QA：中国人每年消耗全球90%的小龙虾。但这一物种并非原生于中国，而且在几十年前还被视为无用之物。小龙虾究竟是如何成为如此受欢迎的美食的？

Jesuan Wu
It’s just like how lobsters turned from trash food to becoming popular.
Crayfish is a North American species.
It was commonly believed to have been brought to China by Japanese immigrants, supposedly used as duck and other animal feed.
After Japan started WWII with its full scale invasion of China, it was said that Japan used crayfish to help clean up the mountains of civlians that they killed, which were piling up and cutting off rivers.

这就是小龙虾从垃圾食品摇身一变成为流行美食的过程：
小龙虾是一种北美物种。
人们普遍认为它是被日本移民带到中国的，据说是用作鸭子及其他动物的饲料。
日本在发动全面侵华战争，拉开第二次世界大战序幕之后，据说曾用小龙虾清理堆积如山、阻断河流的被其杀害的平民尸体。

So in the past the Chinese refused to eat them.
From my memory, it became common in the 90s, as a cheap alternative to sea shrimps, pretty much after the WWII generation phased out.
People slowly improved on the spices and ways to cook it, but it wasn’t until the great floods of the late 1990s, that we really saw the consumption of crayfish explode.
Since crayfish had no natural predator in China, they were just too many and they dug deep nesting holes into the riverbeds and dams. This earned them the name “dam destroyer”, and at least in my province, the government hanged out banners calling on us to "fight a people’s war against crayfish". Markets and restaurants started promoting them as food.
After that, they became one of the most popular street food dishes in my province and they’ve been eaten close to extinction that we’re breeding them in fishing ponds as far as Africa today.

因此过去中国人拒绝食用它们。
据我记忆，食用小龙虾是从90年代才开始变得普遍的，它被作为一种廉价的替代品用来代替海虾，大约是在二战时期那一代人退出的时候。
那时，人们对香料和烹饪方法的改良逐渐加快，但直到20世纪90年代末的大洪水时期，小龙虾的消费量才真正开始激增。
由于在中国境内，小龙虾没有天敌，它们数量暴增，还在河床和堤坝上挖出深陷的巢穴。这使得它们被冠以"堤坝破坏者"的称号，至少在我所在的省份，政府还挂出横幅号召"全民剿虾"。市场和餐馆开始将它们作为食材进行推广。

此后，它们成为我省最受欢迎的街头小吃之一，几乎濒临灭绝，以至于如今我们还在非洲的养殖池中饲养它们。

Feng Lu
At least 50 years ago, crayfish were a food.
I ate crayfish when I was a child.

至少在50年前，小龙虾是一种食物。
我小时候吃小龙虾。

Ed Tsoi
Great marketing at work.
In China, crayfish is called little lobster and lobster is regarded as a high end food. A lot of people believed they were having lobsters.
Moreover, thanks for the Chinese chefs, they make crayfish into a delicious treat, while in the west, they are served mostly steamed or boiled as one of theitems in a seafood platter or on a buffet table.

伟大的营销在工作。
在中国，淡水螯虾被称为小龙虾，龙虾被视为一种高端食品。很多人以为他们吃的是龙虾。
此外，感谢中国厨师，他们把小龙虾做成美味佳肴，而在西方，小龙虾大多是作为海鲜拼盘或自助餐桌上的一道菜用来蒸或煮。

Wasu Koysiripong
Lobsters at the beginning were also only food for inmates. Thanks to American marketing, they have become high end food.

起初，龙虾也只是囚犯的唯一食物。由于美国的营销，它们已经成为高端食品。

Ed Tsoi
Inspiring, I always believe that lobsters are always a delicacy for the French people, believing that it is good for man.

鼓舞人心，对法国人而言，我一直相信龙虾一种美味，相信它对人类有益。

Shaun Lawson
They’re considered taboo or at least somewhat disdained by a lot of traditional island and coastal cultures, as they are scavengers living off waste and, occasionally, human corpses.

