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“Are you really going to eat that?” I hear my friend say over my right shoulder as the old street vendor holds the fried scorpion on a stick in front of my face. This is a phrase I’m used to receiving, whether is from the fish eye I have just taken from a main course in Colombia, to devouring the large clam sashimi that I think I had just pet the day before while diving. “Why not?” I answer, “clearly there is a market for it here” I say as I gesture to the claustrophobic street in Wangfujing. Among my close friends, we remind each other that traveling feeds the soul, in my case, I enjoy it the most while I am being fed. Trying to find what I am going to eat in China is often a guessing game. When I flip through their menus, often that could constitute as a long picture book, I find myself playing a game of “close your eyes and pick a random page”. The characters are a puzzle of similar shades of grey that my mind struggles to put together, even more so when I must decide between two pieces of meat and my translation says they are beef and dark beef. When I want to have any idea of what I am going to eat before it arrives to my table, street markets and the motorcycle food carts can often be a place to start. I turned around to face my friend who was looking horrified. Behind her I see a Chinese family holding their phones ready to take photos of the English-speaking foreigner ready to swallow this arachnid. With my desire to try strange new foods I usually expect the response to be disgust, or a turn of the head, not random relatives that are not on my family tree ready with their iPhones. Having myself be the object of people’s stares caught me off guard when I first landed in Asia. Eating every type of food is common in China, however they do not expect foreigners to join them in their navigation of their daily food choices. I love surprising people around me by being willing to eat anything and everything. It’s amusing when you move to a new country and realize that people are staring at you in amazement that you are excited to devour their culture and customs, and in my case, especially their food.