At a busy little street market in Beijing, apparently mostly intended for tourists based on the abundance of souvenirs, we saw several concession stands selling some interesting snack items. Most notable: fried scorpions on a stick. And the scorpions were still moving. Several members of the group came back later in the week and tried the scorpions, myself included. Hard to describe. Not much taste. Crunchy, a little salty. Not nearly as gross as I expected it to be. One person compared it to burnt popcorn, which isn’t exactly right but close. If you’ve ever chewed up a pumpkin seed or a sunflower seed with the shell on it, it was sort of like that but softer. By the way, they remove the venom and the stinger before cooking.
The video shows the scorpions and then gives an overall view of the street market. Note: In a land of outrageous asking prices, prices for cheap trinkets in this market and places like it were truly absurd.
