Little Eats 小吃

The Chinese word 小吃 (xiao3 chi1), literally "little eats," is usually loosely translated to mean "snacks," but it really refers to so much more. 小吃 can be appetizers or snacks that you have at home, but the word really brings to mind the small - and usually very yummy - bites of street food one can find at stalls and stands everywhere in China. There are some standards (the supposedly Arab, Turkish, or XinJiang style grilled meat kabob with hot pepper, for instance), but every place in China has its own local specialties as well. I wouldn't exactly say 小吃 are healthy for you, as they nearly always involve a substantial soaking in oil (and that's not extra virgin olive oil) but they are cooked right on the spot with local ingredients.

Monday night, Alan and I visited the 小吃 night market street near the busy WangFuJing area. Due to my lack of vocabulary about all things marine, Alan ended up eating shark fin soup (鱼翅汤). It was a small bowl, and now he can impress Chinese people with the fact that he has eaten one of their most prized traditional banquet dishes. So, as the Chinese would say, 黑暗中总有一线光明, "in the darkness there is always a ray of light," i.e. every cloud has a silver lining. And with any luck at all - this is China, after all - they were lying about the shark's fin really being in there, so eating the soup was not actually contributing to the decimation of the shark population.

I was fully capable of identifying the rest of the treats, which ranged from the delicious to, well... check out the images below!


The first plate, in case you don't recognize it, is caterpillars. After that, you've got your standard cockroach and scorpion option, then some sort of sea creature. Needless to say, we didn't eat these particular snacks!

Once again, thanks to Alan for the photos.