Of snake wine and goat testicles

Peter:

Southern China, more than the north is renowned for its culinary catholicism. The joke we heard was "we'll eat anything with 4 legs that isn't a chair, and anything with 2 wings that isn't an airplane". By all accounts this is true. One of our guides mentioned a delicacy for some (though definitely not for her) of eating live newborn mice. They are dipped in spiced soy sauce and downed in one go. Of course I grew up with seal flipper pie, happily slurp raw oysters, and in Zim they eat flying ants, so no one is passing judgement here.

One of the trickiest moments for me came in Kunming. It was after my "Dali belly" experience and I was feeling very fragile. I had just gone 48 hrs with hardly eating and we had gone back to Kunming and had early check in at our hotel. It was a decent hotel - [Chinese] 4 stars and I thought it would be my best bet for getting safe food. I went off in search of some soup or some noodles in chicken broth - something to start my road to revival. The hotel had a Cantonese restaurant and I went in for lunch. It turned out this was a real high end place with very expensive and exotic dishes. I opened the menu and the dishes were presented as pictures. I immediately opened to "goat's testicles" and there they were looking up at me. My stomach did a somersault. After swallowing I looked further past the shark fin dishes and beyond "bull penis soup" and eventually found a simple noodle bowl containing, hopefully, no genitals.

In Guangxi province where we visited Guilin and Yangshuo, snake was very popular and written on most of the menus. Most impressive was snake wine. We took a boat from Guilin to Yangshuo and the boat provided lunch but also offered regional specialties that could be purchased as well. As we floated down the river, the waitresses would come on top deck with various Guilin delights - a bowl with prawns swimming around; osmanthus flower wine (famous in Guilin); and my favorite, snake wine. "Would you like some snake wine sir?" She was holding a large glass gallon jar, like a pickle jar. In the bottom curled up was a blue snake with a mottled pattern covered with a clear liquid. It looked like it belonged in a natural history museum and for all I know it was covered in formalin. Although based on my caterpillar fungus wine experience I suspect it was 50% alcohol or higher. I politely declined. Surprisingly, so did Vera.