2/8/05

bird-nest soup, anyone?

Therese Park

Longevity and good health are common desires, especially among older generations. What do you do to stay youthful and healthy? Are you spending money on exercise machines, health club memberships, and workout videos? Have you thought about drinking a potion made of deer and elk antlers and bird-nest soup?

Traditional Chinese physicians have been using bird nests for centuries to treat respiratory ailments such as asthma and bronchitis, to rejuvenate skin, and to boost energy. Bird nests have been well-loved by the Chinese for 1,500 years and have been a “most-wanted” gift for centuries among older adults in Asia.

The birds known as chimney swifts in North America have famous cousins known as swiftlets that live in deep caves or under the roofs of coves along the seashores of Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Singapore, Burma, Malaysia, and the Philippines. They measure about the size of common sparrows, with shorter bills, a slender body, longer tails, and a wing-span close to that of pigeons. They can fly 80 to 100 miles per hour. The birds build nests with their glue-like saliva and cement them onto cave walls or inside tunnels, far from predators.

Bird nests are a multi-million-dollar industry in Asia. Indonesia alone ships 80 to 100 tons of nests to Hong Kong each year, while Malaysia exports only 10 tons of what are considered the finest nests on the market.

Interestingly, the bird nest industry is never threatened by global economic crisis. In fact, during the past 30 years, the price of bird nests has skyrocketed. In 1975, a kilogram of nests sold for $10 in Hong Kong; in 1995, it sold for $400, and in 2002, for $1,600. This is a huge profit for southeastern countries that depend on foreign exchange.

The Hong Kong  Chinese eat more than 100 tons of bird nests each year, nearly 60 percent of the world’s supply. The Chinese communities in North America consume more than 30 tons, but the mainland Chinese buy only 10 tons, 10 percent of what Hong Kong  Chinese consume.

Today, a bowl of bird-nest soup in a Hong Kong restaurant sells for $60 or more. Most common nest soup is made with chicken bouillon, but with a bit more money, one can get a fancier kind of soup known as “Phoenix Swallowing the Swallow”—clear consommé extracted from a chicken impregnated with bird nests and served in a porcelain pot.

There are three kinds of bird nests—“white,” “orange-yellow,” and “black.” White nests are more expensive, purer in quality, and have higher nutritional value than the other two kinds, which contain color pigments from the iron oxide of cave walls and are believed to give an impure taste.

According to Yun-Cheung Kong, professor of biochemistry in the Chinese University in Hong Kong, the trade in swiftlets’ nests began in China during the T’ang Dynasty (618–907 AD). Some time during the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), an admiral named Cheng He introduced foreign nests to the imperial court of China.   He traveled throughout Southeast Asia, brought back nest samples, and presented them to the imperial court. Kong believes that the supply in China had been exhausted before foreign nests were imported. In the late 17th century, four million nests passed through the port of Batavia, now Jakarta.

Nest-harvesting isn’t an easy job. During the peak season between February and May, harvesters clamber up trellises of bamboo and vines at sunrise, only descending at sundown. To keep their hands firmly on the trellises or bamboo scaffoldings, sometimes as high as 300 feet above the cave floor, they balance torches between their teeth to look for what they call “white gold.” Their only tool is a three-pronged instrument called a rada, which they believe the gods of the cave approved of and anointed.

One harvester can collect as many as 50 or 60 nests a day. Sometimes, like mountain climbers, the harvesters hammer metal poles into rocks and boulders to attach themselves to the cave walls. Many have died when a rotten bamboo pole or a boulder gave in under their weight.

Nest-gatherers have certain taboos: One must not make noise, for noises disturb the cave spirits, who would punish him. And uttering such words as “blood,” “falling,” “death,” or “fear” is the same as cursing the cave spirits.

Swiftlets lose their homes to harvesters three times a season. When their first nests are stolen, they rebuild them quickly on the same spot, only to lose them again even before they can produce eggs. When the third nests are built, most harvesters wait until the young birds are raised and gone, but some ruthless harvesters destroy them anyway, spilling eggs and sending the fledglings to the floor. 

Many scientists are worried about rapidly disappearing swiftlets. Kang Nee, zoologist with the National University of Singapore, believes that the harvest cycles of swiftlets’ nests must be made to coordinate with the birds’ breeding patterns before the birds become extinct. Unless this is done, the number of swiftlets will rapidly shrink while the price of nests will keep soaring.

For the sake of swiftlets, I hope the American public does not discover bird-nest soup at any time soon!

Therese Park, a Korean American,  is a free-lance writer and author of When a Rooster Crows at Night: A Child’s Experience of the Korean War.

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© University of Kansas Medical Center, Center on Aging, February, 2005.