So, anyway, whenever we need to run errands in the nearest large city, my fiancée insists at shopping at the Chinese market in order to find food items from a little closer to her homeland.
While we were there, I happened to notice this fantastic product and insisted on grabbing two cans.
To explain, I first learned of the existence of this beverage when I was working on Jake and the Dynamo. In one scene, Pizza Margherita offers juice boxes to a group of magical girls, and I thought it would be funny if the flavors were mostly exotic ones that would generally offend American tastes, so I went hunting on the internet for weirdly flavored beverages, compiled a list, and applied them to Margherita’s juice-box variety pack.
The one that most stuck in my memory was this thing right here, Wonderfarm Bird’s Nest White Fungus. This drink from China is made with mostly water, white fungus, and sugar, with only a tiny bit of bird’s nest.
The “bird’s nest” in question is that of a cave-dwelling swiftlet, which makes its nest from solidified saliva (no more gross than honey, if you think about it). This is a delicacy in China, usually served in soup, but it appears that only a tiny amount is featured in this drink. White fungus, on the other hand, is a mushroom-like growth used in a lot of Chinese dishes and is comparatively inexpensive.
I was thrilled to find this beverage, which had already inspired a passage in my first published book, so I insisted on trying it and making the magical girl try it as well.
You will be unsurprised to learn it’s not very good. It is something like slimy sugar water, or maybe like sweet snot. Tasting like thin syrup, it has large chunks of the white fungus in it. I wouldn’t personally recognize bird’s nest anyway, but I suspect its presence is mostly undetectable.
I can’t say I was disappointed because my experience matches what I’d already read about this beverage. I’m still glad to have had the chance to try it, and I am surprised to see it shipped to one of the places we buy groceries.
