Usually, rats are unwanted guests in our houses. But that seems not to be true in China wherein Chinese bamboo rats have become their food source for centuries. They believe that eating their "nutritious meat" can detoxify the body and make them prettier.
They also celebrated 100 reasons to eat bamboo rats and found dozens of ways to cook them. Recently, health experts have linked the coronavirus to the wild rodents. Naturally, China has brought the trade to a standstill because of the pandemic.
Chinese bamboo rats: not a new dish in China
Also known as 'zhu shu' in mandarin, the Chinese bamboo rats have a portly figure and fat cheeks. Chinese farmers are rearing about 25 million of these wild rats until it was banned by the government because of the pandemic.
They usually feed on bamboo, hence the name, and can weigh up to five kilograms or 11 pounds and can grow to 45 centimeters or 17 inches long.
Eating them was already a 'prevailing custom' during 1046-256 BC in the Zhou Dynasty. This means that they are not a new dish in the country.
It is believed in traditional Chinese medicine that their meat can detoxify a person's body and improve the functions of the stomach and spleen, according to the ancient Chinese medical encyclopedia Ben Cao Gang Mu in the 16th century.
The Daily Mail reports that the book describes the rats as 'rabbit-sized rodents which many people eat and taste like ducks.'
Becoming famous among Millenials
400 years later, eating Chinese bamboo rats soared in popularity in 2018 when two young men shared a video of them rearing these animals in a video platform, Watermelon wherein they have more than 3 million subscribers.
The Hua Nong Brothers coming from the province of Jiangxi have come up with different reasons to eat the rats and also showed their viewers how to butcher and cook them. It is also because of them that eating these rats have become famous among millennials even though Chinese people have already been rearing them since the 1990s.
In one episode, they roasted one of their Chinese bamboo rats because it was too wounded due to a fight with other rats and has to be eaten. They also suggested in one of their videos that those rats that are suffering from heatstroke should be barbecued.
Their videos proved to be popular in 218 that the hashtag 100 reasons to eat bamboo rats became viral in Weibo, the Chinese equivalent to Twitter.
According to Mr. Zhushu, an internet forum for bamboo rat breeders, these animals can be sold for up to $140 per alive pair or about $40 per kilo. They even found 30 different ways to cook these rats, varying from grilling, roasting, and pan-frying and simmering the rats into a soup.
China bans all trade of wild animals
When the coronavirus outbreak started in Wuhan, China in December 2019, scientists have been looking for the source of the virus and, many believe that it came from the live markets that sell wild animals as food.
Many of the scientists believe that eating wild animals such as the bamboo rats, bats, snakes or pangolins are the likely source of the virus.
In February, China has banned all trade and consumption of wild animals temporarily because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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