The rest of our time in Beijing was fairly unadventurous as far as eating goes. We went to a restaurant with a good friend and there was bull penis soup and turtle on the menu, but she was paying and those dishes were quite pricey so I didn't order either, as much as I wanted to. We said good bye to Beijing and went on to Nanjing to meet our new son. Adventurous eating wasn't easy in Nanjing or Lianyungang (where my son is from) either. I know there must be a ton of places to eat new and exciting food there, but our guide kept pointing us to Burger King and KFC when we said we wanted to eat, even when we told her we were into foods that most westerners would find strange. The most exotic place she would tell us about was a hot pot restaurant not too far away. I love hot pot, but there wasn't anything too strange on the menu there. Just the usual beef, chicken, duck, goose, pork and all of their various insides. They did have rabbit and I believe owl or otter on the menu but when I excitedly inquired, they told me it was a misprint. Apparently someone who didn't speak english had thought the animal they were writing down was rabbit and owl or otter in english but were mistaken. Foiled again. At least I knew my friend was waiting in Guangzhou to show us all of the wonderfully strange things Canton had to offer.
Upon arriving in Guangzhou we found our friend Susan was going to be a bit late joining us. We met up with our old friend Bob and asked him to take us out to try something delightfully unusual. He said he had not ever had people (he was our tour guide last year) who wanted to go and eat adventurously before or after us last year. He thought for a minute and said "we can go eat doggy" I thought at first he'd said donkey, so I reminded him he took us to eat that last year. He quickly corrected me. Doggy, woof woof, doggy. I wondered deep down if I was going to be crossing an imaginary line. Would people think I was a monster? Would they hate me? Would I lose friends? Certainly I would no longer be welcomed at a PETA meeting. I looked at Mason and he back at me and we both shrugged and said, sure. Mason asked about cat meat and Bob squinched his face and said "cat meat too tough, very sour. You wouldn't like". Thats a good thing to know next time I threaten my cats at home with a trip to the BBQ pit when they miss their litter box. We were supposed to meet Bob the next night to go out to our extremely taboo dinner, but instead we were stood up. He called later to tell us he'd come down with strep throat and had been in the emergency room all night. The poor dear's throat was so swollen he could barely whisper. We saw him a little later on and he wasn't joking. He looked rough. I had hoped that our new guide would take us to do something like Bob and Susan had the year before, but this year our guide barely gave us the time of day, much less gave us directions to somewhere fun to eat.
We did find some great "odd" food on the menu at some of the restaurants around the island we were staying at. One restaurant had silkworms (which we had eaten last year), paddy insects (what the heck are paddy insects?) and taro cooked in yak's milk. YUMMO!
We also found that the restaurant Cow and Bridge down from our hotel served a few oddities. We ordered some ostrich steak and birds nest soup. The birds nest soup we got was in a sweet milk, and tasted to me like some mini wheats in sweetened milk that had gotten just a tad soft, but still retained a bit of crunch. It was very good. The ostrich steak was one of the best things I've ever eaten in my life. Unfortunately I did not have my camera on me, as I didn't realize they had birds nest on the menu when we went to eat there.
Finally on the last two days of our trip, my friend Susan made it to Guangzhou. We ended up going to the restaurant the year before that we ate the snake at, as it was close by and it was late.
My son wanted to try the snake venom that Mason and Bob had drank last year and I figured you know, I will do it too. Can't hurt right? Its only venom. We walked in and as I was getting the younger ones settled in at the table, Mason and Jacob went to go pick out our snake. As a buddhist I have issue with an animal being killed for me or choosing an animal to die, but Mason doesn't have these qualms. I don't ask him to do it for me, but I will eat it if the animal is already dead and not killed for me. Yes, I have a lot of morals for someone who was going to eat dog. I know. Anyways, Mason comes back and tells me that the snake they selected was none other than a king cobra. He had asked them what type of snake it was, but they didn't know how to say it in english. He bent down to get a better look and it perked up, showing off its hood and markings.
He stayed and watched them chop the snake's head off, skin it, and drain the blood.
We ordered some chicken feet (which our new younger son LOVED and ate almost the entire plate of), snake soup, fish with the heads intact, and some other normal type stuff I can't recall. I ate the fish head, but as I was going to take the eye out to try it, it fell onto the floor. I'm not brave enough to eat off the floor in China. Yes, it really was an accident.
Along with our snake soup came a cup of snake venom (from the cobra) as well as a cup of the drained cobra blood. Mason, Jacob and our friend James took a swig of the blood, but I am not a big blood fan so I passed.
Next the glass of venom, with the snake's gall bladder crushed inside, made its rounds. Mason drank a tiny bit, then Jacob, then James and there was still some left for me. It tasted like alcohol. For a supertaster like myself, that wasn't a good taste.
The next night was our last in China and we hoped to find somewhere to eat all the groovy things like camel, bees, bear, sand worms and etc Susan had talked about. Then the rain started. And it wouldn't let up. Finally we all decided to go out anyways, after all, how many more chances like this would we get? We took taxis, a bus, even the subway to get to where we were going. Finally Susan found a place that said served traditional food. We ended up with some fried intestine, dumplings, noodles, taro, some veggies and a soup made with chicken and scorpion called dragon and phoenix soup or something similar. These scorpions were not the small kind you just pop into your mouth, these bad boys were HUGE! We were struggling with how exactly to eat them, when my newly adopted son broke his open and shoved his chopstick into the pincers pushing the meat up. A-ha! They had basically been just boiled in the soup and were not very flavorful, but all in all not bad.
 
Unfortunately this was our last night in China so I wasn't able to eat the other things my friend had suggested. Maybe in a few years I can get back to China and find some scrumptious bizarre delicacies to try then. |
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