Beijing Boyce

They’re weird, they’re wacky, and they’re just the thing to make the folks back home go, “Ewww, gross.”

They’re scorpions on a stick!

You just know foreign journalists will use these little suckers during the Olympics for a quick laugh in a pinch (scorpions, pinch, get it!?). I guess that’s fair. After all, people in Beijing eat scorpions every single day, for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, as mid-afternoon and midnight snacks, on picnics and at weddings, and to amuse visitors.

Anyway, in the spirit of James Fallows of The Atlantic Monthly, who chronicles overuse of the boiled-frog analogy, I’m taking on the Olympian media monitoring task of scorpion-on-a-stick references because, well, because I care.

Scorpions were not an easy choice. There are any number of topics the media will soon trample to death like baby kittens beneath a stampeding herd of terrified buffalo – wild taxi drivers, squat toilets, Chinese youth and their Western ways, etc.

And I realize its natural for tourists to be intrigued by scorpions on a stick. I simply wanted to give long-term expatriates, many of whom feel unease in these turbulent times, something familiar about which to roll their eyes during the coming months.

Let’s get snapping!

Category: An ass talking about a donkey?

Candidate: Bob Holtzman, ESPN

Excerpt:

It helps to be courageous at some of the local restaurants, as well. Since our vocabulary was limited, our camera crew generally did the ordering for our entire group. Grouse eggs. Fennel seed dumplings. Donkey. Donkey?! I tried it. I’ll leave it at that. If donkey doesn’t do it for you, there’s always the option of wandering out to one of the street vendors for some fried scorpions on a stick. Don’t worry; if you’re not a fan of scorpions, they also offer fried seahorses.

Comment: Holtzman gets the equivalent of an NBA triple-double by including donkeys, scorpions and seahorses in one paragraph. The only way to top this would have been a reference to boiled silkworms and/or the penis restaurant.

Category: But squatters make it easier to pass scorpions

Candidate: John Powers, Boston Globe

Excerpt:

While some food items can be unsettlingly exotic for the American palate (the Wangfujing Night Market offers silkworms and scorpions on a stick), most of the domestic cuisine, like kung pao chicken, will look reasonably familiar. But if you want Brazilian, French, Spanish, Russian, or thin-crust pizza, there are places that serve it and locals who eat it.

Analysis: This article is generally informative and well-written, but it loses points for using the word “capitalist” in its subtitle, given that the Globe discovered China had free-market tendencies as far back as, uh, November 2007. I also wonder about Powers equating “modern” and “squat toilet.” Pressing your ass against the same seat that a thousand other people have used is more sanitary / modern than having your bottom airborne? Really?

That’s a thought to consider while munching on some scorpions – or seahorses – on a stick.

(Photo: MH)