A man in Qingdao, China, got an unexpected surprise while eating clams after biting into a hard object that turned out to be three tiny natural pearls.
Zhang, who lives in the West Coast New Area of Qingdao, was having dinner with his family on August 26 when he suddenly felt something hard hit his teeth while eating the meat of a cracked clam.
“There was a very hard object in my mouth. I even thought one of my teeth had fallen out,” Zhang said.
He carefully spat out the object onto the table. It was only when he examined it closely that he realised there were three small, translucent objects lying on the table.
The discovery left Zhang and his family stunned. After examining the objects under the light for some time, they concluded that they appeared to be natural pearls and put them away for safekeeping.
The clams had been bought by Zhang’s mother, Ma, from a seafood vendor near their residential area. The family paid 15 yuan for about 2kg of clams.
Zhang said the clams looked no different from those they had eaten before in terms of size and colour.
The family lives close to the sea, and seafood vendors regularly sell their catch near the neighbourhood in the afternoons.
Interestingly, Zhang was not the only person in the area to make such a discovery.
Three months earlier, another Qingdao resident, Wang, from Laoshan district, also found a pearl while eating clams at home.
Wang said he was eating clams in mid-May when his teeth suddenly struck a hard object. After spitting it out, he discovered a small pearl in the palm of his hand.
He washed the regularly shaped pearl and placed it in a glass bottle together with the clam as a keepsake.
“Pearls bought from the market are usually bright white, but this natural pearl is milky white,” Wang said.
