This is not Chinese food!

Chinese food is famous for two reason: its extreme deliciousness and its weirdness. The later characteristic has a perfect example, the Wangfujing snack street in downtown Beijing. Just google it or YouTube it and you can find a lot of of videos and photos of foreigners amazed by what Chinese people are eating. You can find skin-piled sparrow, cicada, silk worm, inside-out snake, giant grasshopper, penis of various kind of animals and star fish. You name it. Just think of something you don’t dare to eat and they would probably have it on sale on Wangfujing snack street.

Judging from videos of this street’s visitors, they are absolutely enjoying themselves. Maybe not enjoying the food but the weirdly exotic atmosphere where people cook and eat anything.
Some were playing truth or dare there:
“OK, John, truth or dare?”
“Dare”
“Alright, go eat that fried giant spider.”
Some were enjoying talking to the shy and funny food vendors.
“What is this?”
“Sheep penis”
“What?”
“Dick…”and the food vendor started to use hand gesture.
“What?”
“It will make you strong.” the food vendor was now posing like a body builder.
“HAHAHAHA”, the foreigner started LOL.
And some just became wordless like that double rainbow guy.
“What is this?”
“Snake inside-out”
“WOW”
“What is this?”
“Baby silk worm”
“Oh my God!”
“What is this?”
“Fried Starfish”
“Fried Starfish all the way!”

After having fun there some visitors came home and started v/bloging or sharing there experience on Facebook. The conclusion? Chinese eat everything!

But do you find this place strange? As a Chinese who grew up in China, I do. There are two things I find really strange. First, the food vendors can speak English! Although they can’t speak perfect English but they can tell you what kind of worm you are eating and that eating animal penis“make you strong.” Can you imagine someone working in McDonald’s speaking Chinese? Then why can they speak English? Second, I didn’t find many Chinese on these street enjoying their fried spider. Looking around you can see so many foreigners. If this place is indeed a good place for snack why are the Chinese people missing?

Because this place is only meant for tourists and especially foreigners. The food there were made to be weird so it will attract more attention. And it worked. Some came here don’t know what this place is about, many people came in order to be surprised by Chinese food. Fried worm on a stick? I won’t even call that food. Here is a review on Dazhong review, a famous Chinese review site.

It states: “This place is meant to be a rip-off for people who come to Beijing for the first time! None of the stores are run by local people and all of them are very dirty. I have diarrhea after every time I go there. So new comers of Beijing, do not come here. Wangfujing is also just a shopping center for none-locals and foreigners.”

You can certainly find more review of Wangfujing snack street but the above one said enough. You may ask how can one find real Chinese food. The best way is of course let your local friend guide you. Besides that I have three more pieces of advice to help you to have a pleasant dining experience in China.

1. If the vendor can speak English, leave.
2. If the place is full of Laowai (foreigner) like you, leave.
3. Don’t convert the currency. Treat one Yuan like how you treat one dollar/euro back home. Real good food won’t cause that much.