Description
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At this Jinan
restaurant in China, there were two items that were easily identifiable
as "weird." Scorpions and cicadas. Live ones. The scorpions were really
small ones, dull brown, almost colorless critters. I'd already had big
black ones, and I wasn't really doing the ordering so I politely ignored
them. My host did catch me looking at the cicadas crawling around in a
bucket, however, and challenged me to try it.
So minutes later, we
had a huge plate of fried bugs. I'd say about a hundred of these little
bite-size insects were deep-fried crispy. Everyone liked them. Even my
friend Boya from Texas, usually not as adventurous a diner, enjoyed
them.
At one point during our stay in Jinan, I suggested trying some street
food. Mr. Boya wasn't into that. So we popped into the safe,
global-standard KFC for some chicken nuggets -- and had to spit the
first one out as it was raw in the center. Hahah, the irony. Maybe the
safer stuff is on the dirty streets.
