AFP Photo/Ed Jones
by Ed Jones
We had just crossed the threshold of Chinese New Year, and I was determined – this being the Year of the Snake – to takes some pictures of a serpent-swallowing street performer. It’s a trick I had seen several times before at temple fairs in Beijing and elsewhere. I put the word out, and a colleague gave me a call when he spotted what I was looking for.
When I arrived at the Temple of Earth Park the festivities were already underway. Just getting close enough to the stage to shoot was a challenge because the place was chock-a-block with New Year revelers. I’ve learned that the best technique for navigating a densely-packed crowd in China is to merge with the masses and go with the flow. Eventually, you get there.
The show lasted around 15 minutes, and included a two-headed girl (not real), a Shaolin kung-fu master (probably not real), and a man who was very good at balancing some things on the ends of other things (impressively real). And then there was the snake-swallower. I watched the show twice.
The second time, the snake man coaxed the serpent up into his nose per usual but – and this was a bit scary – could not get the creature to exit via his mouth. This caused him to gag and vomit numerous times (the man, not the snake). When those beady-eyes finally appeared, the man grasped head and tail, pulling the snake back-&-forth in a tug-of-war motion. The audience squirmed more than the snake. Then the man removed the animal and took a hasty bow before what struck me as an under-appreciative audience.
1 reactions
1 From Spirit Healer - 15/02/2013, 23:29
What many people may not know is snakes dissolve their prey with extremely condensed hydrochloric acid. This makes their vomit extremely volatile. For example, volatile enough to dissolve and pit the surface of linoleum tile. In addition, most snakes are extremely shy and do not respond well to being manhandled. Given that knowledge, I cannot imagine the damage a freaked out snake might do in someone's nasal passages, if he simply vomited from fear. Since snake swallowing is likely not along-term career, I certainly hope it pays well.