Edible bird's nest

Bird's nest soup

A bowl of bird's nest soup
Alternative names	Yanwo
Place of origin	China
Region or state	Chinese-speaking areas
Main ingredients	Swiftlet's nest, water
Media: Bird's nest soup

Edible bird's nest
Traditional Chinese	燕窩
Simplified Chinese	燕窝
Literal meaning	swallow's nest
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin yàn wō Wade–Giles yen-wo IPA [[unsupported input]ân [unsupported input]wó] Yue: Cantonese Yale Romanization yin wō Jyutping jin3 wo1 Southern Min Hokkien POJ iàn-o

Bird's nest soup is a delicacy in Chinese cuisine. A few species of swift, the cave swifts, are renowned for building the saliva nests used to produce the unique texture of this soup.

The edible bird's nests are among the most expensive animal products consumed by humans. The nests have been used in Chinese cooking for over 400 years, most often as bird's nest soup.

Name

The Chinese name for bird's nest soup, yàn wō (燕窝), translates literally as "swallow's nest". When dissolved in water, the birds' nests have a gelatinous texture used for soup or sweet tong sui. It is mostly referred to as "yin wo" unless references are made to the salty or sweet soup in Chinese cuisine.

Harvesting

The most heavily harvested nests are from the Edible-nest Swiftlet or White-nest Swiftlet (Aerodramus fuciphagus) and the Black-nest Swiftlet (Aerodramus maximus). The white nests and the red nests are supposedly rich in nutrients, which are traditionally believed to provide health benefits, such as aiding digestion, raising libido, improving the voice, alleviating asthma, improving focus, and an overall benefit to the immune system.

Most nests are built during the breeding season by the male swiftlet over a period of 35 days. They take the shape of a shallow cup stuck to the cave wall. The nests are composed of interwoven strands of salivary laminae cement. Both nests have high levels of calcium, iron, potassium, and magnesium.

Hong Kong and the United States are the largest importers of these nests. In Hong Kong, a bowl of bird's nest soup would cost $30 USD to $100 USD. A kilogram of white nest can cost up to $2,000 USD, and a kilogram of red nests can cost up to $10,000 USD. The white nests are commonly treated with a red pigment, but methods have been developed to determine an adulterated nest. Natural red cave nests are often only found in limestone caves in bird nest concession island in Thailand.

The nests were formerly harvested from caves, principally the enormous limestone caves at Gomantong and Niah in Borneo. With the escalation in demand these sources have been supplanted since the late 1990s by purpose-built nesting houses, usually reinforced concrete structures following the design of the SE Asian shop-house ("ruko"). These nesting houses are normally found in urban areas near the sea, since the birds have a propensity to flock in such places. This has become an extraordinary industry, mainly based on a series of towns in the Indonesian Province of North Sumatra, which have been completely transformed by the activity. From there the nests are mostly exported to Hong Kong, which has become the centre of the world trade, though most of the final consumers are from mainland China. It has been estimated that the products now account for 0.5% of the Indonesian GDP, equivalent to about a quarter of the country's fishing industry.

In a sadly ironic twist, this potentially environmentally sustainable industry is contributing to deforestation in Indonesia, notably in the Gunung Palung National Park, West Kalimantan (mid-2011). The swiftlet barns in this area are built from copious quantities of timber (particularly belian and meranti), and legal timber supplies are inadequate to meet demand, which is instead being met by increasing levels of illegal logging in the National Park.

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  The key ingredient of bird's nest soup
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  Bird Nests box showing US$888.99 price tag
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  Ko Lao Liang Tai island, in southern Thailand, where bird nests are collected
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  A typical nesting house for swiftlets in Baan Laem, Phetchaburi province, Thailand.

In popular culture

In the children's book Pippi Longstocking, one of the protagonist's "tall tales" about the countries she has visited is that in China, people eat birds' nests. Even though it is true, this is one of the few stories she claims is made-up.

One episode of Sagwa has Tai Tai banishing a number of creatures, one being some swiftlets, preventing bird's nest soup from being properly made.

Writer Amitav Ghosh has written about the birds nest in his 2011 novel River of Smoke.

See also

• Shark's fin soup

References

• Jordan, David (2004). "Globalisation and Bird's Nest Soup". International Development Planning Review, volume 26, number 1. Liverpool University Press.
• Lau, Amy S. M., and Melville, David S. (April 1994). International Trade in Swiftlet Nests with Special Reference to Hong Kong. Traffic Network. ISBN 1-85850-030-3.