Some people for whom travel is a way of making a living seek the past in crumbled arches, be they Gothic or Romanesque. They go under the ground, beneath historic buildings to view ancient bedrocks such as the bricks of ancient Rome. They view monuments to one revolution or another, to one war or another. Or they simply look for the roots of heritage.

I eat.

Some who search find history and ethnic evidence in thatched-roof cottages or in the fallen stones of ruined castles, perhaps even in the coincidence of language usage.

I find culture on plates, and as I do I discover, often by happy accident, tangible aspects of someone’s life and how his forebears lived. I find pieces of a people’s ethos, a country’s essence. I encounter tradition, ways of life, beliefs and customs. As I did one afternoon a few years ago in Guangzhou, China, when my wife and I were invited to what was to be, we were told, a dinner from the rice fields, as it had been eaten for generations by southern Chinese. And it was to be without rice.

We were taken to the kitchen of the White Swan Hotel in Guangzhou to the table of Chef Zhang Nuan, a jolly, smiling, heavy-set fellow in his mid-60s, a man called, respectfully, “dai See fu,” Master Chef, who had been cooking the foods of south China for a half century. He was a bit skeptical of me, he told my wife, wondering whether a Westerner would appreciate the meal he was cooking.

To which my wife replied, “Do not worry, dai See fu, my husband eats like a Chinese.” Which is true, a circumstance that is a natural result of living in close proximity for more than 40 years to my wife, Eileen Yin-Fei Lo, who, I should mention, is the doyenne of Chinese cookery in the United States. Chef Zhang smiled and nodded.

He brought out a platter of snails that he explained were tin lor, literally “rice field snails,” for they grow in the moist, soft earth of the rice paddies. They fatten up to their optimum, the chef told us, near the end of each rice-growing cycle. And they were big, quite plump, their brittle shells a lovely translucent pale green. The platter held dozens of them, steaming from their stir-fried bath in fermented black beans with garlic and pungent rice wine.

Chef Zhang gave each of us a handful of toothpicks and we began to eat, spearing each snail, pulling it from its shell, and dipping it into the black bean sauce before popping it into our mouths. They were marvelous, sweet and tender, and as we depleted the mound in the platter the empty shells piled up, their emptiness picking up light so that they seemed to glow. Pretty. We continued to feast on them until Chef Zhang cautioned us not to overeat because more rice field food was on the way. In fact, he said, the for chung were hot and waiting.

These are simply white worms that live in the mud of the rice paddies, and are highly prized since they can only be gathered near the end of the rice-growing cycle, when they have been well-fed.

“Worms?” I asked my wife.

“Worms,” she replied. “You’ll love them. Trust me.” She told me their name translated as “fire worms” in Chinese. “When I was a girl, I remember my mother racing to a temporary market for these worms in Sun Tak, when those who gathered the for chung were selling them.” Sun Tak is a suburb of Guangzhou, the village in which my wife was born, about a two-hour bus ride south of Guangzhou. So we were truly on her home turf.

“Worms?” I asked again.

“Worms,” she replied, cutting off further debate.

And Chef Zhang brought them over from his stove, pure white and steamed into bowls of smooth egg custard. They were tender and salty and tasted of the eggs and fresh ginger with which they had been steamed.

“Please tell the chef his fire worms are very good, and ask him why they’re called fire worms, would you?” I asked my wife. Which she did. “He said he was pleased that you liked his cooking and that there was at least one guai lo who seemed to appreciate his food. And he said he doesn’t know why they are called fire worms. They have always been called fire worms.” I did not much like his reference to me as a “foreign devil,” but anybody who can cook a good dish of worms should be given some slack.

“Is there more?” I asked.

There was, to be sure. The wor cheuk had been deep-fried and were brought to the table. These are truly tiny birds that migrate to the rice fields at the time of the rice harvest and swoop down to pluck out and eat the ripened rice kernels. They are akin to the ortolans of France, which raid vineyards pecking out rice grapes. The wor cheuk, whose name translates as “rice stalk bird,” are trapped by the hundreds in fine mesh netting stretched over the stalks. They are killed, their feathers removed, blanched in boiling water to cleanse them, and spiced with anise, soy sauce, and salt before being deep-fried—heads, wings, feet, and all, to be eaten whole.

The fried birds, dipped into seasoned salt, crunched as they were bitten into, and the flavors of anise and soy enhanced their taste. I asked my wife if the Chinese had a custom, as do the French, of covering their heads with hoods before eating the little birds whole. She relayed my question to Chef Zhang.

“We do not hide from our food,” he said with a smile. “We like to look at it. We are proud of it and we enjoy its appearance as much as its taste.”

Of course.

