Tisss the Season
Snake season is back. Winnie Yeung and TC Fung eat up.
Traditionally, snakes are best eaten in the winter after they’ve fattened up all juicy and healthy-like. Or so Chinese medicine would have you believe.
Snakes have been a Cantonese delicacy since the Qing dynasty. According to Chinese medicine because snakes live in damp areas they are good at fighting “dampness” in the body. Symptoms of dampness include feeling heavy but weak in the limbs, loss of appetite, fatigue and dizziness, and eating snake will help kick it out of your body, says Chinese medicine practitioner Dennis Law.
A Cure-all?
Ask any random grandmother and she’ll tell you snakes are a panacea, a disease fix-it and general pick-me-up. But that’s not strictly true. Master Mak, a “snake master” who has been selling snakes at Ser Wong Lam (13 Hillier St., Sheung Wan, 2543-8032) for 60 years, says snake is not a cure-all, but it certainly can help treat rheumatic diseases, weak liver and kidneys, weak bones and, tendons and rhinitis.
The snake bile is key ingredient, and it's apparently great for anyone with asthma or a bad cough, or if you simply need a detox. And according to Ser Wong Lam menus, it helps enhance your libido too.
One Traditional Chinese Medicine principle is “like nourishes like” – eat chicken feet if you want stronger legs, for example. Similarly, eating snake bile supposedly helps people – especially children – become more courageous because the Chinese word for “courage” sounds a lot like “bile,” Of course, you would need to be quite brave to eat the stuff in the first place.
The bile, however, isn’t cheap. A bladder about the size of a fingertip goes for $200-$250, and a tiny bottle (around 10 ml) of bile wine costs about $100. It’s usually mixed with Chinese white wine. Master Mak shows us how this is done:
