SCMP: “For Zisiqiao in eastern China, the arrival of the Year of the Snake on Sunday carries a special meaning, as the scaly reptile has given the tiny village its main industry and prosperity.
In the 1980s, villagers began raising snakes for food and traditional Chinese medicine, transforming the Zhejiang village economically.
Scores of households now raise serpents, earning the settlement of more than 800 people the nickname “Snake Village” in Chinese media.
A visitor holds a snake at the Snake Culture Museum in Zisiqiao village, Zhejiang Province. Photo: AP
They include Gao Shuihua, 50, who began breeding snakes three decades ago instead of the traditional farming and raising fish.
“We were poor before. We didn’t have anything else to do so we started raising snakes,” he said.
The snake is not considered to be among the most adorable of Chinese zodiac animals – which are based on the lunar year and not the calendar month – but Gao said they provide food and medicine as well as his livelihood.
“Some people don’t like to eat snake because they think it’s weird. But every kind of snake has its own method of preparation,” he said, adding he preferred his in soup, which makes the meat more tender.
“Business ought to be better this year because of the Year of the Snake,” he added, as he pulled out glasses for visitors to sample his homemade snake penis wine – the males have two such appendages – made from the venomous Chinese krait.
His nephew praised the drink’s benefits. “This is a tonic for building up health. It’s especially good for men.”
But Gao warned: “If this snake bites you, you will be dead in four hours.”
Upstairs in one of the bedrooms, the family keeps nine buckets of sharp-nosed vipers preserved in alcohol awaiting sale to traditional medicine factories, which pay 3 yuan (HK$3.70) apiece.
Snakes were worshipped by the earliest Chinese as a totem, with millennia-old stone carvings depicting Fuxi and Nuwa, the mythological ancestors of all Chinese, as half-human, half-snake.
And some historians also believe the dragon, regarded as China’s national symbol and typically depicted with a long serpentine body, was based on images of snakes.”
via Zhejiang ‘Snake Village’ seeks New Year boom | South China Morning Post.
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