它们被认为是禁忌，或者至少在一定程度上被许多传统的岛屿和沿海文化所蔑视，因为它们是以吃废物为生的食腐动物，偶尔也以人类尸体为食。

Ed Tsoi
Yes, I read from National Geographic that lobsters live at the bottom of the sea and they mainly rely on dead fishs and alike as food.
However, as they were easy to catch, a lot of coastal region population used them for food including the British.

是的，我从《国家地理》杂志上读到龙虾生活在海底，它们主要依靠死鱼等作为食物。
然而，由于它们很容易被捕获，包括英国人在内的许多沿海地区的人口都用它们作为食物。

Xun Yang
As a mainland Chinese, I've never felt the sentiment of people comparing crayfish to lobsters. Crayfish has always been an everyman's food. It's what it is, messy but tasty and abundant. Rather it's the other way around, you can as well translate lobster to “big crayfish” or “Australian crayfish”. It's foreign and fancy, you think it as a more premium kind of crayfish.
I think the success of crayfish is always about the cooking and freshness. In Europe crayfish is bought imported, ready boiled in salt water and frozen, leading to boring taste and bad texture. In China they are boiled alive (whoa!) in complex spice mixes and condiments. Personally I'd prefer crayfish to lobsters because I don't find the western way of flavouring it very attractive, plus it's too snobbish to truly enjoy.

作为一名中国大陆人，我从未觉得到人们把小龙虾比作龙虾。
小龙虾是为所有人准备的食物，就是这样，难以处理但美味又营养丰富。
相反，你也可以把龙虾翻译成“大鳌虾”或“澳大利亚鳌虾”。这会充满外国情调和花里花俏，你可以认为它是一种更优质的小龙虾。
我认为小龙虾的成功，与烹饪和新鲜度有关。

在欧洲，小龙虾是进口的，在盐水中煮熟后冷冻，导致味道乏味，口味差。
在中国，它们在复杂的香料混合物和调味品中被活活煮熟（哇！）。
就我个人而言，我更喜欢小龙虾而不是龙虾，因为我觉得西方的调味方式不太吸引人，而且它太势利了，无法真正感觉享受。

Robert Parker
Ironically, crayfish were introduced to China by Japanese soldiers, and Chinese chefs borrowed a lot of cooking ideas for crawfish from Louisiana where crawfish have been cooked up with various herbs and spices for a long time. Now Vietnamese Americans dominate many of the restaurants selling crayfish in America. The recipe is often a combination of garlic, Cajun peppers, butter; but there are many variations.

具有讽刺意味的是，小龙虾是由日本士兵引入中国的，中国厨师从路易斯安那州借鉴了很多小龙虾的烹饪理念，路易斯安那州的小龙虾长期以来一直用各种草药和香料烹制。现在，越南裔美国人主导着美国许多出售小龙虾的餐馆。食谱通常是大蒜、卡津辣椒、黄油的组合；但也有许多变化。

Ruijie Lu
I only know that they are not lobsters but instead are crayfish. My grandpa cooked them one and he called them mini lobsters, doesn’t taste that different from a lobster either

我只知道它们不是龙虾，而是小龙虾。我爷爷做了一个，他叫它们迷你龙虾，味道也和龙虾没什么不同。

Tina Nguyen
I heard the clay fishes ate the poops and all the dirty stuff on the bottom of ocean, am I wrong? I staying away from eating them since then

我听说小龙虾会吃了海底的粪便和所有脏东西，我错了吗？从那以后，我就不再吃它们了

Eugene Lee
My sister was married to a Chinese guy (since deceased). She always used to say to me, “The Chinese will eat anything that doesn’t eat them first.” lol

我姐姐嫁给了一个中国男人（已故）。她以前总是对我说，“中国人会吃掉任何无法先吃掉他们的东西。” 哈哈

Peony
The Chinese will eat anything with 4 legs, except the table and the chair. :-))

中国人会吃任何有四条腿的东西，除了桌子和椅子。 :-))

Peter Kaye
Tastes change, it’s not just China, here in Australia, many years ago a mate was a skipper on a prawn trawler and he used to give me a lift around the NT coast to different rivers and while on board I used to help in sorting the prawns, we used to get a lot of morten bay bugs as well but because there was no market for them they went over the side with all the other waste, but these days they get THIRTY DOLLARS A KILO for them, and they just can’t get enough. So like I said tastes change.

