As I was walking to the bus this morning after buying groceries, I noticed a lady with a bucket full of little squirming critters.
Now, seeing ladies selling small creatures along the sidewalk isn't unusual, and the animals are often moving, bubbling or squirting various juices. Dalian is a seafood town, after all, and the second character in the Chinese word for seafood is "fresh." But I'd never seen anyone selling these particular critters before. Normally you see turtles or fish or clams or snails. But these were an unusual color, and they were moving in a more creepish-crawly manner.
She was not selling seafood. She was selling scorpions--a whole bucket full of live scorpions.
When I was in Beijing, I saw a snack booth with a bunch of scorpions, cicadas, seahorses and starfish on sticks, but I figured that they were just there to draw in the curious crowd. Apparently I was wrong. Apparently scorpions are edible, though you shouldn't expect to find me trying them. I don't think I could figure out how to get past the legs, let alone the pinchers and stingers.
However, the thought of eating scorpions leads me to some questions and ponderings. Are scorpions meaty inside like crabs? Maybe you can buy scorpion sized shell crackers. Maybe you just fry them and chomp them down whole. How do you cook them? If you boil them, do they whistle like a lobster? Would the whistle be higher pitched because scorpions are smaller than lobsters? Were the ones I saw in Beijing killed by cooking or impaling? Do you have to wear leather gloves to cook them? Do they taste like chicken or beef? Does the poison add a spicy flavor, or will eating the stinger kill you?
Import life questions, questions to which I never expect to learn the answer.
Posted by at May 29, 2004 4:33 PM