Year of the Snake : 12 Months of Peace, Quiet Expected, Though Serpent Symbolizes Good, Bad in Chinese Lore

At the Yu acupuncture clinic on Beverly Boulevard, next to the ultrasound equipment and needles, in the middle of the cotton swabs and the Q-tips, there is a small, unassuming box of itch-soothing capsules. Among its key herbal ingredients: sophora flavescens, xanthium sibiricum--and snake gall bladder.

Don’t be alarmed, says Dr. Moses Yu, who operates the clinic with his wife, Mei Mei. On the streets of China “they will cut the (boiled) snake open, take the gall bladder out and right there you swallow it.

“This is much easier,” said Yu, referring to the capsules. This way, “you don’t have to boil.”

Today marks the beginning of year 4687, the Year of the Snake. In Asian-American communities throughout Southern California, the often maligned and misunderstood reptile will reign supreme for 12 lunar months until its turn comes again in 2001. According to tradition, it should be a very good year.

“With a snake, if you don’t bother them, they won’t bother you,” explained Yu. “So this year for Chinese people will be peaceful and quiet.”

The snake of Chinese fable and folklore is quite different from the devilish, slithering creature blamed for the fall of mankind in Christian literature. While some Chinese lore suggests snakes are not to be trusted, the serpent is more often portrayed as a savior, of sorts.

He is immortalized in story as a 1,000-year-old symbol of the Chinese people’s oppression under cruel emperors. He is the village deity to whom many Chinese have prayed for protection and good luck. He is the creature who, according to legend, sat behind the throne of the emperor to ensure that no one approaching from behind would cause the ruler harm.

And he doesn’t make a half-bad soup.

“The influence of the snake over Chinese thinking is very strong,” said H.H. Chou, assistant professor of East Asian languages and cultures at UCLA. “He is food, folk literature, medicine, political thought, religion. And (Chinese Americans) still believe in the medicinal value of the snake.”

According to Chinese and Japanese beliefs, people born in the Year of the Snake are beautiful, intelligent, excel in planning and organizing--and move fast. They should work in medicine, politics or “any field where there is life-and-death urgency,” said John Cutter, secretary of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce in Los Angeles.

In short, according to Chou, even among Westernized Chinese living in Los Angeles, belief in the snake and its many virtues remains strong.

At the Tak Shing Hong herbal store on North Broadway, glass cases line a narrow, aromatic aisle. In one of those cases, under the Chinese good luck symbols and across from the dried sea cucumbers, is a dead, dried, coiled King Snake. A few inches away lies his head, on a silver platter.

Of course, they’re not for sale, said Yu, a herb doctor and acupuncturist, during a tour of the store from which he buys much of the herbal medicine for his practice. They are merely samples.

“The snake is very good for you,” said Yu, president of the United Acupuncture Assn. of California. At Tak Shing Hong, a large herbal pharmacy in Chinatown, “they sell 23 different kinds of snake products” in liquid, capsule or tablet form.

It is a part of a Chinese tradition, thousands of years old, in which the poisonous snake is considered a cure-all. Herb doctors say a sip of its blood can correct impotence, and a meal of its meat is an aphrodisiac.

Yu said that the bones also can cure asthma, shock or rheumatism. After all, said Yu, chuckling, “snakes have very strong spines. You won’t see any with lower back problems.”

It is a noble creature, the snake, this protector of emperors and restorer of vitality. But for all its good qualities and because of its somewhat untrustworthy image, the snake is regarded much less favorably than the dragon it follows on the lunar calendar.

Dragon Is Better

“The dragon,” Chou said, “everybody wants.”

Whereas the dragon is loyal, the snake is considered two-faced. Whereas the dragon has been dubbed the best of the 12 creatures in the lunar bunch, the snake is merely mediocre.

But the snake has got one up on the dragon--its own soup. And it’s a delicacy.

“Believe it or not, not everyone can make snake soup,” said Kenny Der, 35, whose family owned Dragon Regency Seafood Restaurant in Monterey Park is one of the few eateries in the Los Angeles area to make snake soup. At $20 for a large bowl, not everyone can afford it, either.

Dragon Regency only serves the gourmet dish from December to February, said the Hong Kong-born Der. The soup supposedly can do everything from warding off wintertime illness to clearing up acne.

It takes 10 hours to create the culinary specialty, much of which is spent carefully taking the snake meat off the bone with a fork. Regency chef Kwan Wong, who has been preparing the delicacy for 40 years, always uses five kinds of land snakes, all poisonous.

Wong would give only the barest details of his secret recipe. After the snake is taken off the bone, it is added to a pot filled with chicken broth, orange peel, ginger and mushrooms and left to simmer. Finally, the soup is ready to be served.

“Have some wine,” Der says to a designated taster. “Really, it’s good to have a bit of wine before you taste snake soup--so you’re not afraid.”