Without doubt an acquired taste, but one attracting growing hoards of devoted diners, fried golden cicadas are a growing fad in many a street-food stall across much of the nation, out of their “hometown” right here in our very own Jiangsu Province.
Welcome to Lulou Town in Pei County of Xuzhou City in Jiangsu, the so-called “Golden Cicada Town”. Here, many villagers have grown rich in recent years by breeding golden cicadas, with local cooperatives able to make annual sales of up to 20 million branches, into which female cicadas have injected 20 to 30 eggs each.
A lady by the name of Wang Man heads up a cicada breeding cooperative in Peixian. Speaking to a Purple Cow News reporter, she said, “Each egg branch sells for ¥0.3; the number of cicada eggs in the egg branch is between 100 and 400, and the survival rate is about 20 percent”.
Wang also said that in addition to selling cicadas in Xuzhou, they have found a market for them in Shandong, Henan, Anhui and other places. In Nanjing, golden cicadas are to be found in many night markets, with some barbecue stalls able to sell hundreds of skewers a night.
But why Lulou Town? There, fully 70 percent of the land is sandy soil, ideal for breeding golden cicadas. Add a dab of local entrepreneurialism and Lulou Town of Peixian has become the largest-golden-cicada-breeding area nationwide.
Some seniors in their 70s and 80s even breed golden cicadas around the trees in front of their homes, reports The Paper.
A Mr. Zhu, 59, of Dazhuji Village in Lulou, is also invested in the cicada breeding business. On 10 June, he headed out on an electric tricycle to buy 13,000 cicada egg branches. This will be his 6th year of breeding golden cicadas. Zhu has 2,700 square metres of land and boasts of 300 trees, under which he breeds the cicadas. “The management method is very simple. You just need to sprinkle some water on the branches regularly”, he said.
Zhu claims that in recent years, he and his family have been able to catch three to four thousand cicadas in one night. On his outlay of ¥3,900, Zhu figures he can bring in ¥60,000 this year.
Back in Nanjing, reporters visited a night-market barbecue stall near Nanjing University of Technology. There, on sale were delicacies including golden cicadas (¥8 per skewer), silkworms (¥6 per skewer) and grasshoppers (¥4 per skewer).
Xiao Liu, a girl from Xuzhou in her early 20s, was one of the night market’s customers. A senior student in Nanjing, she bought two golden cicada skewers. “When I was young, I often went with my father to catch golden cicadas. After school, I seldom went straight home. I especially miss the taste of them in my hometown”, she said.
The months of June and July define the golden cicada harvest season. But what is driving the increasing popularity of eating a beast that many would find repulsive? Those golden cicadas are rich in protein, low in fat and, it is said, quite delicious in taste.
