Extreme Chinese Street Food – Live Scorpians, Insects, Tiger Claws

Chinese Street Food – Live Scorpians, Insects, Tiger Claws

In some Chinese night markets, wide selections of skewered fried insects can be found displayed among more “normal” food choices. These include spiders, large tarantulas, scorpions, cicadas, beetles, silkworms, giant centipedes, and bamboo worms. Dried lizards (like geckos), starfish, and seahorses (signs listed them as ahippocampus) are sometimes offered as well.

In Xi’an, a Tibetan vendor was seen selling exotic animal parts on the street. Tiger claws, bear paws, deer antlers, gazelle horns were among them, and were sold for medicinal purposes.

Extreme Chinese Street Food – JACUZZI CHICKEN and Market Tour in Kunming! | Yunnan, China

Kunming, Yunnan, China – Kunming is the capital and largest city in Yunnan province China. So I was excited to explore the local market in Kunming and eat as much street food as possible!

Here are all the Chinese street food dishes we ate throughout the market:

Rice pudding – 5 RMB ($0.76) – This was slightly fermented, and sweet, like a rice alcohol pudding. It was pretty good, but quite sweet, so I couldn’t eat that much of it.

Dumpling – 1 RMB ($0.15) – I saw these dumplings sizzling and hissing and there was no way I could walk by without trying one. Stuffed inside were leek and egg. They were a little on the oily side, but delicious.

Whole duck – 20 RMB ($3.03) – Yunnan is famous for roast duck, and there’s a version that’s comparable even to Beijing style. Style I was excited to find a stall that at the market that specialize in Yunnanese roast duck. It was delicious and the owners were very friendly as well.

Pickled pears – 5 RMB ($0.76) – This was an interesting snack, and supposed to be very healthy and good for digestion.

Drink – 2 RMB ($0.30) – This drink was incredible sweet, but refreshing.

Tofu Noodles – 5.5 RMB ($0.83) – Another extremely popular Chinese street food snack at the market was tofu noodles – I’ve had tofu and noodles, but not really mixed before. It was a little plain and starchy, but from all the sauces, it was taty.
Rice balls – 5 RMB ($0.76) – We also tried sesame rice balls which were delicious.

Jacuzzi braised ½ chicken – 15 RMB ($2.27) – This was one of the highlights of the market for me, mainly because the owner was so friendly and his giant jacuzzi of boiling chickens was amazing to see! The chicken was a little bony, but flavorful.

Yellow soybean porridge – 3.5 RMB ($0.53) – As we were leaving the market, we stopped for one last bowl of soybean porridge to eat with youtiau, Chinese donuts. I wasn’t expecting to like it as much as I did, but it was delicious. It was very warming and hearty.

Finally to complete this Chinese street food tour in Kunming, Jerry and I, along with his family ate Chinese Yunnanese bbq. It was tasty and a great way to end this amazing day of street food.