I spent more ten weeks in Shenzhen China for work in 2015. Prior to that stay we traveled there in March 2015 to assess a partnership with a Chinese electronics plant. While there that week in March the Chinese plant owner took us all out to dinner. There were four of us from America and several of the plant's Chinese staff. The family style table was served with various dishes. One platter was yak meat (basically like beef). Another platter had a pile of what looked like nuts. When asked what it was the Chinese owner struggled to translate to English and eventually came out with "baby bees."

Bee larvae deep-fried. A closer look at the pile revealed some actual bees caught up and fried in the process of scooping the bee larvae out of the hive.

I am a vegetarian. The only animal products I consume are cheese, butter and eggs. (I don't drink milk). But I was the only American who would try it. I picked up a couple of the fried nuggets with my chopsticks and popped them in my mouth. Crunchy like peanuts, basically.

Interestingly, of all the food on the table left over, that was the only thing the Chinese owner asked to have boxed up to go which indicated to me it was either expensive relative to other foods or simply rare.