Expensive and shameless - how the Chinese take pride in an exotic cuisine

Expensive and shameless - how the Chinese take pride in an exotic cuisine (Filed: 17/02/2006)

Chinese society is generally conservative, but food opens all doors shamelessly when it comes to showing off the newly acquired wealth of the rich and powerful.

Southern Chinese are said to eat anything that has legs except a table, anything that flies except an aeroplane, and anything that swims except a submarine.

The Queen has enjoyed the dubious fruits of this proud feature of Chinese culture. In 1986, on a state visit, she was served sea slugs at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

No expensive restaurant worth its name fails to offer shark's fin soup and abalone. Bird's nest soup - the regurgitated food from a swift's nest - is even more expensive.

Frogs are usually diced small, with their bones, and fried with chilli. Silkworm pupae are fried or boiled. Scorpions, locusts, and a whole variety of other insects are grilled. There is a taste for dog in Guangdong province, and for rat stew in Guangxi and Guizhou.

In many cases, restaurants, particularly the pricier variety, show off their delicacies in the window. The Daily Telegraph recently came face to face with a whole windowful of curiosities. They included three whole shark's fins, a bowl of sea cucumbers, several abalone, and four dried deer's penises.

The fad for exotic food came under scrutiny during the Sars crisis three years ago. The virus was carried by the civet cat, another wild animal eaten in southern China. Endangered species are among those consumed, though giant panda was, as far as is known, only hunted for its meat during the Great Famine of 1959-61.

A restaurant in northern China went too far last year, however, when it put tiger on the menu. A police investigation showed that the dish was donkey meat flavoured with tiger urine from a nearby zoo.