We’ve had our fair share of rare and unique foods here in China. Everyone knows about the chicken feet – which I still haven’t had a chance to try, but there is SOO much to choose from aside than chicken parts. As you know we had pig tongue and stomach on New Years Eve, and both were really good. After returning home to Haiyang and getting our driver, he and his family invited my husband and me to eat lunch at their home. The house was larger than the one we had seen in Shanghai, but much less comfortable and lacking most amenities. As usual, the master bedroom is also the living room and we started lunch by sitting on the master bed, basically a hot water heated surface with a thin pad overtop, to drink tea. Once lunch was mostly prepared, we moved to the dining room and took our seats for the food to come out. At lunch was our driver, his wife, his mom and dad, and two of his dad’s old classmates (at least that’s who I think they were, haha!)
The meal consisted of a normal assortment of fish, pork, warm and cold vegetables, dumplings, and… silk worm pupae… I had the intent to try these eventually but wasn’t really prepared for it at that moment. His family seemed perplexed that we were hesitant to dive into the giant bowl of creepy looking brown insects. I explained to our driver in my broken Chinese that Americans do not like to eat insects. I think he understood.
Silkworm Pupae
Unfortunately the conversation at this lunch was irritatingly difficult. I only speak basic conversational Mandarin and my dear husband speaks almost none. He tries to use google translate on his phone to start a conversation – this usually causes more confusion than results.
I watched the mother and wife make dumplings for a little while. I would’ve helped but didn’t want to mess them up! The best part : They were making them on the master bed in the master bedroom. Yup.
Drivers Mother & Wife Making Dumplings on the master bed
All of the food was really good. I’ll admit that the Silkworms were not bad. You don’t actually eat the outside shell, which is tough, but not hard or crunchy. The inside was the part to eat. There wasn’t much taste and it had a consistency between that of scrambled eggs and mashed potatoes. Would I eat them again? Yeah, I probably would if they were served at someones home (out of politeness), but I will never willingly order them at a restaurant.
As with every Chinese meal with friends, they served alcohol. We started with some warmed up brown alcohol. It was ok although I don’t know what it was. There was some wine then another alcohol that tasted like a sweet plumb wine although it had images of deer and chickens on the front of the bottle. I thought for sure there must have been some animal parts in the brew…
We left there feeling very full and comfortable and VERY ready for a nap!
On a side note: don’t think it would be that uncommon for a Chinese liquor to contain animal ingredients. They do, after all, eat every part of everything that had ever breathed, swam, flown, walked, grown, lived, or is still living. We did not have this liquor at our driver’s house but he has a very strong opinion about it…
I’ve seen it featured on two different TV programs. First, it was a segment on National Geographic Channel’s The Witch Doctor Will See You Now. The next time I heard about it was when my husband was watching an episode of “The League” (if you haven’t ever watched this show, it’s funny – you need to see it.) So what am I talking about?? THREE PENIS WINE of course!!!! I understand… you don’t believe me…
Ohhh, but it IS true!
ChangYu Three Penis Wine
Three Penis Wine Ingredients
This particular brand of Three Penis Wine contains a brew of seal penis, deer penis, and Cantonese dog penis. The intent of this “wine” (really it’s more like rice wine/liquor) is to provide male virility to the drinker. I found this small bottle at our local JiaJiaYue (the grocery store literally means “family family happy”). No better way to make a family happy than to make your wife happy by consuming some good ol’ Three Penis Wine! I picked it up and showed my driver. Without skipping a beat he said (in slowly pronounced English) V e r y G o o d ! I giggled and bought a few bottles. Now before I go on, my dear husband has not yet tried this stuff. I had to! In all honesty, the taste is much better than baijiu (white liquor / moutai). It has a bit of molasses/sweet taste to it. Put it this way – if you had no idea what was added during the original brewing process you would never know you were drinking fermented animal privates.
Life in the Middle Kingdom is never boring!
Read Full Post »
LaoWai LiSha 