Weird Chinese Food: Scorpions on a Stick for 5 Yuan

The great Buddha once said, “When in China, dine as the Chinese do”… and that’s exactly what we did…. Okay, Buddha never said that– but it sounds cool.

Steve and I stepped of the Korean Airlines flight at approximately 4:30am (Chinese time), and in our jetlagged stupor we make a pact— during our month in China we would eat everything placed in front of us.

Bull (my student-translator) loved food, and he knew about our culinary pact…Steve and I quickly realized that asking for language translations while dining was a bad idea… halfway through eating our first meal I said, “this is amazing, what is it?” Bull replied, “Yīnjīng… Americans call them ‘mutton testicle’, very delicious in China.” That was the last time I asked for a translation before I was done eating.

Three guy lucky, pickled cuttlefish, boiled duck embryo tacos, duck beak meat, fish heads, intestine, thousand year old egg, tuna eyeball, sheep gentiles, stinky tofu, squid neck, chicken hearts, pickled chicken feet, and Steve’s favorite Xiezi de shíwù (蝎子的食物), also known as fried scorpion on a stick…. and much more.

If it could be fried and put on a stick we ate it. The most outrageous part is that neither of us got sick.