We Peeled Crayfish with a Professional Sexy Crayfish Peeler
It’s a hot and wet June evening, the night of China’s Dragon Boat Festival. I’m on Shanghai’s Shouning Road looking for one thing — crayfish.
Crayfish is the underdog-turned-champion of Chinese snack cuisine. They first landed in China through Nanjing, brought by Japanese traders and intended as food for bullfrogs. They devastated rice paddies, much to the dismay of farmers, and were generally reviled. Nonetheless, sometime in the ‘90s, the tide changed. Somehow, crayfish became a blockbuster summer dish, a near overnight sensation.
And that wave hasn’t slowed down — the output of China’s “crayfish industry” shot up last year by 83%, reaching 268.5 billion RMB (42 billion USD). Now, the country watches closely as a red cargo train carrying 100,000 frozen crayfish shuttles its way to Moscow, decked out in a big banner with the script “Chinese crayfish rush to the rescue of the World Cup.”
With China’s crayfish fever now at dizzying heights, it’s time to find out what all the fuss is about. Shouning Road is Shanghai’s go-to crayfish destination: one short street, lined on both sides with bright lights, fragrant scents, and loud vendors. Outside of crayfish season it’s a popular late night street food area with just as much hustle and bustle; the late Anthony Bourdain made sure to visit on his first trip to the city.
I’d heard one tidbit that made the whole prospect even more interesting: namely, that you could pay a service charge to have a professional crayfish peeler sit down at your table to de-shell your meal with you. Apparently, most of them were college students, and word on the street is that “prettier” attendants receive higher pay. Novelty, lurid intrigue, sex appeal, and crayfish? This story has everything.
Sure enough, I’m spotted soon after rounding the corner and a street team of two middle-aged women leaps out from the shadows to ask if I’m hungry. They wear plain clothes, and blend right into the scene. One even has a small clutch bag on, and I wonder if the civilian get-up is just to lull passersby into a false sense of security.
Do you have little lobsters? I ask, 小龙虾 xiaolongxia being the putonghua term for the crustaceans in question. Chinese is a refreshingly literal language.
The woman nods enthusiastically and points to the window beside us, which is quite literally crawling with crayfish. Red, cooked creatures are lined up in rows on the windowsill, looking delicious. Below them on the floor are their not-yet-cooked brothers and sisters, scuttling around in a basin, looking confused.
Fantastic. But do they have pro peelers?
Yes, she tells me. But this service costs extra.
Sounds right to me. It’s a classic business model, just transplanted to crayfish. These overworked, drunken businessmen need to blow off some steam, and I’ll be damned if there’s a way to do that without deeply engrained sexism.
Upstairs at our table, we look over the restaurant’s flavor options. We opt for their house specialty, one jin of crayfish (that’s a little more than twenty individual lads) boiled to perfection in a fresh, fragrant broth with chili and spices. Great choice, we’re told. Our peeler will be with us soon.
That Fish Cray
I guess now is the time where I hit you with some crayfish facts, lest you think I’m babbling unsubstantiated nonsense about this tiny two-clawed takeover.
First of all, I wasn’t kidding about the 83% industry jump last year. That is, combined output from all things crayfish, according to the Chinese Association of Fisheries. China is the world’s largest producer of crayfish by far, accounting for over 70% of the world’s total production. In 2017 alone, China cranked out over a million tons of crayfish. That’s enough to dole out 800 grams of crayfish to every Chinese citizen (and China has a lot of citizens).
Crayfish is a social food. The whole idea is to sit outside for hours on a summer night with your friends, mutilating and consuming unholy mounds of crayfish and washing them down with cold, refreshing beer. Those elements — crayfish, beer, summer, and friends — form the real basis of the phenomenon. Bottom-feeding shellfish alone could not cause such a commotion.
The World Cup is a beer-laden social activity in its own right, and China’s culinary brand ambassadors saw the opportunity to strike. It explains the prominently-sloganned crayfish express train headed to Moscow, and it also explains the extra intensity of this year’s crayfish craze, since it cosmically aligns with the once-every-four-years football championship. It’s especially salient considering that, in spite of China’s ongoing all-time crayfish spike, overseas exports have dropped 18%. A big red train on the world stage is China’s way of pitching a flag and claiming the crusted crawler as its own.
Cray, Sexy, Cool
Ok, back in the restaurant. We’re sitting at the table waiting to see if these shelled creatures are all they’re, ahem, crack up to be. Lo and behold, our meal arrives, and with it, our professional sexy crayfish peeler. Get ready for the reveal of the century:
I talk it over with my tablemate. Well, he is a college student…and he is pretty sexy, all things considered.
At this point, the attendant recognizes the popular English word sexy, and giggles shyly from behind his hand. Luckily, the point here is crayfish — not long-legged, scantily-clad peelers, and certainly not the integrity of that headline image up top. Our peeler shows us how to extract the crayfish’s precious meat.
I’ve de-shelled some crayfish in my day, but never before have I approached the task with such precise methodology. Five quick steps, and our perfectly coiffed attendant was handing me a beautiful circle of meat. Snap off the claws (you can eat those later), twist and yank off the head, give the shell a sideways squeeze, twist off the tail, and withdraw your reward.
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