Two roommates (Mary and Adriana) and I flew to Chengdu
during our week off of work for National Holiday and the Mid-Autumn Festival
Holidays. I wanted to go primarily
for the food and they wanted to go to hold some pandas. Turns out the food
wasn’t all that spicy, though it was still good, but fortunately there was a
ton of other stuff to do and the trip wasn’t a failure.
The first day, while they were holding pandas, I went on a
walking tour of Chengdu. It was
led by a pretty Chinese lady named Laura, and it was just me and 4 other people
on the tour. We went all around
the city, touring monasteries, nunneries, Chinese street markets, the snack
street, an 800 year old tea house, and more.
The highlight of the tour and also possibly the lowlight,
was the street market. It was in
an old part of town that was only accessible to foot and bike traffic. The stalls were filled with meats,
produce, drinks, cigarettes, spices…pretty much anything. There were some ear cleaners and even a
dentist office set up (scariest dentist ever, unfortunately wouldn’t let us
take pictures). We stopped at one of the vendors selling various spices and
peppers, and Laura asked if we could try a few of Sichuan Province’s famous
peppers. First we tried some dried
red pepper and it wasn’t particularly spicy to me, however a few of my fellow
tour partners felt differently.
Next she asked who wanted to try the famous “Sichuan Black Pepper.” I was the only volunteer in the group
and I soon came to find out why.
She handed me a small handful of peppers that looked like innocuous
little seeds of some kind. I
popped them in my mouth and started to chew. They tasted really good and didn’t have any kind of kick
initially. Laura asked how I was
feeling and I said “great, no problem!”
About 5 seconds later my throat, lips, tongue and pretty much my entire
head felt like they had swollen up about 3 times their normal size. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t swallow,
I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t spit.
My eyes started tearing up and I felt like I was going asphyxiate. I was scared that I was having some
sort of allergic reaction and that I was going to die in some back alley market
in Chengdu, China. Fortunately
after about 30 seconds to a minute of that horrible feeling I was able to spit,
swallow, kind of talk, and most importantly breathe. Lots of Chinese people had gathered around and were having a
huge laugh watching me try to eat these peppers and then try to survive the
aftermath. Laura at some point
during my suffering bought me a bottle of water which helped a ton to get the
pepper remnants out of my mouth and to get me on the road to recovery, so I
appreciated that. She was a great
guide and it was a lot of fun walking around the city with a local.
Laura also took us to snack street as mentioned earlier,
which was just lined with food. I
purchased a deep fried scorpion on a stick. It was fried up in front of me, the stinger was removed, and
it was served still sizzling.
Eating it was odd, the pinchers, arms, legs and head all tasted like
nothing except for the seasoning that had been added. They were pretty much
just crunchy things with seasoning.
It could have been anything really. The body of the scorpion however was pretty delicious. It is hard to describe what it tasted
like. It was a sort of meaty, sort
of metallic tasting thing, again covered in seasoning. It wasn’t something I’ll
probably ever have any desire to eat again, but it did taste a lot better than
I had ever anticipated.
The city of Chengdu was much more open than Shanghai, with
broad streets and wide sidewalks which made it much more pedestrian
friendly. However it was also a
town with a lot less happening.
Shanghai is always so alive and Chengdu felt a bit slow in
comparison. It may have also had
something to do with the holidays, with many shops and restaurants being closed
or closing earlier than usual. More
about the trip coming soon, including monkey holding extravaganza.
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