Yellow chicken was next, called wong pei gai, literally “yellow skin chicken.” These run free among the paddies eating often of the ripe rice stalks, more often feeding on the husks of the grains of rice after they have been thrashed off. Eating these husks gives the skin of these chickens a peculiar light yellow cast, a color highly prized. Our chicken was cleansed by Chef Zhang, after removing its feathers, by rubbing it with great gobs of salt then rinsing it under water. He cooked it with sesame seeds in a mix of red rice vinegar, soy sauce, cane sugar, and ji soy yip, “purple whisker leaf,” aromatic and mintlike, after which it was cut up into pieces and served.

Chef Zhang was most proud of his chicken, telling me its skin was like “yellow linen” and that he could do more than 20 different preparations with it, a boast I did not doubt.

As we ate, he mentioned to my wife that I should take care not to call the chicken tin gai, even though that translates as “rice field chicken.” The reason? Tin gai are what rice paddy frogs are called, mischievously.

Okay, I nodded, no frogs. Nor, I noted, in this traditional rice field dinner, had we eaten one grain of rice, an unusual gustatory pleasure, though not the only gastronomic oddity I have eaten in my travels through China.

I have eaten live shrimp, flipping about in a dish, “drunk” from ingesting rice wine, and I have eaten deep-fried scorpion which an herbalist said would cure a persistent sore throat. It did not. I have had stir-fried horsemeat in Beijing, and the foot pad of a bear paw, braised so that it tasted like wild boar.

In the course of my work, which is pleasure, I have eaten the fins of sharks, softened after soaking, boiling, and reboiling—only the dorsal fin of the hoi fu, the warm water Sea Tiger will do—then braised in a thickened oyster-laden sauce and served with elegance as a floating fan, just as the Chinese have been eating shark fin since the 16th century, believing it to be not only a food to serve with great honor, but that restores one’s inner balance.

I have eaten sea cucumber, a gelatinous sea slug usually the length of a man’s middle finger, and twice its girth. It is a creature that inches its way through life along the sea bed, and is regarded by herbalists as a kind of seagoing ginseng, a restorative, and as a food that increases male virility. Usually it is collected, dried, and cut lengthwise, then cooked in soups or stir-fried for its texture. It has little taste of its own but rather absorbs the tastes of other food with which it is cooked. I have eaten it numerous times and must report that I have experienced no results that I would define as startling. So.

I have eaten the nests of the Southeast Asian swift, a tiny bird that constructs its nests in niches on the steep cliffs of islands such as Borneo. Actually one doesn’t eat the whole nest. What is eaten is the saliva of the swift, which bonds the twigs and leaves of the nest together. It is a dangerous business collecting these nests and many Asians make a living scaling cliffs and collecting nests. The nests are boiled so that only the cleansed threads of saliva remain. These are boiled into a thickened soup sweetened with sugar cane, a soup which the Chinese believe brings exceptional smoothness to one’s facial skin and reduces the lines of age.

One must believe in the saliva’s skin-enhancing properties without reservation. If not, it is said, it will not work. I must have had, I suspect, a significant failure of faith. The saliva also quells stubborn coughs and there it seemed to work. I’m a bit wrinkled, but I don’t cough as much. So.

And I have eaten abalone, that egg-shaped mollusk, cooked slowly in a superior stock of chicken, cured ham, and fresh pork, and not just any abalone. The best, the Chinese say, is the Oma, small, slim, and rare, found only in the northern waters off Honshu, Japan, at the mouth of the Tsugaru Strait; or the Yoshihama, also in the waters of Honshu, but in a small bay of Iwate Prefecture, and only there. The abalone are dried, then reconstituted in stock as they cook and are most expensive, as dear as $200 for an oval no larger than two inches.

Does the abalone have a health component? Not specifically, though the Chinese regard all expensive and rare foods as generally healthy.

Foods and their cumulative medicinal effects upon the body are continuing concerns of the Chinese, and so, when I wish to eat foods that were, and are, arcane, but which are said to have healthful properties and social significance, I consult Dr. Wong Yut Wei, a Chinese doctor in Hong Kong whom I believe to be an expert on foods and their purported properties.

One evening, for example, Dr. Wong took me to a small restaurant called Ah Yee Leng Tong, which translates as “Beautiful Soup From Number Two,” a sly and fanciful name which suggests that if at home one is not getting good soup from “Number One,” one’s wife, then perhaps a good soup from “Number Two,” one’s mistress, might be in order.

Dr. Wong told me that Chinese men, in general, believe that “number twos” usually make better soups than “number ones.” What do I think of that? he asked.

“I think I would rather discuss my personal yin,” I replied. He had already determined that I was not a yang, but a yin. “Besides, we came to drink soups that fit my personality. Did you not promise me that?”

“Yes,” he agreed. “Let us get to it. But first we must press on past the yin and the yang and discuss your physique before we order your soup.”

“Well some people have suggested that I am a bit on the chubby side . . . ,” I began, thinking I could help.

“We know that. We are not talking about that. We must discuss your interior, consider the construction of your yin. Are you yin weak or yin strong? Is your yin one that is wet-cold-weak or dry-hot-weak, wet-hot-strong or dry-cold-strong?”

