Watching football while enjoying crayfish and beer has become a treat for many Chinese World Cup fans these days. But decades ago, crayfish were rarely seen on Chinese dinner tables and even deemed as an invasive species, harming rice seedlings and paddy fields. The popularity of crayfish took off about 20 years ago in Qianjiang, a city in China’s Hubei Province, when people realized it could become a culinary delicacy. Almost overnight, it went from being the “most hated” to the “most sought-after.”