The Limit to my Courage....The Beijing Night Market

So I am a pretty adventurous person. Always have been, even when I was a kid. I was, and am, basically scared of nothing.

I have done all sorts of crazy, exhilarating things all over the world: I went skydiving over Hawaii. I did the hang gliding over the urban forest in Rio De Janeiro. I tackled 4+ rated rapids in the coal mining rivers of West Viriginia. I climbed the Syndey Harbour Bridge. Most recently, I did the 10K treacherous hike of the Great Wall of China portion all by myself.

Basically then, I have very little fear...except for one category. I don't eat gross things. Just can't do it. It is the single factor that will never allow me to be on any kind of adventure reality show. It's not even that I can't stomach yucky food; I can't even get to the point where I would put it in my mouth.

I will admit that I am braver when it comes to meats. If something is cooked all the way through, and doesn't resemble the original animal on the plate, I'm usually cool with that. For example, I ate boiled duck brain at a restaurant here in Beijing a couple weeks ago.

Well, out of morbid curiosity more than anything, I braved the Beijing Night Market last week. It is this street fair food stand type thing that they have every night - known for cooking right in front of you, and some very unusual food.

And it really is something to see.

I decided that talking about the Night Market would not do it justice, so here are the pics of my recent adventure.....


First, an overview of the food stands and their offerings.

Anyone up for silkworm on a stick???

How about a scrumptious fried centipede on a stick. "On a stick" was a big theme at the market. Probably because it was easy for the workers to fry up the goodies in these huge vats of boiling oil they set up right there on the street.

Tasty seahorse maybe, to take the edge off your hunger before dinner.

The giant grasshoppers. On a stick of course.

A close up of the popular Chinese snack.

And the gratuitous posed "pretending to eat the fried grasshopper" shot.
My personal favorite find at the market..... I am posing with a big kettle of stew. What kind of stew do you ask?
I'll answer that question with the following picture of the menu at this particular food stall. Yeah. Needless to say, I did not partake of that.

The funny thing is that, as soon as we were finished walking through the infamous market, we went out for a lovely dinner. I had chicken.

P.S. I do have to add a "shoutout" here to my coworker Beth. She said, before we were on our way to the market, that she was going to eat a scorpion. And she did!

WoooHooo Beth! You are braver than I. And I will never get out of my head the look on your face, when you had just stuffed the whole fried scorpion in your mouth at once, and were chewing it up. Priceless!