17. A Mixed Bag
The article which included the horse urine nonense above also went on as follows. I've put their claims in italics; my comments follow unitalicised.
1. Sparrows are a common food both in the street and as a snack at home.
No they aren't. Never seen any such thing.
2. Banquet specialities include cow's lung soaked in chili sauce, goose stomachs, fish lips with celery, goat's feet tendons in wheat noodles, shark's stomach soup, chicken-feet soup, monkey's head, ox forehead, turtle casserole, pigeon brain, deer ligament and snake venom, also lily bulb.
Some of these are common world-wide. Chicken-feet soup, for example. Some (marked in red) are extremely rare or mythical. It is well-known that sharks are de-finned then cruelly thrown back into the sea to die. They take their stomachs with them. Fish maw (float bladders) , usually from freshwater fish, are used in soups.
Snakes are eaten; their venom rarely if ever.
Grass Carp with its Float Bladder
What is so surprising about lily bulb?
3. Some people in China eat dirt as "famine food."
What? Drivel!
4. Huangshan Stone Frog is a speciality of the Anhui province.
Yes. So? Frogs of many varieties are eaten world-wide.
5. Interestingly, the Chinese considered many foods eaten by non-Chinese to be strange. They consider eating a plain cooked steak as primitive and unappetizing. Many regard eating cheese or butter as disgusting and find the French custom of eating snails to be strange.
Yes. But you might want to consider that if a food is popular in a country with a population of 1.5 billion, but 'strange' in a country with only 330 million, then maybe it is you who are strange!
And you should have stopped at cheese and butter (but see my comments on dairy above). Snails are extremely popular in China. Why would they think France was strange?
Chillied snails in my local market
These Jade snails below are imported from Africa at great expense and are considered a delicacy in China.
"Don't believe anything you read on the internet" - Plato.