Street Food: It’s a turtle on a stick!
They're not just for breakfast anymore.
Ahhh, spring is arriving in Guangzhou. That means the distinctive beige soft-shelled turtles are beginning to emerge from hibernation. So it’s time to run down to the banks of the Pearl River and pull their groggy little heads out of the mud. Next, tie a string around the shell, attach it to a stick and stand near a busy intersection, dangling the critter as you hawk it to passing motorists.
A couple weeks ago, as the weather started to get consistently warm, I began seeing the turtle sellers on the roads again. When I first wrote about them last fall, I noted that I had never seen anyone stop to buy one of the reptiles. I wondered why they were being sold in my neighborhood, mostly populated by expats, Hong Kongers and nouveau riche Chinese. Surely, the foreigners weren’t buying them. Were the well-heeled locals eating them?
And then the turtle dealer said: Would you like some fries with this live reptile, ma'am? Check out the pretty gal in the front seat. I love the look of mouth-watering anticipation. You can almost hear her saying: Mmmmmmmm. Turtle stew for dinner tonight!
Well, I got my answer on Sunday. I was finishing a 105-kilometer ride and was just a block away from my apartment complex when I saw a guy crossing the street with a bamboo pole with a turtle hanging from a string from the end of it. I stopped, fished out my camera from my back jersey pocket and got into position to shoot. The turtle guys rarely let me take their pictures, and they usually try to hide the turtle from the camera, so I was trying to be as discreet as possible.
Just as I was ready to shoot, a BMW pulled up at a red light, and a lady in the backseat called the guy over and started bargaining with him. The negotiations, which I couldn’t hear, lasted less than a minute and were over by the time the light turned green. The BMW drove through the intersection, pulled over and the turtle dealer started stuffing the reptile into a green bag.
One of my favorite details: The BMW was another one of those cars that doesn’t need license plates. Just like my neighbor’s lemon yellow Ferrari. It kills me. These guys can stuff themselves with fresh turtle meat and drive around town without plates, but if the cops catch me in public without my passport, they can haul me down to the station – as they’ve done before. Sorry, I’m ranting and getting off topic.
License plates? We don't need no stinking license plates! So this is how people can afford those German luxury vehicles. They save money by buying their reptile meat on the road.
I tried to imagine this BMW family pulling into their villa or upscale apartment complex, where they butcher a live turtle in their kitchen, draining its blood in the sink. I suppose they just handed it over to their ah-yi and said: “You know what to do.” If people have a taste for turtle, that’s fine with me. But I’m not sure it’s a good idea to buy it on the side of the road. But then again, I’m not sure it would be any safer to buy it in a “regulated” food market. Just look at the tainted milk powder debacle. More worrisome: I’m not sure I would eat anything that lives in a Chinese river. If that turtle really came from the Pearl River, the heavy metals and other pollutants in its body must be off the charts. That the creatures can survive in the river is amazing. These turtles shouldn’t be in the soup pot. They should be studied in a laboratory.
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No different to eating any other animal really. Whether you kill it yourself, get your ayi to kill it, or it’s killed in a slaughterhouse, it’s just as dead.
I thought I’d mention that most of the cars you see without plates, it’s because they’re brand new and they have a grace period of a couple of weeks before they need to get them.
Only very few people have the guanxi/money necessary to drive around permanently without plates. You’re neighbor’s Ferrari might put him in that league, but doubtfully would anyone in just an X5 or Audi have the means.