| The Chinese eat jellyfish! While it may not be a staple on western menus, if you find an authentic enough Chinese restaurant, you can almost certainly order the "haizhe" (pronounced like the words "high" and "jug" together - without the G on jug).
When I lived in China, my professor (a native of Shandong province, where Tsingtao beer is made), invited our class to lunch and proceeded to order her "favorite" food from her province's cuisine. (What we call "Chinese food" is actually several distinct culinary styles, each from a different part of China.) The dish came to the table and we all eagerly awaited this "favorite" dish. We had no idea what it was, as we'd only had one year's worth of Chinese language instruction and the word "haizhe" had never been among our vocabulary words.
When the spaghetti-looking dish arrived at the table, we were faced with a common problem of Westerners in China... Do I eat first or ask first? If I eat it first and then ask, I might be rather upset once I find out what I ate. If I ask first, then I'll still have to go through with eating it, knowing what it is. I grabbed a helping of "haizhe" with my chopsticks and, holding it in front of my mouth, said "Zhi shi shenme?" ("What is this?")
I was answered with a long pause, and I put the haizhe in my mouth. Mmm, tasty! It was actually pretty good. It had a flavor that the Chinese describe as "suan" (pronounced "swan" like the animal), which they translate as "sour" although I would argue that it's a poor translation and English has no true equivalent for the flavor. Then my professor said, "How to say in English...? Jellyfish?" Great. I just ate a jellyfish? I'm not sure I would have willingly done so if she'd answered me quicker. I flipped through my Chinese-English dictionary, hoping it would tell me that "haizhe" meant something other than jellyfish... but it didn't. My professor's English wasn't great, but she sure knew the right word for her favorite food! But, like I said, it actually tasted great!
On a more serious note, obviously this is a problem we can't eat our way out of. Grist recommends using policy to build back our marine ecosystems, suggesting California's Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) as a model. I think curbing climate change is a must too, because no matter how much we cut back on fishing, we'll still manage to kill the fish if the water's too warm and too acidic. |
