Snails and clams

Snails and clams

　　“March snails, April clams, May and June just leeches,” is a local saying in Mianyang; neighboring counties Tianmen and Qianjiang also have a saying, “January snails, February clams,” both referring to the lunar calendar. It reminds people that if you want to eat snails and clams, don’t miss the best season.

　　 Mianyang, located in the heart of the Jianghan Plain, though all its rivers, lakes, ditches, and canals are habitats for snails and clams, getting a meal of their meat is no easy task. Clams are “fished out” one by one from the water, and snails are “picked up” one by one from the water—both activities require getting into the water. Locals call clams “clam fools” because they lie motionless in the muddy bottoms of ponds, with most of their hard shells exposed, making them easy to grab once touched by a clam fisher’s hand or foot. Isn’t that foolish? But in the chilly spring months of March and April, clam fishers work in freezing water, their bodies breaking out in goosebumps; sometimes they even have to stand waist-deep in the water and feel around with their feet. Once they locate a clam, they submerge themselves to retrieve it by hand—quite an ordeal. In comparison, snails are mostly found in rice paddies where the water is only ankle-deep. The water is clear, and you can spot and pick up snails one by one with ease.

　　 However, people on the Jianghan Plain don’t eat snails the way outsiders do—cooking them half-raw and sucking them noisily out of the shell. Instead, they first “blanch” the snails in boiling water, then use a broken spinning spindle or a bamboo skewer to extract the meat, and consume them following one of the “Three Steamed Dishes” methods from Tianmen, Qianjiang, and Mianyang. Recently, another way of eating them has become wildly popular across the city’s restaurants: the so-called “Three-Flavor Hotpot” featuring clams, cured meat, and bean dregs cakes. This unexpected trend has even brought small windfalls to local farmers who sell clams.