Soft shell turtle dishes are generally soups made with turtles braised in a brown sauce. There are lots of bones. The jelly-like flesh on the edge or the hard top shell is said to be tasty. The turtle soften come from Lake Hingfu in Hubei Province. The dish became famous when it was revealed that the coach Ma Junren served it to his world-record breaking female runners.

Snakes as Food in China

Skinning a snake Snake eating is especially popular in Shanghai and Guangdong Province. According to one survey over 6,000 specialized restaurants in Shanghai serve snake dishes made with pit vipers, cobras, freshwater snakes and sea snakes. These restaurants serve up to 4,000 tons of snake a year. One Shanghai supplier, who provides two tons of snakes daily to restaurants, sells cobras for $14 a kilogram and pit vipers for $42 a kilogram.

Snake meat is often referred to as dragon meat on the menu. Many of the snakes served at Chinese restaurants come from the Snake Repository in Wuzhou, Guangxi Province, where more than one million snakes are raised each year. The repository is favorite tourist attraction for Chinese tour groups from Taiwan and Hong Kong who sometimes have special snake versus cat fights staged for them.

Snake eating is nothing new. Describing the practice in Canton in the 1320s, the Friar Oderic wrote: "There be monstrous great serpents likewise which are taken by the inhabitants and eaten. A solemn feast among them with serpents is thought nothing of."

Snake and Crocodile Restaurants in China

Tourists who order snake in southern China often are treated to watching the poor reptile killed, skinned and drained of blood right before their eyes. Snake dishes offered at the Snake Restaurant in Canton include fricasseed snake with cat meat, snake breast meat stuffed with shelled shrimp, stir-fried colorful shredded snakes and braised snake slices with chicken liver. The bill for four people is often less than $30. [Source: Lonely Planet]

The Flying Dragon Snake Farm in Panyu (near Shenzen) serves snake skin with peppers, snake semen liqueur ("good for a person with a weak body"), baked cobra and five-step snake ("take five steps and die"). The farm also features a snake stage show, sells snake-based traditional medicines, and has a cobra petting zoo, a bath with hundreds of snakes and a snakatorium that offers "extended snake-diet therapy.”

The owner of the immensely popular snake farm is Chin Lung Fei, the self-proclaimed "King of Snakes. He told National Geographic that his motto is "treat snakes as friends." A Hainan Island food stall vendor who specialized in snake delicacies should have followed this advise. He was killed by poisonous bites to his hands from the heads of two snakes that he had just been beheaded. The bites were inflicted when the vendor tried to pick up the heads.

Crocodile is believed to cure coughs and prevent cancer. It is available steamed, braised or stewed at the Yuim seafood restaurant in Guangzhou, were crocodiles with their jaws taped shut roam the restaurant’s floors. A manager at the restaurant told National Geographic, “People don’t care about the cost. They just care about health.”

Image Sources: Weird Meat blog except skinning the snake, Perrechon

Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, National Geographic, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, Lonely Planet Guides, Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.
© 2008 Jeffrey Hays  

Rat Restaurants in China

Highest Ranking Wild Flavor Restaurant in Guangdong offers simmered mountain rat, mountain rat curry, spicy and salty mountain rat, simmered mountain rat with black beans, steamed mountain rat, rat soup. During an outing there Hessler was asked. "'Do you want a big rat or a small rat?” What's the difference? "The big rat eats grass stems, and the small one eat fruit.” Which tastes better? “'Both of them taste good." [Source: Peter Hessler, New Yorker, July 24, 2000]

Terry Pratchett would be so proud!!

I'm still looking for a place that has civet burgers.

What about 3 squeak mice?
The first squeak is when you pick it up with your chopstick, the second squeak is when you dip it into sauce and the third squeak is when you bite into it.

So gross......

What about 3 squeak mice?
The first squeak is when you pick it up with your chopstick, the second squeak is when you dip it into sauce and the third squeak is when you bite into it.

So gross......

is that for real? yikes... I've heard of the WaWa fish, which is so fresh that it's still breathing (going wa-wa) when it arrives at your table!

I think the 3 squeak mice may be an urban legend, but I have sampled the still alive fish! Not very tasty.