Wangfujing Street, Beijing

This guide to Wangfujing Street in Beijing opens with a vendor named Zheng Zhongbin, who has sold fried scorpions on a skewer here for twelve years, and the two-stage frying method he swears by. It notices who actually buys them, rarely the Chinese shoppers walking past with candied hawthorn in hand, and traces the street's name back roughly six hundred years to walled mansions built for Ming dynasty princes. Watch for the reaction you get if you ask a passerby to try one.