Hong Kong Scrambles for Chicken Feet

Hong Kong, which imports most of its fresh vegetables and poultry from China, has to go farther afield for chicken feet, Chinese cuisine’s crunchiest, boniest staple.

“One chicken has only two feet, so we have to import,” said Humphrey Shi of Hong Kong’s Agriculture and Fisheries Department.

Chicken feet are used in soups, fried with tiny spareribs to accompany Chinese dumplings called dim sum or steamed with sweet and sour sauce in a dish called bak wun gai gu , Cantonese for “white cloud chicken feet,” so named because the appendages turn white when steamed.

Teen-agers coming out of the movies on dates buy fried chicken feet from street vendors and can be seen moving off into the night hand in hand munching their feet.

Hong Kong, a British colony with a population of 6 million squeezed onto an island only 25 miles across at its widest, is too tiny for farming.

It imports most of its feet from Japan, but some come from more exotic climes, such as Brazil.

The 92,000 tons imported last year from Japan, where people do not eat feet, vastly outstrips the 2,600 tons imported from China, where they do.

Tony Asvaintra, executive vice president of the Hong Kong-based agricultural firm C.P. Pokphand, says the company sells 6 million chickens a week in Asia.

Demand for chickens is growing, Asvaintra says, estimating that C.P. Pokphand will sell 10 million chickens--and 20 million feet--a week in the region by 1994.

But none to Hong Kong.

“Hong Kong is much too small a market for us,” he said. “We raise chickens where we sell them--in China, Taiwan and Thailand.

“The demand for chickens in those countries is huge, but people there also eat the feet, so we have none left to sell to Hong Kong.”