Then & now: soup of the day
Snakes remain a perennial winter warmer in southern China, whichever appetite one wishes to sate, writes Jason Wordie
Seasonality in food items has been steadily eroded in today's ever-more globalised world. Most fruits and vegetables are available year round, and constant accessibility has, in turn, diminished beliefs about certain foods being consumed only at certain times of the year.
In a culture as old and entrenched as that of China, however, some habits and preferences have held firm.
The most obvious involve foods believed to be "heating" or "cooling" to the body during digestion, and therefore appropriate (or not) to certain seasons. With the gradual change in the weather, traditional "heating" items are disappearing for another year. Mutton is one and, as we've entered the Year of the Snake, that item will soon disappear from menus for several months, too.
A steaming bowl of snake soup - made to various recipes - is a popular winter warmer. Dragon and phoenix soup combines two kinds of meat - snake, to represent the dragon (and the male element), and chicken, to represent the mythical phoenix and the female side of life.
Another variant includes "lion", which is represented by domestic cat. Readily available in specialist shops in Guangzhou, and elsewhere in Guangdong province, lion and dragon soup is difficult, but - animal-rights activists take note - by no means impossible, to find in Hong Kong, if one knows where to look and who to ask.
Consuming snake is not - contrary to assumptions over-seas - a custom all Chinese share. Except in periods of famine, when all things edible were fair game, snakes and other exotic fauna were mostly eaten only in the south.