Are you urine for a treat?

If you can believe it, this is the anniversary so to speak, of my first blog or two after arriving in China and that time is here again.

It's the end of a school day in the eastern Chinese city of Dongyang, and eager parents collect their children after a hectic day of primary classes. But that's just the start of busy times for dozens of egg vendors across the city, deep in coastal Zhejiang Province, who ready themselves to cook up the unusual springtime snack favoured by local residents.

Basins and buckets of boys' urine are collected from primary school toilets. It is the key ingredient in "virgin boy eggs," a local tradition of soaking and cooking eggs in the urine of young boys, preferably below the age of 10. There is no good explanation for why it has to be boys' urine, just that it has been so for centuries.

The scent of the eggs being cooked in urine is unmistakable as people pass many street vendors in Dongyang who sell it, claiming it has remarkable health properties. "If you eat this, you will not get heat stroke. These eggs cooked in urine are fragrant," said Ge Yaohua, 51, who owns one of the more popular "virgin boy eggs" stallS and he is quoted as saying. "They are good for your health. Our family has them for every meal. In Dongyang, every family likes eating them."

Now here's how you too can make Virgin eggs - It takes nearly a day to make the eggs. First you start off by soaking and then boiling raw eggs in a pot of urine. After that, you crack the shells of the hard-boiled eggs and then let them continue to simmer in urine for hours. You must pour on extra urine to make sure the pot does not boil dry.

Mr. Ge said he has been making the snack, popular due to its fresh and salty taste, for more than 20 years. Each egg sells for 1.50 yuan (24 US cents), a little more than twice the price of the regular eggs he also sells. Many Dongyang residents, young and old, said they believed in the tradition passed on by their ancestors that the eggs decrease body heat, promote blood circulation and reinvigorate the body.

The eggs are not only bought from street stalls. Residents also personally collect boys' urine from nearby schools to cook the delicacy at home. The popularity of the treat has led the local government to list the "virgin boy eggs" as an intangible cultural heritage.

So there you have it - we have not tried them and don't plan on trying them anytime soon but now you know how they are made so you can give it  a try.