China: How Would you Like a Live Scorpion? Or Maybe a Grilled Tarantula?

ANYTHING THAT MOVES CAN BE EATEN IN CHINA

I was in my hotel in Beijing, China. I had just arrived from Moscow in the morning, and I was having a serious bad-ass jet-lag. Laying on my bed like a corpse, I realized this incredible city was waiting for me at the other side of my room's door, so I gathered my forces and plunged into China's capital city.

I decided to head to Wangfujing Market first, which apparently was not so far away from my hotel.

Beijing is a really huge city, definitely not European-scaled. Distances between places, even if they look short on a map, are actually enormous. I soon realized that.

After walking for one hour, I was there. I had heard that in this market it was possible to find some out-of-ordinary snacks (ex. insects). I happened to be quite hungry that day. And I was curious to see those supposed scorpion and grasshopper brochettes.

In my native Mexico we eat grasshoppers and worms, and they're quite tasty, so I thought this thing would be no biggie for me. After all, we also eat insects.
I was very wrong. When I got there I was positively shocked.

People didn't only eat scorpions. I found everything that is potentially edible there:
- Seahorses,
- Flying lizards
- Tarantulas and 2 or 3 kinds of big spiders.
- At least 3 different sizes of grasshoppers
- ...And scorpions
- Whole pigeons
-Whole fishes of many kinds
- Whole lizards of many kinds
- Centipedes
- Starfish
- Snakes
- Whole clams
- Cocoons,
- Whole chicks
- Frogs and toads
- Very bizarre-looking seafood (I still have no clue of what that was)
- ...and thankfully more common things such as beef and chicken (lol).

China, a far and -during much of it's history- relatively isolated country, is nothing short of impressive. Its like a continent. It has 1,300 million inhabitants (that's about the same amount of people living in North and South America, Oceania and the Middle East). That's a LOT of people.

It also has a very big territory, being the 3rd biggest country in the world (slightly bigger than the USA). That is, more than 4 times the size of Mexico.

The best thing about it is that Chinese people have a totally and entirely different way of living than ours (Westerners and Latin Americans). A radically different culture, and that is fascinating.
The cultural differences here are big, and abundant. They can be seen in every single aspect of life, starting with the most elementary: what they eat and how they eat it.

For starters, people in China and a few countries in Asia eat with chopsticks.
Also in China, besides eating apparently everything, people eat the whole of it.
If you ask for fish or chicken (that is, in a typical non-touristy Chinese restaurant) you are likely to get the whole piece (with the head, feet, etc.)

Once in Shanghai after a night out I went in the middle of the night to have something to eat in a local place on a backstreet and asked in my very mediocre Chinese for a Chicken soup.

I had already eaten half of it when I remarked a silly-looking piece of meat inside it, a form that you don't usually find in your chicken dishes back home.
After staring at it like a retard for a little while, I realized the head and the feet of the chicken had actually been put in the soup.

 I had a difficult time finishing it.

This is not good or bad, it is just different. Every culture is a different way of understanding life.
We must understand that there are REAL cultural differences in every place we go.
If we try to understand them, experience them and respect them, we learn more about our own way of living, and that makes you grow up. That's the magic of traveling.

China is a marvelous and incredibly diverse and rich country. Go there, no matter to what city, and you'll be continually surprised by what you'll see. It is another world, indeed.
Wait for more post of China in the future.

Please like my blog's FB page: www.facebook.com/roraroundtheworld

Thanks for reading! =)