Let Them Eat Snake

“Listen to me and understand this: A man is not defiled by what goes into his mouth, but by what comes out of it.” – Matthew 15:11

It might seem strange to get excited about the start of “snake season,” but I set out to get some of the stuff before the dishes fade into history through the combination of redevelopment in our traditional neighborhoods and a government keen to remove another game animal off our menus. While you can certainly have snake year-round somewhere in Hong Kong, autumn and winter are the traditional season to “warm the blood” as it gets cooler. So as the heat dissipates, I went on a hunt for some good serpent. Little did I know that soon I’d be downing shots of rice wine and raw snake blood.

Medicinal Benefits?

Many who venture to dine on snakes believe in the medicinal (and sometimes mystical) benefits of eating the beasts. Though snakes are now - like French geese, sharks and tuna – the vogue animal to protect from our plates – many still can’t stay away from the things.

But like most traditional remedies, there is no conclusive proof of any “magical” results of eating snakes. But there are still a lot of believers, though it must be said that eating snake seems to be more of a culinary practice of an older crowd. On my travels, I was almost always the youngest patron and certainly the only Westerner, but when in Rome...

Restaurants serving this specialty typically display their serpents live, coiled and hissing in cages or in wooden medicine boxes where they will live for weeks until consumption. Most of the varieties come from the southern mainland province of Guangdong, so some people are still pretty antsy about the whole Sars thing. Many snake specialty shops closed during that crisis, but there are still about 70 snake shops left - you just need to seek them out.

The specter of a government ban still worries some shop owners. “The government seems to want every snake shop to be put out of business,” merchant Ho Cheuk-hing said from his store, She Wong Lam, which translates into the “Snake King.” Hong Kong dealers say their imported snakes are free of the Sars virus. In fact, they insist snake is good for one’s health. And to keep snake consumption safe, they recommend that people eat the meat only after it’s fully cooked. “If anyone would get sick, we’d be the first,” said Chau Ka-ling - dubbed the “Snake Queen” by Hong Kong media.