Snake Soup/Wine/Blood – Huaxi Market: Traditional Medicine
- Tara Chen
- Aug 12, 2015
- 4 min read
We have a new roommate that came back from vacation- his name is Edison. He is studying at Taipei Medical University and I think he is getting tired of us because we are always yelling around the dorm in English and bugging him to come play haha! As our internship is coming close to an end, we decided we should all go out to eat together. We decided to go get Korean BBQ !!!
I was SO SO SO excited! I haven’t had the opportunity to eat Korean BBQ yet except once at my old roommate’s house in Canada. I was sleeping over for Dragon Boat practice and her family had a Korean BBQ party for her. It was one of the best memories about food that I remember. I also always hear about the WDBC team getting Korean BBQ and I am never around to go with them. It’s a huge craving.
Taiwan has many of these restaurants and it comes as an all you can eat style. There are two options – either BBQ or Hotpot. We chose BBQ and the food fest began! I can’t explain how much we ate. I saved myself all day for this. The types of meat that we could eat, the cuts of the meat- it was just beautifully done. It was SOOO hot but it was worth it. We had competitions with each other on whose was cooking faster but everyone made sure we all ate enough. My mouth gets savory thinking about it. I am not even lying- the oil made the meat a shiny glare making it look juicer and juicier as it cooked. The moment you put it in your mouth, it melts and its just YUMMMMM. On the plus side- since it was my birthday a couple days before, I got a discount and a free alcoholic beverage. It was pretty sweet!
Earlier at work, one of the Doctor’s that we see every morning on the elevator told us we had to go to Huaxi Market to eat snake. When we finished eating, we didn’t want to go home right away so I said- hey! Let’s go explore. We went to the market and it was different than any other market we’ve ever been to. It was very old school and it was a bit of a black market scene. Since we were with a big group of people, we were fine but Edison told us he would never go here with his friends. We started wondering- where in the world did the Doctor tell us to go? I googled it after and it is a very traditional Chinese ceremonial market that sells goose meat, snake and other questionable items. It used to be the legal red-light district (which it still is as we saw many sex workers working illegally). We went on a weekday so not many stores were open. As full as we were though- we just had to try the snake. I had alligator once in New Orleans and it tasted like chicken so I thought why not. I didn’t believe it at first that they ate snake here but we turned into a corner and the entire row of restaurants had snakes in their restaurant- prepped fresh for dinner. On the walls, you could see snake soup, snake blood and snake wine for sale. They also sell turtles and turtle testicles are a common dish. It is known to be good for your health. Every single last bit of the snake is to be used. The pattern is to drink the soup, take a shot of the blood and eat the meat to strengthen your body. Snake penis and snake gall are still very common to eat as it cools an overheated body as well as revitalizes and nourishes the skin. The owner told us that if a person has a skin irritation that did not heal, they were told to take the soup to cool the heat in their blood to improve their condition. Doctors do not prescribe eating snake though as it is considered with a tonic food. We had to be careful though because we knew we didn’t want to eat it raw and put ourselves at risk for other parasites that may have been infecting the snake.
We went to 3 different restaurants before getting the guts to eat it. We only bought one bowl because we were scared. It took a few seconds but we sucked it up and all tried a little piece of snake. It tasted bitter and herbal. The meat was a bit tough but the most interesting part was the bone. You could actually see it was a snake through its vertebrae. I can’t believe people eat this on a daily basis and turtles too for health benefits. This is one traditional cure I am okay from straying from.
It was an adve
nture and an exploration. I am glad I got to go with the people I went with because its memories I will share with them for a lifetime. Also- I can now say- I ate snake!
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