Edible Bird Nest in China

Sweet Papaya Bird Nest Soup is my mom and mine favorite soup. We always order it when we dinning out. Not only the Sweet Papaya Bird Nest Soup is delicious, but also it’s nutritious and healthy. The cook recipe of the soup is simple. Sweet papaya, edible bird nest and tremella (a kind of semi-transparent white fungus) are boiled in water with 3 spoons of cane sugar for half or one hour. Finally, the soup would be served in a hollowed sweet papaya. Last weekend, I went to a Cantonese restaurant called Empire Chinese Seafood Restaurant where serves customers bird nest soup in Denver. The soup is transparent, stinky and sweet. I enjoyed drinking it so much.

Edible bird nest is the most essential part of the Sweet Papaya Bird Nest Soup and it’s the most expensive material. Edible bird nests are nests produced by a few swiftlet species. White-nest swiftlet and black-nest swiftlet are the two major species that produce edible bird nests. They built edible nests on face wall of island and inland caves or sea-caves in southern China, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Borneo and Philippines (Marcone, "Characterization of the Edible bird’s Nest the “Caviar of the East."). Edible bird nests’ major colors are white, red or some colors between white and red. Some scholars believe the blood-color edible bird nests contact mineral-like irons in the cave and present the blood color. Furthermore, the edible bird nest is extremely light and the shape looks like a half of a bowl. Collectors usually collect nests before young swiftlets are mature enough to left their nests. “If procured before the young are fledged, the nests are of the best kind; if they contain eggs only, they are still valuable; but if the young are in the nests. Or have left them, the whole are then nearly worthless” (397).

Bird nest is expensive for reasons. In China, the Sweet Papaya Bird Nest Soup is about 16 to 40 dollars per bowl in most restaurants. Edible bird nest is expensive because high concentration of nutritious materials, such as collagen. According to “Ben Cao Gang Mu” (a famous ancient Chinese medical literature), bird nest was one kind of medicine in ancient China because ancient medical scholars found that it could keep healthy (Manna Science, “History of Birds’ Nest.”). Moreover, collecting of edible bird nest is dangerous because most of bird nests are on steep cave walls. Finally, the process of cleaning the edible bird nest is complicated. In general, those are reasons why bird nest is valuable and precious. Although edible bird nests are expensive, the market needs still could not be met by production. Some edible bird nest producers use toxic chemical material to reduce the time of cleaning process or replacing real edible bird nest by fake one that is made by jelly. Nowadays, edible bird nest became a debatable and conflict food material.

The history of bird nest is more than one thousand years. The bird nest has been regarded as a delicacy for royal and rich peoples since Ming Dynasties. The bird nest was discovered by He Zheng - a famous explorer and diplomat in Ancient China. One day, He and his sailors were trapped near an island of Malaysia by a violent storm. He found many bird nests on the cliff face and he asked his attendants to collect and cook them as food for the whole team. Several days later, sailors became energetic and almost every one had ruddy complexions. He brought some to the empire of Ming Dynasty. In stem of this event, bird nest became a luxury and royal delicacy since Ming Dynasty (Jing, “Do You Know the History of Edible Bird Nest?”). Not only Asian area, the edible bird nest is spread all over the world recently.

The collecting and cleaning process of edible bird nests is complicated and effortful. Because nests are built on steep islands’ face walls and cave walls, security settings for collectors are useless. Collectors have to climb steep walls to collect nests only by traditional and simple tools like bamboo ladders. As for the cleaning process, collected nests would be soaked in water until nests are soft enough for workers to clean small feathers and plumage out. The following step is rearrange clean nests and put them into molds for different shapes. After air-dried process, the further processed edible bird nests are finished (Koon 30). 

In general, edible bird nest is a kind of luxury and nutritious material as a kind of food or medicine. Only white-nest swiftlets and black-nest swiftlets could produce edible bird nests. Moreover, He Zheng, as the first person who discovered the edible bird nests, sharing others the value of edible bird nests and making the edible bird nests become a big part of Asian food culture since Ming Dynasty. What’s more, the production and process of edible bird nests are hard and time-consuming. According to my research, not only benefits of edible bird nests but also risks associated with huge consumption by human beings are found. More specifically, more and more young swiftlets would be hurt or became homeless because collectors are finding the best kind of edible bird nests – nests that are procured before the young are fledged. Some people would doubt whether it is ethical to eat edible bird nest. More seriously, the nature balance and species diversity would be thread by over-collecting nests. Secondly, there is a finding that one kind of protein called 77 KDa in edible bird nest would contribute to some children allergic reaction by consuming edible bird nest products (qtd. Marcone, "Characterization of the Edible bird’s Nest the “Caviar of the East."). The last point is production of fake and toxic edible bird nest products. Because of the increasing sky-high price of edible bird nests in the market, more and more producers try to get the highest profit in a series illegal ways. As a result, the toxic edible bird nest products would have unpredictable negative effects on human health.

Sweet Papaya Bird Nest Soup is always my favorite soup. However, I was shocked by the research I made, as well as those facts that showing the negative side of consuming edible bird nests, for example, the potential destruction of swiftlet species. I probably would stop eating them because I want to respect and protect swiftlets, giving people a remainder that edible bird nest is not a perfect health and medical product and it also would cause negative effect on human health.

Work Cited

            1. Marcone, Massimo F. "Characterization of the Edible bird’s Nest the “Caviar of the East." Food Research International 38.10 (2005): 1125-34. Print.

2. "Edible Birds'-Nests of China." Harper's New Monthly Magazine 2 (1850): 397. Print.

3. Manna Science. "History of Bird's Nest." Manna Science. 2009. Web. 9 May 2012.

4. Jing, Liu. “Do You Know the History of Edible Bird Nest?” Yanwobaike. 2011. Web. 9 May 2012.

         5. Koon, L.C. “Features – Bird’s nest soup – Market demand for this expensive gastronomic delicacy threatens the aptly named edible-nest Swiflets with extinction in the east” Wildlife Conservation 103(1) (2000): 30-35. Print.