All pictures taken: Street market in Beijing, China.
Date: December 9, 2010.
Camera: Panasonic TZ3.
Before I came to China I had terrible misconceptions about the food. I thought everything would be weird and horrible. On the contrary, it's been quite normal -- and delicious. I may have actually put on weight, instead of losing it, because I've eaten so many yummy banquet meals.
But this morning, wandering through a Beijing street market, we got a glimpse of the freak show food I thought was de rigour in China. It was the scorpion skewers that caught my eye first. The chap selling them made a point of showing us that they were still alive by tickling their legs with another stick. Seeing the scorpions move and unfurl their tails gave me the creeps.
Further on we saw lots of other odd creatures on skewers, including giant spiders, locusts and sea horses. And then there were the bowls of foul-smelling tripe (see below).
Of course, there's plenty of Western food in this city, so we're not going to starve. And from what I can gather, most of this odd stuff is done just to attract the tourists -- though goodness knows how anyone makes any money from it if all we do is go around and take snaps of it.
