“Eat anything that flies except airplanes;
eat anything with legs except the table.”
Anonymous (but I will take credit for it if no one else will)

I will be diplomatic and say that Chinese street food, to my taste, was like taking my taste buds to the circus. Eating street cuisine in China did not come easily to me.

Without ever having set foot in The Middle Kingdom, I signed a contract to teach English in Shenyang, a day’s train ride northeast of Beijing. Shenyang is heavy into industry, and is more known for its sooty air quality than as a haven of epicurean delight. (The air is sometimes so chunky with particulate matter, it might actually qualify as a side dish or at the very least, a condiment.)

For the author, dieting was easy when the only food choice was hot pig’s knuckles, as seen here.

I struggled with the language at first. Compliments of my Chinese immigrant parents, I have a smattering of Cantonese at my disposal, but living in northeastern China required Mandarin — and lots of it, more than my Lonely Planet phrasebook served up, that’s for sure.

I lost 25 pounds over 10 months that first year, a change so dramatic I could have marketed this diet. I was never hungry, yet I was soon punching new holes on the negative side of my belt.

The tongue-in-cheek Chinese adage, “Eat anything that flies except airplanes; eat anything with legs except the table,” is one that describes the culinary attitude of the local people. Logic follows that with a 1.3 billion– plus population, every niblet and giblet, each root, everything Fear Factor-ish, will have been taste tested at some point.

If the morsel has potential, it is often afforded an exotic name, then served up with smothering sauces and an inflated tab. In this regard, I believe I have been included in several focus groups without my ever having known.

I was born and raised in North America. My parents left their first life in China, hustled my brothers and sisters though foreign and domestic channels, and settled on Canada’s west coast. Now, true to Great White North tradition, all foodstuffs deemed inedible or unsightly are disposed of, ground up in the garbage disposal, vaporized; atomic-sized remnants are chased into oblivion by antibacterial sprays so even their essence would no longer exist to offend. So what happened?

Why delve into street fare? Why, indeed, rock the rickshaw? Well, in my early days in China, each day as I rode past countless street vendors, the aroma of barbecuing lamb, fresh pastries and grilled seafood, teased me with their tantalizing bouquets, the siren scents chasing me back to my flat, where I would sit and contemplate my roomy slacks. Those heady days, I hadn’t yet the will to challenge my stomach mettle or my burgeoning language skills.