Urine Soaked Boiled Eggs: A Chinese Delicacy
As spring sets in, a strange but familiar smell permeates the
air in Dongyang City of China’s Zhejiang Province, as locals begin to
eat the seasonal "virgin egg." It’s the smell of urine, because "virgin
eggs" are actually eggs boiled in the urine of virgin boys. The local
word is Tongzi Dan which translates to “boy egg”. This bizarre
street eat, though appalling to an outsider, has been a standard street
fare in Dongyang for hundreds of years.
The process for making
Tongzi Dan boiling the eggs in urine. After being brought to a boil in
the steaming urine, the eggs are removed, their shells are cracked and
they are placed back into the boiling urine to soak up flavor.
Residents
of Dongyang love it. "It's so delicious that I can eat 10 eggs a day,"
said a woman who moved to Dongyang several years ago However, not all
Dongyang people are interested in them. One local resident, said he had
never tasted "virgin eggs." "I can't stand the smell. It's awful."
The
urine is collected from local elementary schools. Plastic buckets are
placed outside their classrooms and young boys are instructed to pee
into them. The buckets are then collected through the day and used to
make the delicacy. For the most part, the practice is accepted
throughout primary schools in Dongyang and teachers even remind the boys
not to use the buckets if they are sick.
Locals believe that
the eggs have medicinal value. Urine contains a kind of crystal that can
"diminish the internal heat of the human body" and stop bleeding. But
Huang Jian, the chief urology physician of Jinhua Central Hospital,
contested that there is nothing good for people's health to be found in
the urine. "After all, it is waste from the body," he said.
