SARS alert hasn't dulled exotic tastes.

Byline: Michael A. Lev

GUANGZHOU, China _ What a raucous, pungent, exotic sight the Xin Yuan wild game market must have been before SARS.

Here you could buy many of the unusual creatures destined to become the delicacies for which the Cantonese earned their reputation for adventurous, bizarre and perhaps even risky dining.

No more. There are only a few stalls selling chickens and ducks now. Most businesses are closed, and the rusting cages are empty of snakes _ poisonous and non-poisonous _ badgers, monkeys, pangolins and civet cats, the mongoose-like animal that has become the focus of scientific inquiry as the suspected origin of the SARS epidemic.

It has not been confirmed that the civet transmitted severe acute respiratory syndrome to humans, but researchers from China and Hong Kong are intrigued after finding a coronavirus nearly identical to the one behind SARS in several civet cats taken from a market in southern China.

The government is taking no chances. It has acted swiftly to ban the sale and consumption of wild animals to mitigate the risk of infection. The rules have not been clarified, however, leading markets and restaurants in Guangdong province to include most of Cantonese cooking's funkier ingredients in the prohibition, including farm-raised snakes, turtles, monkeys and bats.

Wild-animal traders are furious at being shut down, and some of the city's restaurateurs have been unwilling to deprive their clientele of a good meal. Along a busy suburban highway lined with fancy restaurants such as Food God and Big Buddah Mouth Lodge, diners can still indulge their taste for exotic fare.