Page 192 - Chinese SIlver By Adrien Von Ferscht

Continuing further around the bowl on our journey through this underworld fantasy, we come across another
crustacean in the form of a large conch shell nestling among a variant of seaweed.

But there remains one mystery; why all this artistry lavished upon a crustacean? Could this bowl have been for
the revered and much sought after dà zhá xiè, aka “the hairy mitten crab” [ ], because as a classic
Cantonese dish, it often appears as a golden apparition in a bowl. In modern-day China, the name for this crab is
also a colloquial term for a loser on the financial or property market because when the crab is cooked, its claws
are tied up, rendering it useless – no connection with this bowl, however! As a species, the crab is somewhat
invasive and has somehow managed to become a pest in parts of the River Thames in London and has even
infiltrated the subway systems in China.