Example: [Collected via e-mail, 2006]
Origins: We don't know the specific origins of the pictures displayed above, but they probably are real images of rats being prepared for human consumption somewhere in Asia. However, it's rather unlikely, as the text accompanying the photos implies, that the rats pictured are vermin rounded up off the street and foisted uponunsuspecting diners as chicken.
The level of preparation and presentation pictured here is indicative of a restaurant (or perhaps a private home) in a part of China where clean, fresh, farm-captured rats are lavishly prepared and served to diners eager to consume rat-meat dishes. Indeed, in some parts of China rat meat sells for considerably more than chicken, pork, or beef.
In 2000, New Yorker reporter Peter Hessler journeyed to Luogang, a small village in China's Guangdong Province specifically because he'd heard Luogang was home to "a famous restaurant that specialized in the preparation of rats." Upon his arrival, he discovered there were two such restaurants (the Highest Ranking Wild Flavor Restaurant and the New Eight Sceneries Wild Flavor Food City) in the village, with a third under construction. Here are a few excerpts from his article, describing what he found out about the preparation and consumption of rats at those restaurants:
Besides rat, a customer at the Highest Ranking Wild Flavor Restaurant can order turtledove, fox, cat, python, and an assortment of strange-looking local animals whose names do not translate into English. All of them are kept live in pens at the back of the restaurant and are killed only when a customer orders one of them.
Many people come from faraway places. They come from Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Macao. One customer came all the way from America with her son. They were visiting relatives in Luogang, and the family brought them here to eat. She said you couldn't find this kind of food in America.
At the Highest Ranking Wild Flavor Restaurant, I began with a dish called Simmered Mountain Rat with Black Beans. There were plenty of other options on the menu— among them, Mountain Rat Soup, Steamed Mountain Rat, Simmered Mountain Rat, Roasted Mountain Rat, Mountain Rat Curry, and Spicy and Salty Mountain Rat — but the waitress had enthusiastically recommended the Simmered Mountain Rat with Black Beans, which arrived in a clay pot.
I ate the beans first. They tasted fine. I poked at the rat meat. It was clearly well done, and it was attractively garnished with onions, leeks, and ginger. Nestled in a light sauce were skinny rat thighs, short strips of rat flank, and delicate, toylike rat ribs.
"We're not eating city rats," [the restaurant's owner told me]. "The mountain rats are clean, because they aren't eating anything dirty. Mostly, they eat fruit— oranges, plums, jackfruit. People from the government hygiene department have been here to examine the rats. They took them to the laboratory and checked them out thoroughly to see if they had any diseases, and they found nothing. Not even the slightest problem."
I watched dozens of peasants come down from the hills, looking to get a piece of the rat business. They came on mopeds, on bicycles, and on foot. All of them carried burlap sacks of squirming rats that had been trapped on their farms. In Luogang, rats are more expensive than pork or chicken. A pound of rat costs nearly twice as much as a pound of beef.
Last updated: 15 October 2006
Many people come from faraway places. They come from Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Macao. One customer came all the way from America with her son. They were visiting relatives in Luogang, and the family brought them here to eat. She said you couldn't find this kind of food in America.
At the Highest Ranking Wild Flavor Restaurant, I began with a dish called Simmered Mountain Rat with Black Beans. There were plenty of other options on the menu
I ate the beans first. They tasted fine. I poked at the rat meat. It was clearly well done, and it was attractively garnished with onions, leeks, and ginger. Nestled in a light sauce were skinny rat thighs, short strips of rat flank, and delicate, toylike rat ribs.
"We're not eating city rats," [the restaurant's owner told me]. "The mountain rats are clean, because they aren't eating anything dirty. Mostly, they eat fruit
I watched dozens of peasants come down from the hills, looking to get a piece of the rat business. They came on mopeds, on bicycles, and on foot. All of them carried burlap sacks of squirming rats that had been trapped on their farms. In Luogang, rats are more expensive than pork or chicken. A pound of rat costs nearly twice as much as a pound of beef.
