These Feet Were Made For ... EATING!

Today I ran across these gals hanging around the Wet Market in Zhongshan. Maybe it's my theatrical background, but there's something about the legs that reminds me of a clutch of chorus girls taking a smoke break at the stage door of Radio City Music Hall during Christmas season - complete with goose bumps! (One's even wearing an ankle bracelet!)

I heard recently that the largest consumer export from the U.S. to China is not grain or beef or diesel fuel or Levis or cowboy boots or Marlboros, not even Ford Mustangs. The largest export of consumer goods from the U.S. to China is (yep, you guessed it) - chicken feet! The Chinese just LOVE them - and the U.S. is swimming in them!

Now, in fairness, people in China also enjoy the rest of the bird; however, nearly everyone will tell you their favorite part of a chicken is, without question, "the feet!" And believe me, they're hard to avoid:

You order a bowl of chicken soup, the feet are lurking in the depths. You order a whole roasted chicken, it comes to you with BOTH the head and the feet. You order a half a roasted chicken, they'll throw in the second foot as a bonus (you're guaranteed at least one foot.) You order chicken livers, I assure you, they'll come with the feet. You'll even find the guy next to you in the local pub gnawing on a chicken foot with his Tsingdao Beer (they're on the snack menu right above dried duck neck!)

This unabashed display is how the feet are presented in the Wet Market. In more conventional grocery stores (for those who wish to avoid the disturbing process of amputation), the feet are chopped off at the knees and packaged in neat saran-wrapped containers much as you would find in the meat section of your local grocery store back home.

But no worries, you won't be seeing them there anytime soon. No matter which road your chicken crosses getting to your dinner table, for the feet, all roads lead to China!