Food

Food. It is the staple for life. But America is fairly spoiled when it comes to food. They never really had experiences like the Chinese. During the cultural revolution, there was a famine that claimed the lives of millions of people. Just to survive, they began experimenting with all sorts of culinary venues that would make half the world cringe, such as insects, snakes, starfish, sea horses (which are apparently an aphrodisiac according to the salesman,) grubs, etc. But the foods are actually edible. If you let your gag reflex stop you from eating, you'll miss out on some of the most amazing foods you'd never thought you'd eat. This is my story of Wangfujing and everything you wish would stay under the rocks they started from.
***
Cabs are always interesting. Sometimes you get a quiet cabbie, other times, you get a talkative one, while other times you get a quiet cabbie who is just waiting for you to talk with him. My cab ride over was the latter. After bonding with him as we sat in traffic for 53 minutes, and slowly feeling my pocket become lighter with every passing minute, I arrived. Stands and booths as far as the eye could see down the road. It was ridiculous. The lights overpowered the banks they were temporarily set up in front of. The uniform of the workers were the same. An army of red aprons, red visors and white shirts, all yelling at the passer-bys in Chinese and broken English, "Zhe ge hen hao... ayaaa, Haixing hen hao chi! you buy?" They were ferocious, yelling and screaming at me. Luckily I met up with some friends, and we embarked on our "disgusting" culinary odyssey. Bridget and I first bought our fairly squeamish friend some noodles. But noodles... They're too normal, I can have those anywhere. We decided to start from the far end and work our way down. Now I'd like to describe the smells. They stick to you as the day goes on. At the end of the day, if you sniff your shirt, you think to yourself, "That actually describes my day pretty well." But I digress, chou doufu, which literally means, "Stinky Tofu," assaults your olfactory senses. It brings tears to your eyes, it burns your throat. You want to die. And then you walk 30 feet through the smell and see that smells origin. Tiny pieces of doufu. There's the smell of a bay, cooking meat, fruits, and other things that I can't describe and only wish I never smelled, mixing together with the chou doufu to make up the most bizarre smell I have ever experienced in my short 17 years of life. But at last, Bridget and I braved through the smells and arrived at a stand selling starfish. I handed over 20 Kuai and ended up with a starfish on a stick. The whole thing. It just sat there, dead as can be, but I ignored the fact that these are the garbage disposals of the ocean, eating practically every dead thing that falls within reach. I ignored the fact that they can turn themselves inside out, everything I ever remembered from middle school biology classes, and stuck it in my mouth. I bit through the leg. Chewy, like a very gamey fish stick. But it was good. Eating that, attracted a crowd of Chinese and Waiguoren alike. Oh look, those Americans are eating, "Hen chiguai de dongxi." Moving on, we came to the Scorpion stand. Well mainly whatever insect you could imagine, but i had my mind set on scorpions. Bridget shelled out the money for this one, and we got two sticks, three scorpions on each. They had all their legs, their tail and everything that makes them so scary. I started to wonder why I wouldn't touch bugs when they're alive, but they're perfectly ok to eat when they're dead. Of course my mind doubted myself for a moment. How did they catch these things? Didn't Indiana Jones say small scorpions are poisonous? How did they get on the stick? But I ignored the history of all these bugs and ate them. Eating scorpions is a tricky ordeal, one that experience teaches how to eat. Bite that bloody stinger first. The first one I ate, somehow stung the back of my throat. Of course it was surprising, especially with 8 legs brushing up against your tongue, but no matter. CRUNCH. Salty, crunchy, kinda meaty-esque, but all of it was amazing. It was better than most of the things I'd eaten back home. It compared to a filet. I'm drooling just thinking about it. Walking hardly any further down the seemingly endless row of stands, we stumbled across Silk Worm Pods. Slightly envious that my friend Chris had already eaten some, I pulled Bridget over and bargained for some. I'm an awful bargainer, so I ended up letting her do most of it. She just adds -Aaaa to the end of every sentence and the cooks' hearts melt. Apparently I'm not that cute. *sigh* So we got a stick of Silk worm pods. I bit one and pulled it off. Now, for some reason my mind started thinking of it when I bit it in half. "Oh. MY. GAWD! These are larvae in here, that are getting all over my mouth." But it didn't gross me out. It was hard to explain; I think it was excitement, but then I tasted it. They made it Spicey and every single larva tasted like crayons. Spicey crayons are not a delicacy. So I ate two. For photo opportunity's sake. Just so I never have to eat them again. The snake stand beckoned us. I stood there and just stared at all the "Chuanr" or meat on a stick. There was beef, chicken, sheep, kidneys, praying mantis looking shrimp things, mussels like you've never seen before and snakes. The whole snake. Looking back at you, with its soulless eyes, it's mouth agape, and a stick piercing it's whole body, as it snaked back and forth through the stick, (forgive the coincidental pun.) Bridget worked her bargaining magic and got the price down to 7 kuai. So the guy started making it and he then tried to kiss Bridget's hand. Then seeing us bargain in chinese with him, he began to say in chinese, "Oh you are americans, you have lots of money, the snake is thirty kuai." I began to tell him, in chinese, "America's economy is awful at the moment, our stock market crashed terribly," (yes I finally got to use that useless phrase I learned back home,) "Plus we're students so we don't have much money anyway." He didn't like this, and started yelling really loudly. This drew a crowd. It felt as if the whole market was staring at us. They began to talk, "Look at those Americans, they've been eating all this weird stuff." But the salesman was about to threaten the cops on us, when we ran. Probably not the most tactful thing, but we got away. Passing through a crowd of people, all of them talking about how we were those "brave Americans" who were eating the gross stuff. I felt that I was getting yet another dose of 15 minutes of fame. But Bridget and Mary had to go to their dinner with their host families, so I was left on my own now. Having learned how to bargain from watching Bridget do it, I went to a different snake stand. This guy I just decided not to bargain with and pay the full price. A group of British teachers came up to me and said, "Oh 'allo there, are you that crazy american that's eating everything. Everyone's talking about you. Can we film you eat whatever that is, cause we don't have the balls to do so." So I got my snake, Head and everything, and ate it. The skull was the worst part, cause I didn't realize it was there. The fangs shattered and went straight into my tongue. After uttering a slight profanity, I finished. The Teacher then asked me to say hello to his elementary school class. "Hallo, elementary schoolers! Sorry I swore in front of you." I decided that I was going to go get a sea urchin. They cracked it open and gave it to me. It was awful. That's all I can say. My stomach was telling me to stop, so I walked to the street, got in a cab, and headed for home, content with my experiences in the Wangfujing Night Market. The lights faded to nothing as we drove off through what felt like Beijing's Times Square. Tomorrow morning, the stands would be gone. Everyone would pretend that that never happened. But I know, that I'll never forget it. Nor will my stomach... or my host families toilet.