WUHAN FOREVER
As you are now obviously aware, earlier this year, a new global health pandemic emerged out of from Wuhan, China in the form of coronavirus.
Wuhan with a population of 11 million people, is the sprawling capital of Central China’s Hubei province. Known as “China’s Chicago.” Wuhan is a commercial center, divided by the Yangtze and Han rivers, with attractions like the Yellow Crane Tower.
Editors Note: I traveled to Chicago in early March and Chicagoans are nonplussed about referring to their city as America’s Wuhan.
Prior to January, Wuhan was a city very few outside of China knew much about. Even though the population of Wuhan is more than New York City and LA combined.
Wuhan went “viral” for being ground zero of a new rapidly spreading disease. While unconfirmed there is much speculation of the official cause of the Wuhan coronavirus. It is thought that bats could be the origin of the virus itself, and it got from bats to people in the wildlife wet market.
Why is China is a hot spot for viral outbreaks?
“China combines large bat populations with densely populated rural areas who have a long tradition of eating wildlife, especially in the southern provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi.”
Please note: I am not an epidemiologist and my opinion on viral outbreaks should be taken with a grain of salt.
HAVE IT YEWEI
Wuhan like many cities in China is home to a “wet market.”
Wet markets are marketplaces that sell living animals along with meat and produce, and often feature Ye Wei, a Chinese word that means bushmeat or game including exotic animals and wild animals used in Chinese cuisine.
The Manchu–Han Imperial Feast, popularized ye wei serving it many ways in one of the grandest meals ever documented in Chinese culinary history.
The venerable Wikipedia highlights the menu from this banquet as a feast served over three days, six meals and 108 courses. The banquet consisted of 134 hot dishes and 48 cold dishes with many Ye Wei dishes of exotic animals, many of which are now endangered species.
The original banquet reportedly consisted of “Thirty-Two Delicacies" with at least twenty-four recipes surviving to today:
Eight Mountain Delicacies including such dishes as camel's hump, bear's paws, monkey's brains, ape's lips, leopard fetuses, rhinoceros tails, and deer tendons.
Eight Land Delicacies featuring several precious fowls and mushrooms and a dish that is known as Golden Eyes and Burning Brain - bean curd simmered in chicken, duck and cuckoo brains.
Eight Sea Delicacies like dried sea cucumbers, shark's fin, bird's nest.
It is worth noting that modern versions of this feast exist and can cost up to $54,000.
After the 2003 outbreak of SARS, a disease also first transmitted to humans via a wet market, Chinese scientists attempted to stop the practice of eating wild animals. Warning that if human consumption of wildlife is not curbed. Large populations will continue to face heightened risks of viral disease.
Yet, the practice may be more difficult to stop than expected.
“Why do I eat it? It is delicious,” said Terry Gao, a 30-year-old businessman from Guangxi, where he usually eats wild meat. He said he had a particular taste for civets.
“It is really hard to describe. Like how lamb has that special taste, civets are the same. Just the flavor of the meat itself. You don’t need to cook it in any special way: Once you taste it, you’ll know it’s civet.”