Travelin Dreams

Rates of consumption of "exotic" food are down due to disease concerns, have frequest travellers to China noticed this?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,192134,00.html

anacapamalibu

When I was in Beijing last winter I asked if there were any snake hot pot restaurants or snake wine. The local people I know there said the government doesn't allow wild animals for food. But I think there's not too many snakes
up north anyway, mainly in south China. They did have dog hot pot restaurants in Beijing. That's a whole nother story.

mosburger

One thing that seems to be changin g are drinking habits. People have apparently been scared by many alcohol related deaths since the open doors policy began and switching to tea houses for business meetings. At least around Shanghai, that is.

Peter N-H

Foreigners are not typically offered these exotica and they don't show up at all on most restaurant menus. So even regular visitors would be unlikely to notice, although it's more in the south that "anything with legs except a table, anything with wings except an aeroplane" are on the menu.

Snake isn't particularly exotic in this context, and not likely to be, or to be thought of, as a source of disease. There are plenty of restaurants offering snake in Guangzhou, and I've seen it at Dai minority restaurants in Beijing, and eaten snake jiaozi elsewhere in the city.

The turning away from alcohol, mentioned above, if it is indeed happening, may well also be to do with the amount of fake hooch that's about--lakes of it. If you want a cocktail with real ingredients these days you'd better stick to the upmarket Western hotels.

Tod E Tosser

I was in BJ in January and probably half of the vendors at the night market near the Forbidden City were offering snake on a stick, not to mention silk worms and insects of all varieties.