PENN
and small wild mammals are shipped downriver from Canton to be dumped
here on the Hong Kong waterfront along with the more conventional foods; or they bump in lorries from the land border to the city shops, and then to herbalists or the wealthy restuarant clientele.
their livers, eyes, brains and
The parts of these creatures other organs are esteemed as delicacies and cures for all manner of ills. Meats and soups of the carnivores and eagles' are believed to warm the body in the winter and bring new vigour to flagging sexual energies the fiercer the creature the better the result.
This is a Hong Kong Chinese physician. Chinese Physician
There is a physiological explanation in this feeling of warmth after eating these kinds of meats. What we call the specific dynamic action of food and all kinds of food after you eat it will produce heat, but certain types of amino acids that are in the protein in these meats of these kinds of animals that produce heat, the dynamic action, much more quickly and they feel this heat for a long period of time - maybe' 12 hours or 16 hours you get it, say, an hour after you eat.
So in the wintertime, when the weather is cold, people are cold and have to wear a lot of clothing. But after you eat a bowl of say snake meat soup you do not have to wear so much clothing. I mean there is a proof it is a very very good food and very nutritious food.
The gall - the bile from the gall bladder of the snake is very good for rheumatism. Now as you know....
(PP
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It really is?)
I think that may have some effect. Because bila has a lot of cholesterol and it may contain some corticoid material inside the bile. Now, cortisone is very effective for the treatment of arthritis. Now that may be the reason: I'm not saying that it is the reason.
However, about, say, eyes of the owl is good for the ges, and I think it's too far fetched, too far fetched. I cannot accept that. But this is the belief, and all kinds of superstitions.
Hechtel
When ringing in the New Territories and suffering from gout on one occasion I was assured by one elderly gentleman that I should eat soup made of kingfisher's head. This was very, very good for any sort of complaint of the feet or logs.
Fred Hechtel is the President of the Hong Kong Birdwatching Society and Hong Kong contact for the International Council for Bird Preservation.