Excerpt from novel, JOURNEY FROM SHANGHAI

Excerpt from the novel, THE YEAR OF THE RAT, published by www.iUniverse.com 2000. All rights reserved to author Lucille Bellucci






A CHINESE CRAB FEAST

The crab season, open at the onset of cold, rainy weather in late October, had been underway for some weeks. Foreigners do not know this type of crab, which come from a specific lake in Hangchow, about 150 miles southwest of Shanghai. This lake, in the past an imperial summer resort of audacious luxury, is fed by numerous large adjoining lakes. In Chinese it is called the West Lake. Its water is clear, and twenty to thirty feet at the bottom the living delicacies may be seen walking about. The West Lake crab, the doo zah har, is so famous throughout the land that rich men as far away as Hong Kong will contrive to have quantities shipped to them. Its consumption always engenders merriment and messiness, for one has to roll up sleeves and wear aprons, and there is much teasing about who ate the most and who took more than his share of females. The abdomen of the female crab yields a treasure of orange roe that is deliciously crumbly and fatty, compared with food of the gods. The use of sauce is optional, but nothing has been invented to improve upon the traditional blend of soy sauce, white vinegar, some sugar and water, and minced ginger.
To begin, one plucks off the broad carapace, to which some of the roe adheres, adds sauce to its contents and spoons the shell clean. That is the first tasting of crab. The carapace is then used as a dipping receptacle for sauce. Next comes the part eagerly anticipated: the bulk of the roe in the abdominal cavity. The flesh of the female is thin and somewhat watery, for all the nutrition has gone into the making of roe. The flesh of the male is rich and robust, but then in place of roe there is only a teaspoonful of fat. Consumption proceeds: the cleaning and eating of the carcass, cracking of legs, spilling of sauce, jets of juice squirted inadvertently in someone's eye, laughter, quaffing of beer and zoshing wine, and finally, droll disbelief at the mound of debris accumulated on table, in bowls, buckets, whatever.
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