Top 8 Most Disgusting Foods You Must Try When Visiting China
Top 8 Most Disgusting Foods You Must Try When Visiting China
A stag weekend in China is hardly a typical holiday; for a start, it’s a stag do, so you can expect plenty of partying. A Chinese stag weekend means experiencing a whole new culture. There are plenty of awe-inspiring sights to visit and exotic foods to digest. Don’t worry, you won’t have to try any of the foods mentioned below to get by in China, but brave stag party members will be unable to resist trying at least a few of these.
From the Water
Stewed Hasma with coconut palm seeds
Consider hasma. This is a dessert… of sorts. Hasma essentially consists of the insides of frogs – female frogs to be exact – and specifically their fallopian tubes. As if munching on reproductive organs of amphibians were not enough, the fallopian tubes are made bigger by being rehydrated with water, having been sold in a shrunken form. Surprisingly, it’s not so bad taste-wise. The Chinese add sugar so the dessert is sweet and you’ll find that many people enjoy hasma after a good hearty meal.
Sea cucumber is pretty similar in appearance and texture to the kind grown in gardens across the world. It’s essentially a cucumber with tentacles and feet. These are slippery, mild-tasting foods that, rumour has it, act as an aphrodisiac and can be found at Chinese restaurants as well as medicine shops.
When you’re on a holiday in China, for example one of the great stag weekends from Eclipse Leisure, try a bit of drunken shrimp, as long as you don’t mind getting a bit vicious with your food and you also don’t object too much to the possibility of getting a parasitic infection from the shellfish you’re eating raw. The idea here is that when you order drunken shrimp, you get shrimp accompanied by booze. The alcohol the shrimp comes with actually works to knock out the shrimp and so by the time you come to decapitate them with a bite to their necks, they’re drowsy and aren’t moving too much any more.
Dog meat remains a controversial subject and you’ll probably draw comments from your comrades on the stag weekend if you do eat it. Although dog meat is eaten in mainland China, alongside multiple other regions of the world, such as the Philippines, Mexico and Korea, much of the controversy surrounding it relates to supposed cruel practices when it comes to killing the dog ready for boiling or frying. If you can look past this, you may be able to try dog meat while in China.
Getting Weirder
Bee Larvae
Bee larvae is a dish that became popular in rural parts of China and Japan thanks to an absence of meat in the past. Desperate countryside dwellers turned to bee larvae as a source of protein and coupled it with soy sauce to produce a crumbly dish that has some sweetness to it. While it is less seen in the 21st century, bee larvae sometimes makes a culinary reappearance at festivals and events, where it is enjoyed for its nostalgia value rather than its merit as a food.
Probably one of the more ugly dishes, both in appearance and concept, is balut, which is a fertilised duck egg. It is boiled and then consumed when the duck embryo inside is almost ready to be born and so the very look of the thing as a food item is probably going to offend most stag revellers. If you can get past that, you can enjoy your balut with a sip of beer and consider that the dish is apparently an aphrodisiac. It’s also got a fair bit of protein in it. You eat balut with onion sauce and salt on.
Street Foods
Fried starfish in Bejing.
In places such as Beijing you may have an opportunity to try a bit of starfish, which is fried and then popped on a stick for your enjoyment. Star fish have a generally mild flavour and depending on who you ask, taste bitter or crunchy. They tend to be served as a street stall snack.
Another street snack you’ll likely encounter while on a stag weekend in China are bugs on sticks. These are the quintessentially weird and disgusting foods, but it’s not just the Chinese who eat them. If you are in China and fancy an insect or two, head to somewhere like the Donghuamen street market.
Disgusting dishes are common in China, which seems to specialise in the bizarre. Remember to observe any safety warnings before indulging, and don’t feel pressured to snack just because your friends are.
About the author: Roxanne writes regularly on great stag weekends from Eclipse Leisure for a range of travel and event websites and blogs. She has been to China four times during her life. She is not fond of balut at all.
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Thanks, Roxanne, for a great travel guest post for the weirdest of foodies. Come back again sometime!
For everyone else, would you eat any of these foods or have you? Tell me in the comments!
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When I was there in the countryside, a restaurant served silk worm larvae. I just could not try it.
Maria, I don’t blame you one little bit.
