Last night at about 11pm, as we were about to go out, there came an insistent knocking at the door to our apartment. We opened it to find our neighbours, a middle-aged man and his 14-year old son, who often give us little gifts of fruit and the like, with a woven bamboo basket in their hands. “We’ve got a present for you!” they announced. “Pangxie!”

We didn’t recognise the word, and since the basket was quite deep and the hallway we were standing in quite dark, we couldn’t see clearly what these mysterious pangxie were. Only when the boy said casually “They’re still alive” did we realise that this present was a somewhat different kettle of fish…

It turned out these were in fact Yangcheng Lake hairy crabs, and that a friend of our neighbour had brought them on the plane (a little like in this story) from Shanghai that day. Mid-autumn (ie. now!) is the height of the season for hairy, or mitten crabs, which are a rare and expensive delicacy in China, costing upwards of 20 US dollars per crab.

But what could we do? Cam is vegetarian, and I don’t think I have the balls to cook a crab alive, so we politely refused the present. Since reading about the deliciousness of Yangcheng hairy crabs here and here though, I’m slightly regretting our decision…