China 07 - Wangfujing street vendor bugs

Several posts down there are blog posts documenting our first trip to China in July of 06 and the beginning of our adventurous eating excursions. Just a little over a year later, in August of 07 we returned to China for the adoption of our son. We had planned to try many new strange foods, considering this would be our last trip to China for at least quite awhile. We had set it up with our friends and Susan and Bob, who were with us for the first trip, to find some great restaurants serving odd (to us) things and take us there when we arrived in Guangzhou. We talked about things like fried bees, camel, bear and sand worms being on the menu. I was very excited! First we landed in Beijing. Last year we walked up and down Wangfujing street but I hadn't found the little alley where they sold the bizarre foods that you always see on tv. This year I was determined to find it. On our second night in Beijing we set out to walk down Wangfujing again, further this time than we had the previous times. I found a little alley on the left where there was a street vendor selling food and decided to walk down it a bit even though I'd been warned to A) never go down dark side alleys and B) never eat from street vendors. I broke both of those rules almost immediately. As I walked further down I noticed that the vendors wares were becoming more and more unusual, from fried intestines and testicles to various insects and animals on skewers. I walked up to the man who seemed to have the best variety and purchased some odd looking little delights. I selected a stick of small golden colored scorpions, a little sea horse, some sort of insects on a skewer, and something that appeared to have wings and a tail. I asked the vendor in chinese what the two creatures I didn't recognize were and he said they were cicada and something I didn't understand. I asked "is it bird?" and he said no. I asked if it was bat and he smiled and said "yes, yes, bat. Is bat". I didn't realize bats had tails but what the hell do I know about bats? I shrugged and said okay, bat it is. Mason was not in the mood to stop and eat the little treasures there in the night market so I took my snacks with me back to the hotel room to munch on. There was a spice that the vendor added on top of the little creatures that was very spicy for me as a super taster. I would much have preferred a milder seasoning, but it was not too hot for my husband or my son (our oldest son came along this time as well, and has now become an adventurous eater himself!) so it was probably just me. I thought the scorpions were nice. With the smaller scorpions you can eat them shell and all. With the larger type the shell is harder so you have to get the meat out like you would a lobster or crab. The seahorse was dry and crunchy, a bit hard for my taste. The cicadas were good, a bit spicy from the seasoning though. And the "bat" was hard because of the bones and also not easy to eat. I later found out that it wasn't a bat at all (explaining why this "bat" had a tail) but a lizard that had a flap resembling wings on each side. Although it sounded a tad cooler to say I at a bat, lizard makes much more sense.