This is to
answer that one question you always had about the Chinese.
To answer this question, yes even though
eating insects is a taboo in most societies, it dates back thousands of years. Not
only do the Chinese but a lot of south Asian countries like Korea and Thailand including
North, Central and South America; and Africa, Australia and New Zealand enjoy
ingesting insects.
I come from a
culture where we more or less kill insects to protect ourselves and not because
we want to eat them. It’s a cultural difference and perspective that’s hard to
step away from.
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| Your typical sights and smells in Wangfujing, Beijing |
While
researching on the consumption of insects or entomophagy, it came to me as a surprise that the main consumer for
these creepy guys is, in fact, Thailand and not China. Grasshoppers, centipedes,
various bug larvae, silkworms, multiple creepy giant cockroach lookalikes fall
into the list of bugs humans consume.
Other unusual food consumed includes
seahorses, scorpions, even animal body parts like snakehead soup, duck feet
marinated in blood, solidified duck blood, pork lungs, peacock and pig face. 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 venom, lily bulbs and deer’s penis… you know where I’m
going with this.
What came as
a bigger shock was that even though people blame the rapid rate of urbanization
and industrialization for China’s pollution problems and water shortages, few
recognize that meat industries are to be equally blamed. Livestock produces
more greenhouse gasses on the planet than all automobiles and other forms of
transportation combined. China’s meat consumption per capita has nearly
quadrupled over the past 30 years to an estimated 71 million tons per year. And
if China’s meat consumption doesn't slow down, the environmental consequences
could be disastrous.
