China pays a high price to Indonesia in order to have bird nest on their menu.

Walking around the city of Kumai, in Indonesia, I could barely hear anything by the end of the afternoon with so much bird noise surrounding the buildings. Our friend Yasuf told us these buildings were actually bird condos.

What?

The buildings looklike apartment buildings, with wall painted in joyful colors in the front, but are grey in the back and on the sides. The buildings that have more than one floor are the ones which host bird nests. The activity began 10 years ago, when Chinese investors realised that the weather and the situation were appropriate to raise the common swift, a bird species that builds the nest the consumers and the companies demand.

The Chinese like to eat bird nest soup. The dish is compared to caviar. It is a specialty o Chinese cuisine and one of the world’s most expensive. It is prepared with bird nests of Aerodramus gende, that build their nests almost exclusively with saliva. The birds reproduce in caves and may also use buildings that immitate the birds’ habitat.

A kilo of nest may cost USD 10 thousand dollars and a a soup 30-60 dollars in fancy Chinese restaurants. One of the aspects that increases the price is the fact that Traditional Chinese Medicine attributes healing and aphrodisiac powers to it.

The great search for nests arose a profitable business in Kumai, and became a source of wealth despite the conditions provoked because of the bird invasion.

And the city of 20 thousand inhabitants living in simple houses has as neighbors innocent birds that enrich merchants…