Oh.

“If you are wet-cold-weak you must drink a soup of heat and reinforcement. If you are dry-hot-weak your body will welcome a soup that is humid but cool. A wet-hot-strong physique needs to have its blood and other pressures lowered, of course, and if you are dry-cold-strong you must drink a soup that will protect you from strange and sudden sickness. Analysis is very important before the soup. Don’t you see?,” Dr. Wong asked.

I knew he was right. After all, hadn’t he confided to me that infusions of correct soups at correct times had kept him out of the clutches of Western doctors for decades? Surely a record to envy. I resolved therefore to yield to his analysis of me. Before my soup. But I needed assurance that whatever soup I ate would not compare to any soup I had had at home. Ever.

“Done,” said Dr. Wong. “Now because I see your yin as wet-cold-weak, I suggest some rice field chicken soup.”

“Oh. Is that chicken chicken or frog chicken?” I asked.

“Rice field chicken is frog,” Dr. Wong said, “and a nice frog soup, tin gai tong, removes wetness, strengthens the spleen, removes congestion, and clears the stomach. It is a perfect wet-cold-weak soup.”

“Are you sure it’s not toad?” I asked. “Because I’m not sure whether or not I’d like toad.”

“Perhaps a snakehead soup,” Dr. Wong proposed, declining to answer my question.

“Cobra?”

“Snakehead is a fish,” he said quietly, “and you make a soup of it with mulberry tree fungus, barley, and red dates.”

“And it’s good for . . .?”

“Rheumatism and stiff joints, both of which are wet-cold-weak afflictions, and it will also help prevent gout, among other conditions.”

“Let’s have some of that,” I said.

We sipped snakehead soup and had some sin yan sum wu guat gai tong as well, a soup of ginseng root, ginger, and black chicken that Dr. Wong assured me would invigorate my blood and straighten out my metabolism. I expect it did because, well metabolized, I suggested to him we go out into the night and find some lions to slay.

“Not before dessert,” he said.

“Dessert?”

“Dessert,” insisted Dr. Wong. We encountered no lions—fortunately for them—as we made our way through a maze of tiny alleys in Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay. Dr. Wong led the way, pulling me along because he said it was necessary to have a sweet that would give me as profound a jolt of health as the snakehead soup had helped me rediscover long-neglected musculature.

He stopped in front of a small bamboo-paneled shop bearing a small sign, Health Dessert Specialist. “This is part of our Buddhist Medical College,” Dr. Wong explained, and introduced me to Simond Chan, the shop’s proprietor and a former student at the college.

“Medicinal reinforcement of bodily health through eating is taught here,” Mr. Chan said.

“I believe in that,” I replied.

“He does,” Dr. Wong informed Mr. Chan, “and I believe he should partake of some medicinal soups. He is yin,” he pointed at me, “wet-cold-weak yin.”

Mr. Chan nodded. “He must then drink some fig dendrobium. It removes the heat from the lungs and strengthens the stomach.” He produced a bowl of thin soup, dull gold in color, which was sweet, with tartness. I allowed as how fig dendrobium was pretty good and Mr. Chan brought samples of other soups for me to try, noting that small tastes of many soups would not create an imbalance within me, lest I feared that.

“I don’t,” I said. “I’m in your hands.”

I drank a liquid he called “ramulus loranthi,” tea with lotus seeds. A large bowl of this, Mr. Chan said, would strengthen my lumbar region, which I agreed was a good thing. Next I ate some cream of peanut soup with moriuda root, then some cream of apricot soup with fritillary bulbs—both of which should ensure I would have unblemished skin. I drank some pureed black sesame soup, which Mr. Chan said would, in time, if I consumed enough, turn the gray streaks in my hair back to dark brown. He had second thoughts however, suggesting that my gray head just might be too far advanced.

I had some yam pudding with wolfberry, then Mr. Chan brought out two bowls simultaneously. In one was a thick pink porridge, which he said was cream of taro with coconut milk. In the other was a consommé of honey, ginseng, and chrysanthemum blossoms. Though different, he said, both soups would combine to help my “middle burner” immensely.

“My what?”

“Your middle burner,” Dr. Wong said. “These two soups are designed to reinforce the operation of your middle burner. A worthy purpose, you would agree?”

“Oh, yes,” I did agree, “but where is my middle burner?”

I hoped I was being discreet.

“Here,” said Dr. Wong, touching me just below my rib cage.

“Oh,” I said. “There?”

Nevertheless I did drink all of the medicinal soups prescribed for me that night and the next morning. I telephoned Dr. Wong to thank him for his thoughtful dosages and to report that my middle burner seemed to be humming along quite smoothly.

“Of course it is,” said Dr. Wong.

Fred Ferretti, author and essayist, has written five books, and articles for virtually every major magazine in the country. He is Food and Wine Editor for TravelClassics.com and Contributing Authority for Food Arts.