Eating the Wasp
Trip Start
Mar 21, 2005
1
40
354
Trip End
Ongoing
Yongdui Village,
China
Saturday, September 10, 2005
The night began before the sun had set, in the town of Yongdui, overlooking the Yangtze River valley. It began with dinner and Haojiu, meaning "good alcohol" and made of barley, corn, and rice. As Xiao Lin, Gomba, and I were guests of the Baimaxueshan Nature Reserve Office in this remote village, we were obliged to raise our shot glasses with them, sing songs, and give thanks for our friendships. The Reserve Office Manager said: "I look like I come from the forest, and most young people try to dye their hair like mine to look wild."
How do you respond to that? Raise your shot glass and drink.
After dinner came the wasps. In each glass of Haojiu, they put wasp larvae and wasps, still alive. Then you suck it all down. It's a good lesson in homeopathy: if you get stung after Eating the Wasp, it won't swell and sting as much.
Next, the community leaders arrived. We came to meet with them about the ecotourism project. The meeting went extremely well, with more shots of Haojiu all around. Hours later, I crawled to bed after a night of Eating the Wasp.
In the morning, I was completely sapped of energy and my boots were covered in some kind of shit, so the whole room smelled. We skipped breakfast, our stomachs unsettled, and drank some Sprite on the road. We stopped once because my boots still stank too much. Then we stopped again as my mind started to spin around each switchback, and Sprite bile projectiled all over myself and the Landcrusier door, me being too weak to aim through the open window. Covered in Sprite bile with crap on my shoes (the smell wouldn't go away), I was humbled.
"This job was going to be more challenging than I realized," I thought.
I had better change the WWF contract to include Eating the Wasp.