口味变了，不仅仅是中国是如此，在澳大利亚也是如此。很多年前，我有一位伴侣，他是一艘拖网捕虾船的船长， 他经常载着我绕着海岸到不同的河流，在船上我曾经帮助分拣对虾。我们过去也会遇到很多莫顿湾大型海螯虾，但它们没有市场，所以我们会把他们和废物放在一起，一块扔掉，但现在它们的市场价格是30美元一公斤，而且总是供货不足。就像我说的，口味会变。

Lonely Rolling Star
A lot of answers point out the marketing. But you can’t do a nationwide boom on just marketing without good supply, and the stuff is everywhere.
Turns out that rice farmers there love them because they eat the eggs of bugs that are common pests in rice paddies. The crayfish find it a pretty decent habitat. And of course farmers can earn quite a bit of extra money by catching crayfish and selling them, especially due to their popularity right now.
Easy aquaculture led to it being explosively available. I’m sure there are plenty of people who will dish out good money for only the finest of crayfish but this local solution probably supplies a lot of the bulk.

很多答案都指向了营销。但是，如果没有良好的供应，你就无法在全国范围内仅仅通过营销来实现繁荣，而且到处都是这种东西。
最开始，是那里的稻农喜欢它们，因为它们吃稻田中常见害虫虫子的卵。小龙虾有觉得这是一个相当不错的栖息地。当然，农民可以通过捕捞小龙虾并出售它们来赚取相当多的额外收入，尤其是它们现在很受欢迎。

简单的水产养殖使其具有爆炸性的可用性。我敢肯定，有很多人只会为最好的小龙虾花大钱，但这种当地的解决方案可能会提供很多好处。

Bert Clayton
When I was in high school, we were informed that crawfish were a problem to the Chinese, eating up their rice fields, where Chinese didn’t eat crawfish, as we know anyway! In the U.S. it was predominantly a Cajun thing for a long time. It’s not until recent relatively that crawfish began being offered in other states. where they were wreaking havoc in China, where China found out what a Cajun was then found an export market which would assist their problem!
I know this too, I ate crawfish in a Chinese restaurant where Chinese staff came to check me out eating crawfish, where they do not eat crawfish!
Which China did have a crawfish problem. Yet, crawfish has spread to other states, where it’s not as big as South Louisiana, but it has spread!

当我在高中的时候，我们被告知小龙虾对中国人来说是一个麻烦，因为小龙虾会吃掉他们的稻田，而且中国人不吃小龙虾，这是我们所知道的！
在美国，很长一段时间以来，吃小龙虾主要是卡津人的事情。直到最近，其他州才开始提供小龙虾。小龙虾在中国肆虐，中国肯定是发现了什么，然后找到了一个出口市场，这将有助于解决他们的问题！

我也知道这一点，我在一家中国餐馆吃了小龙虾，那里的中国工作人员来看我吃小龙虾，但他们不吃小龙虾！
中国确实有小龙虾问题。然而，小龙虾已经传播到其他州，在那里吃他的人没有路易斯安那州南部那么多，但它已经传播了！

Ivan Zhao
Crayfish is a kind of alien species for China, so Chinese people don’t know it before.
It still makes Chinese people a headache in the wild area, what the Chinese eat now is farmed one, wild crayfish is full of sand and not a good material to eat.

小龙虾是中国的一种外来物种，但中国人以前不知道。
野外的小龙虾现在依然让中国人头疼，中国人现在吃的是养殖的，野生小龙虾身体里到处都是沙子，不是一种很好的食物。