Today all participants of the language courses visited a part of the old city of Qingdao where you can get all the food tourists seem to think is special for China: scorpions, maggots, grasshoppers and other insects. They also sold strange sea-food like sea-urchins, starfish, seahorses and really big worms. They kept every “food” alive in some boxes and then mostly fried it on a stick. The only thing that really looked like you could eat it were the very little scorpions, but in the end, only two brave girls of our group tried them. The rest of the group, even our teachers, was too shocked and disgusted by all the crawling worms and strange insects we weren’t able to identify. When we asked our Chinese teachers if they have ever eaten such insects or strange sea-food they just shook their heads and underlined that they would never try it. So these little street salings only seem to sell their food to foreigners who want to take photos of their braveness eaten “real Chinese food”, just like us 🙂
But, for everyone who still wants to try: go for it! It is always fun, especially for those watching your face while eating 🙂

Franzi