I had the pleasure for the first time last week of tasting snake wine.
Myself and a colleague went on a midnight bike ride to research a story he was planning on "Shanghai Afterdark".
Before you snigger and roll your eyes, the concept for this was family friendly - well, not that you'd necessarily be taking your five year old out at 3am in Shanghai, but you know what I mean: above board, legal, something you'd tell your mum about.
We didn't want to talk about clubs, restaurants, and, er, massage parlours and bathhouses. They get enough attention in the press here already.
So off we went to look for late night bowling alleys, video game arcades, even, this being Shanghai, places you can go go karting or indoor skiing after midnight.
We found these, but we also found a restaurant (not, as I said, strictly on the menu, but we agreed that if we found something unique, we would cover it) where there were a couple of big bell jars in which ten or so snakes were slowly pickling.
It was late by then so we decided a little livener was exactly what was needed and snake wine would do the job. With courage summoned, we paid our ten kuai (60p) and got a glass each of this delicacy.
Not that there is anything delicate about it. The "wine" used is baijiu, distilled from rice, wheat or sorghum. It's a potent brew, and possibly the cheapest rocket fuel known to man.
The Shanghainese and all of China love it, and it is a vital element to the signing of most business deals - being able to take repeated shots is an essential skill to getting ahead here.
Anyway the combination of baijiu and snake was pokey to say the least. Herbs, spices and what looked like several blades of some aromatic grass were all in the jar with the snakes, and the resulting brew was bitter, astringent and not something I'd like to sample too often.
The point of snake wine is, as far as I can tell, the same as most other grisly Chinese eating customs: to improve male potency. Whether it works, I'm afraid I cannot possibly report. As I said, we're very professional here and the assignment didn't allow it.