Chinese Find Solution for Rat Problem

They eat them. Southern Chinese apparently eat everything, and right now, fresh rat is on the top of the menu thanks to a recently flooded lake and a plague of rodents.

A kitchen worker hits a water rat on the head to stun it before it is killed for a meal in a restaurant in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou. Take note of the puddles of fluid on the floor. Heh, those whacky Chinese! Is there anything they won’t eat?

From Reuters here:

Live rats are being trucked from central China, suffering a plague of a reported 2 billion rodents displaced by a flooded lake, to the south to end up in restaurant dishes, Chinese media reported.

Some vendors had asked people from a village in Hunan province, near Dongting Lake, to sell them live rats.

Some Guangdong restaurants were promoting “rat banquets”, charging 136 yuan (8.80 pounds) for one kg of rat meat, the newspaper said.

Local governments in Hunan have been grappling with the rats, which had already destroyed 1.6 million hectares (6,200 sq miles) of crops and could spread disease, according to media reports.

A lack of snakes, also a popular dish in the south, and owls, a traditional Chinese medicine, was held partly responsible.

That, and the cats are stolen from peoples’ yards to be sold in the south for meat too. I think I will pass on Chinese food next time I’m offered.

Oh, and one of the worst jobs in China? The truck drivers who carry live rats, live cats, live snakes and whatever else is gross to the dining rooms in Southern China.