Alex in China

I think the title explains it all, I’ve finally taken the plunge and eaten a scorpion! We’ve been talking about doing this as a group ever since we saw those live scorpions on the street (look for a picture of them in one of my first posts) in Qingdao. Well, it turns out there’s a street in Beijing known as Wang Fu Jing that is famous for being filled with the kinds of food that you see in Fear Factor. Sea snake, starfish, testicles, dog, sea urchin, scorpions and much more!

Being the good professor that he is, Tio wasn’t very happy to hear about our scorpion-eating plans. Apparently there is a large number of tourists who end up at the hospital every year after eating scorpions. Sometimes the poison doesn’t completely cook out and can cause a wide array of painful side-effects. The logical thing to do after hearing this would have been to cancel our scorpion dinner and go visit a noodle stand, but since when have college students been logical? We assured Tio everything would be “ok” and took off for Wang Fu Jing.

Trey and Aaron took the plunge first and ordered a skewer of scorpions to share. A few minutes later (almost) everyone was biting into the crunchy shell of a fresh scorpion. We were the center of attention as we chowed down, every tourist in the area stopped to get pictures of the Americans eating scorpions. Even a Spanish news crew filmed us for some story they were doing on the area.

To put it simply, scorpion tastes like popcorn. Once you get past the idea that you’re consuming a very well-feared insect, it’s not too bad. Actually, the only thing that stopped me from getting more was the price. For 18 kuai there was a lot other disgusting foods I wanted to try before the night was done.

Luckily I had my eating partner, Derrick, with me to split all our exotic foods with. We went ahead and continued on to try starfish and sea snake. Starfish…not so good. Combine bad sushi with dirt and you’v basically got starfish. Sea snake on the other hand is amazing, a very light fish taste similar to eel with lots of tiny bones thrown in.

Overall, I’d say the night was a success! I’ve almost eaten as many exotic foods as my parents now (which was a goal of mine) and I actually enjoyed most of them. The only thing that I’ve held back on is dog meat and testicles… but who knows, maybe I’ll just save them for next time -a