by Bill Yim

    The beauty of having a drink in a bar after a hard day's work is the chance of meeting different people with different tastes.

   I recently ran into an American tourist who asked me in a heavy Texas accent where he could get a rattlesnake steak.

   "Funny you should ask this question," I answered. "This is the snake eating season in Hong Kong but I'm afraid I don't know of any restaurant that serves rattlesnake steak here."

    He was obviously disappointed but totally fascinated when I told him about a Hong Kong snake chef who can kill a king cobra by grabbing its head, sticking it into his mouth, biting it off with his teeth before skinning it and turning the meat into a delicious snake dinner.

    Tam Kam Sun, better known as Seh Wong Sun or Sun the King of Snakes, owns a small snake restaurant in Tai Yuen Street in Wanchai busy serving hundreds of customers during the snake eating season these days.... 

   "I first started beheading snakes with my teeth in 1975 when I was selling live snakes in the streets near the markets in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories," he told me.

   "I'm the only snake man in Hong Kong who does it and it really helped in drawing a crowd in front of me before I started talking about the medicinal goodness of snake soup and snake wine made from their bile and penises."

    Tam said he normally started his day by going out with two large bagfuls of live snakes wiggling over his shoulder.

   "Shum Shui Po in Kowloon and Yuen Long in the New Territories were my two favourite spots because people living there are more traditional than those in Central or Tsimshatsui and thus more familiar with the benefits of snake food and keen to buy them."

   "I had no problems in getting passersby to crowd around me as soon as I untied one of the bags, reached my hand into it and fished out a couple of poisonous snakes, all hissing and wriggling."

    "I then started talking about how snake soup can keep you warm in winter and how snakes' internal organs can energise and rejuvenate a person."

     "I told the crowd: 'Most people are afraid of snakes because they bite. Not me.'  Without further ado, I grabbed one of them by the neck, stuck it into my mouth, bit off the head with my teeth and spat it out."

     This writer was there watching this awesome performance when Tam put on a demonstration right in front of his restaurant some time ago. Most women screamed but men cheered as they watched the headless snake wiggling on the floor. 

     After leaving it there for a few minutes, Tam picked up the headless end with his left hand, stepped on the tail with his right foot,  cut a slit on the body and skinned it with his right hand with a flourish.

    He then chopped up the skinless serpent into several sections, put them into a plastic bag and handed them to the buyers for home-made snake soup.

    He said the heaviest serpent he had ever decapitated with his teeth was a 16 lb wriggler. "That thing was so tough I almost lost a couple of teeth," he giggled as he recalled.

    Tam used to stage the same performance several times a day in different locations to make a living and eventually saved enough money for the opening of his restaurant in Wanchai after two years.

    The 60-year-old snake specialist who first learned snake hunting from his father in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, China when he was a seven-year-old boy, told me how he had come up with the head-biting routine as an eye-catcher for his sales.

     "I used to get bullied by boys in school, often badly kicked and punched in the street.  One day, I decided that I had had enough. I grabbed one of the boys by the neck, bit off his right ear and spat it on the floor.  Ever since that incident, none of them would come near me."

     Tam said that was the bloodiest thing he had ever done.  "I thought: if I could stop those axxholes from beating me up by biting off one boy's ear, beheading a snake's head with my teeth in the street should be an awesome performance."

     As an eye-witness, I must say the performance certainly blew my mind. 

     He said one European man, who identified himself as a representative from the SPCA,  once walked up to him and ordered him to stop the act.

      "I explained to this European," he said, "biting off the head is less painful to the reptile because it only takes two seconds, short and sharp, compared to beheading it with a knife. I then handed him a knife and challenged him to decapitate one of my snakes. He chickened out and vanished."

     The popular Chinese folk saying "Chau fung hay, sam seh fay" may mean nothing more than "snakes get fat when the autumn wind starts blowing" but it literally spells the relationship between the season and the gourmet's palate for the reptiles.

    It is during the spring and summer months when snakes hunt for food before going into hibernation for the rest of the year.  This is the time when snakes are caught in China, Thailand and Indonesia and exported to Hong Kong for snake soup, fried snake meat slices and snake bile and penis wine.

   Snake soup and meat are popularly credited with powers of keeping you warm and snake bile is believed to be good for rheumatism and similar aches as well as rejuvenating the tired and aging.  Snake penis wine is regarded as an aphrodisiac and some people drink it regularly.

    The most popular snakes for the purposes are cobras and banded kraits.

   There are about 30 to 40 restaurants serving nothing but snake dishes in Hong Kong.  They are busy only from October to March when many gourmets walk in for their three-course snake dinner:  a cup of fresh snake bile wine, a bowl of snake meat soup and a dish of fried snake slices.

   To prepare a glass of fresh bile wine, a professional snake killer would walk up to the customer with a bag of live snakes.  He reaches his hand into the bag and fishes out three poisonous reptiles.

    Showing the wriggling serpents under the watchful eye of the customer, the snake man points out how healthy and virile they are and why it is the right time to kill them for consumption. The customer, normally a seasoned snake eater, knows what the man is talking about. He nods and gestures him to start operating on the snakes in his presence.

    The most exciting part of the whole dinner now begins.

    The killer holds the snake's head, runs the other hand down the side of the reptile. In a matter of seconds he locates the bile, known as the "gem" of the snake, picks up a special knife, cuts a one-inch slit at the spot.  The "surgeon"  then squeezes out the dark green sac with two fingers and drops it into the shot glass. With a little stirring movement he mixes the bile with a shot of Chinese wine and the drink is ready.

    It normally takes three sacs from three snakes to make a fresh bile drink and the price can be up to HK$2,000 to HK$3,000 if the bile comes from king cobras which are more poisonous and thus believed to be more potent.

   The "miracle drink" doesn't taste like the good old snakebite shot served by your bartender but it is certainly more powerful and expensive than the simple concoction of beer and dry cider.

   The snakes can still live for a couple of months after the bile has been removed.... The usual practice, however, is to skin them immediately for snake soup and meat dishes.

   The snake soup is always the most popular item on the menu. It is a mildly savory broth with a delicious mixture of chicken, snake, pork, abalone slices, mushrooms, ginger, lemon leaves and chrysanthemum petals. 

    If you feel the soup is only the beginning of an exotic dinner, order a dish of snake meat slices fried in garlic, chili pepper and black bean sauce. It always goes down well with a glass of beer and never fails to switch on the heater in your body afterwards.

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  Bill Yim, the writer, is also a party caricaturist specialising in entertaining guests at corporate and private functions.  For a glimpse of his performance please click on the following link:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpBmvuAU37g

or email:

bycartoon@yahoo.com.hk