Bizarre Foods Beijing style has all other countries beat. Forget plain crickets and maggots, this is where things get serious.

After a long day of typical China activities; eating, eating, and more eating…

we made our way to the Fuxingmen Night Market, infamous for its tasty treats.

Red lanterns lined the street, emitting a luminescent glow while the street vendors called out their nightly specials.

We were lured in slowly by the sounds of traditional Chinese singing by a man dressed in old emperors garb.

Then came the street vendors not so melodious screaming, “Penis and testicles, eat to make you strong!”

So we began our journey, passing oddities we would soon consume, making decisions we would definitely regret.

Starfish

Baby pigeon

Fried baby pigeon

Cows stomach. John was convinced it was just a wet rag.

Monkey Penis

Sheep Penis

And the infamous Stinky Tofu which much to John’s protests and whimpers, I obviously had to have. After 15 years being deprived of such a delicacy, I was overly-delighted and thoroughly welcomed the rotted, fermented, blue-in-color, tofu.

And then your assortment of creepy-crawlers.

Fried Tarantula

Scorpians

Small ones…that are still wriggling their tiny legs and stingers

I hope to never come across one of these live.

And so comes the time to make big life decisions. The one’s that you will most certainly never face again.

The testicles or the penis?

One vendor with an especially booming voice and an especially large buddha belly, bellowed us over to his stall. He looked John and Florian over, taking his time from head to toe, sizing them up as if looking right through to their souls. Just as we were about to start slowly shuffling our way out of the picture, he says in the most serious of tones, “8 times tonight.” Mind you, this was in Chinese. Without taking his eyes off of the men, he spoke directly at me.

“What?”

“8 times tonight. You will not be able to handle. He should have the snake.” He motioned with the slightest flicker of an eye downwards to one single stripped snake.

We almost collapsed in laughter expecting the men to break out their grins as well. But through our tears, we saw that they stood there, confused at what could ever be so humorous.

Before I knew it, we all decided to give it a go. Eating snake couldn’t be nearly as bad as all the other parts.

Guess we’re all in for the long haul, bottoms up.

Telling by the looks on our face, it wasn’t horrible. A more chewy calamari.

But from there, it got worse. From snake to scorpion.

And how did it taste, you wonder?

Bad. Just bad.