I purchase canned larva from an Asian store here in Tennessee, stir fried with peppers, onions, and a bit of soy sauce, then served on brown rice they are delicious and high protein. I am not Asian I am a Caucasian who lived in Asia for eight years.
Charlie, I might have to be openminded and try some. I love stir-fry, so why not larvae rather than beef or chicken? Hmmm. Thanks for your input!
I have always considered myself adventurous in trying new foods. I have heard of a few these foods and I am relatively certain China is not a spot for me to be overly adventurous. I have a feeling I would be looking for a McDonalds (and I really don’t like them) sigh
Aaron
Aaron,
I wouldn’t be that adventurous with these things either. The weirdest I’ve eaten was fried rattlesnake and alligator.
This post is so negative it makes me sad. “Disgusting” is such a harsh, unfair term for food that is simply unfamiliar. Cultural relativism is a fancy term for being judgmental of how others live — and eat.
Lauren, I really don’t think (or hope) she intended to be offensive. She actually encouraged trying the food. It’s not my taste, but everyone has different tastes, and I respect that. Perhaps bizarre would have cast less of a negative light.on her post I’m sure some of the things we eat is bizarre to them, too. Cultural relativism does indeed exist, whether we want to acknowledge that or not.
um, thanks?
Seriously, though, I’m due for a trip back to China sometime this year, and have tried some “interesting” things while there, but never ventured this far. I might have to get brave on, well, maybe one of these, just to see if I can get through them 
Tall Pajama man, come back and tell me how you fare
That would be a big no for me. I have eaten some things that others have found to be gross like chicken gizzards and hearts but I don’t think I’ll be snacking on any of this ‘food’ anytime soon.
Mary, I don’t think I could do it either, really.
I don’t care how delectable they are, no bugs and no starfish for me. I would much rather see a starfish alive. I know it’s a cultural thing, but unless I’m starving, the exotic stuff can stay alive for all I care. LOL
Mary, I’m in agreement with you. I prefer those types of things alive. Now if it is beef or pork, that’s a different story and part of my culture.
If one is sufficiently hungry, anything will be a delicacy!
Dwayne, you raise a very good point there.
8 things I am definitely putting on my list of foods to NEVER eat. I firmly believe many (though not all) foods like this evolve because of food shortages. Therefore, in the 21st century, in places that don’t have a food shortage (because granted some places still do) they are not a delicacy, just something you now have the pleasure of not NEEDING to eat!
I’m more fascinated by the concept of a stag weekend in another country. The only place we can really go ‘for a weekend’ that’s NOT Australia is basically NZ. It takes too long to fly anywhere else, nevermind the cost.
Ciara, I would love to check out NZ myself and take a stag weekend pretty much anywhere (if I am thinking of the correct definition of stag).
Wow – I love to try new foods, but I really don’t think I will be trying any of these – ever! :-p
Shelby, nor I either.
I’m not that adventurous. My most exotic food is raw fish, ie sashimi. But everyone’s comfort level is different. Tks for sharing!
Lisa, I love sashimi!! Mmmmm!
Wow! Those are some creepy food. I’ve never really tried any of those myself because I’m extremely afraid of exotic foods.
And I’m also not a fan of balut, even if I do live in the Philippines, and a lot of people here think it’s really good.
Unisse, I’m not a fan of anything on that list, but perhaps if I tried them, I’d change my mind, but probably not.
I’ve had hasma. It’s not bad. I’ve had sea cucumber – it’s growing on me. I’ve eaten sago worms – no big deal.
I think uptight Americans have to change their ideas about what constitutes food.
Nate, it’s funny you say “uptight Americans” when it was not even an American who wrote this post. I am all for trying different things, but some things just aren’t for me. My husband is Asian and I enjoy a variety of foods he shares from his culture with me, and I handle the culinary department of Spanish style and Southern American fare. If you like worms and sea cucumbers, that’s lovely, but not everyone is going to like it, and that doesn’t make them uptight. It means they have preferences, which is an entitlement. Live and let live, eat and let eat, right? Thanks for your comment!
Asian food is every bit as diverse as it is delicious. I used to think that I knew Asian foods growing up. You see, we used to go out to Chinese and practically every weekend. They were a couple Chinese restaurants in the neighborhood, and they were perfect for us kids. They were greasy, flavorful, and we got a cookie at the end of every meal. What more could a child ask for?”