Got a craving for roasted scorpion?

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inner our first night in Beijing was....of all things, pizza. Not surprisingly, the *western* dinner turned out to be one of our more expensive meals and for me, not very satisfying but it kept everyone else happy!


Luckily, that was not the end of our meal :-)

After pizza, Jenny took us to the Wangfujing Night Market and she left us there to wander on our own. It was not more than a minute walk into the market before I spotted the scorpions. They were on skewers and at first they looked dead until the vendor tapped the container and the legs all started to move....these were definitely alive!












I really wanted to try them and managed to convince Robbie to give it a shot. I paid 40 RMB for two skewers which was complete highway robbery but I didn’t care because I really, really wanted to try these things. I handed over the money and vendor handed back two skewers of roasted scorpions. Each skewer had only 4 scorpions on it so this was a sampling....if YOU want to call it that!

I took a quick bite and it was pretty tasty bite. Robbie asked if he could eat the stinger or not....like I would know :-) I think he waited a few seconds to see if I would keel over and when I didn’t he took his first nibble. In no time, we had completely devoured our four scorpions each. Not bad tasting with no objectionable after taste. The texture was crunchy tail and legs and a soft body.

Thanks to Jackie, we have Robbie and I munching in scorpions captured on video.

 

Except for one small alleyway that is lined with restaurants and food vendors, the rest of the market was mainly occupied by souvenir vendors. By now, it was getting late and I was getting tired. I bought one souvenir and soon bumped into Dean and Bernd who were ready to go back to the hotel. I decided to follow them and hit the sack. I wanted to make sure I was fully rested as the main item on our agenda for the next day was to climb the Great Wall!

Good night, Beijing!