- Title: CHINA: Beijing offers a wide variety of food for the adventurous Olympic tourist
- Date: 3rd August 2008
- Summary: BIRD'S HEAD RESTING ON LAMB KEBABS UNIDENTIFIED AMERICAN TOURIST EATING SEAHORSE ON A STICK WITH FRIEND (SOUNDBITE) (English) AMERICAN TOURIST, SAYING: "It's really not bad. It's definitely a different experience so I figured I'd try it. It's not bad" FOOD VENDORS SITTING BY STALL AND CALLING OUT TO PASSERS BY LIZARDS ON STICKS (SOUNDBITE) (Mandarin) SUN HAINAN, FOOD V
- Embargoed: 18th August 2008 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: China
- Country: China
- Topics: Light / Amusing / Unusual / Quirky,Sports
- Reuters ID: LVAEVZE5YPLR6QTA0YV914PY2D20
- Story Text: People attending the Beijing Olympics can put their taste buds to the test, with a variety of unusual food such as scorpions on sticks, stir-fried insects and many other dishes.
Even though dog meat has officially been taken off the menu for the Olympic Games, tourists will not be disappointed with the Chinese cuisine they offer.
As dusk falls just near Tiananmen square, food stalls prop up on the main road in Wangfujing shopping district. Hungry visitors, eager to sample anything from deep-fried scorpions to seahorses and lizards flock to the area.
The army of touting vendors welcomes the people offering them good deals for their unique food.
Jackie Siegel, who was on a short trip to the Chinese capital could not resist trying out a medley of starfish, snake and sea urchin.
"The centipedes and the worms and scorpions kind of bother me a little bit. I'm trying to down the sea urchin and I don't think I can do it.
It doesn't even taste cooked. You know what that looks like? Something really dirty," she said before tasting the sea urchin dish.
A freshly fried and seasoned skewer of farmed scorpions, the centerpiece of any true street banquet, costs just 50 Yuan (7.30 U.S.
Dollars). For the more faint-hearted, you could opt for a spicy barbecued lamb kebab, a popular central Asian import from China's northwestern Xinjiang region.
For one 19-year-old tourist, the sea horse on a stick was just too tempting to ignore.
"It's really not bad. It's definitely a different experience so I figured I'd try it. It's not bad," he said while biting the cooked tail.
The Chinese traditionally believe that certain animals or their limbs and organs have medicinal or life-enhancing properties such as a ground dear's antlers boiled as tea or snake pickled in China's popular baijiu alcohol.
Sun Hainan, a young food vendor from Anhui province, explained the benefits of the various creatures on offer at his stall.
"The seahorses are good for men's kidneys and their virility, those (crustacea) are for the girls to improve their skin and looks, and these (lizards) ones are for both the boys and the girls, they boost your virility," he said.
These unusual dishes are more popular in South China than the North.
The Beijing Olympics opens on August 8 and China is expecting between 400,000 and 500,000 foreign tourists for the event.
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