Expensive Meal n Lesson

My whole family and I had dinner at the MG restaurant, courtesy of my uncle. With grandma, cousins and my aunts, we ate..makan-makan and by the 4th dish, everyone was almost full.
Partly due to the 2nd dish…a pot (a huge one indeed!) of ‘nutritious’ soup. Everyone except my uncle was unaware what it was when it is served into small bowls, assuming it’s just a soup similar to shark’s fin.

Many things in the big pot…ginseng, sea cucumber, chicken, some Chinese herbs etc. However, in some of our bowls (aunt, uncle, grandma and mine) and the remaining in that big pot contained pieces of this black gluey thing. I had a piece in my bowl …

After eating all the familiar stuff in the bowl and drinking the soup, I started to inspect this black thing.
I thought it is the black chicken, common in soups like these too. Though the skin is black, it looks rubbery and transparent, even the meat is peculiar…not like chicken’s meat . It’s redish brown and the meat is not evenly distributed (not in a whole piece, it’s bits here and there and some soft protruding white bones). Not black chicken then what is it?

Across the table my uncle finally spoke “Ou lang gia tiuk pi boh?” (Has anyone taken *** ?
At first I don’t realize what this ‘pi’ thing in Hokkien…but when my aunt says “Ciakliao mia eh can terng sia ka ha leh pi…” (After you have eaten this, your life will be as long as this ***)

Yikes! Oh! ***is actually turtle’s meat!! Or tortoise meat!! Either one, whateva, in the soup!
According to The Star paper today, these wildlife are smuggled into our country and transported to China. A freshwater turtle can cost between RM 100 to RM 200 per kilo! Chinese claims it has medicinal properties and it is a prized delicacy.
Goodness la…Good or no good…I tak termakan …I put that black gluey thing aside and immediately felt full. My grandma said she saw a seller in the market overturning a tortoise so that it will not ‘run’ or crawl away. Grandma did not finish hers. But uncle seems to love it! Afterall, this whole course dinner was selected by him and costed only a few hundred short of RM 1k!!
So no matter what, must not waste…6 courses to go after this main attraction dish.

Uncle: Eileen, so much soup left in this big pot, come I give you some…
Eileen : No thank you uncle. I full already…(waves frantically and gesturing that the soup is up to throat level!) =p

After that dish was taken away, the other dishes were filling, luckily not so exotic: roasted pork, fish, vege, chicken, mee and dessert.
It was a very expensive meal, it cost a bomb and the lesson also expensive! I shall never put turtle/tortoise/snake/pangolins into my mouth…