Culinary adventures at the Beijing night markets

Beijing has some absolutely amazing food - tasty dumplings, fresh steamed buns and flavourful noodles. It also has some very interesting street food, particularly at the night markets seen around the city.

These markets are marked by their red lanterns (now lit by energy efficient fluorescent bulbs rather than candles) and are well known for their unique protein offerings.

The market is essentially a long row of food vendors all trying to tempt tourists into trying strange and exotic foods.

Upon arriving at one market, a snake on a stick was shoved in my face. Mercedes actually braved up and tried snake after being assured it was quite delicious by some people from our hostel, but claimed it was a horrible soft, mushy texture and far too salty. I decided it fell into the category of meat and didn't fit in with my pescetarian ways.

I suppose starfish may count as seafood, but I was not too keen to try.

Despite the fact that sharks live in the sea they were too mammal-y to even consider trying them. And the sea urchins just looked sharp.

Worst of all I would say were the scorpions still moving on their skewers. One vendor took particular glee in waving them in the faces of unsuspecting female tourists, laughing at their shrieks.

Also available? Dog and cat. Both looked like normal pieces of meat, but a vendor was kind enough to show the origin of the cut of meat to prove the authenticity of his claim (although he showed it too quickly to snap a photo).

Despite all of these awful sounding foods, there were actually quite a few very tasty items available. I tried crab dumplings, fried tofu, sugar coated fruit and fried banana, all of which were delicious. And it was definitely fun watching other brave tourists try all sorts of proteins - insects, reptiles, unusual mammals and more. Better them than me.