to market, to market to buy a fat...

My daily visits to the market fill my mind with a million stories so to be told... don't even know where to start. Maybe I could just take you with me this morning and try to paint a brief glimpse for you.

Since it was raining I donned my newly purchased rain poncho, construction yellow with a cartoon sketch of Santa in orange carrying a green sack of toys? Dare I say it's a child's size and that could explain the graphics. They have odd taste here in many things. Lai kwan took her lilac umbrella as usual so we were nicely colour co-ordinated.

The local market is a block away, or should I say there is a market every few blocks. There is the usual street with shop upon shop of veggies, live and dead fowl, meat (mostly pork) dried goods (fish, rice, corn, seasoning, nuts, peppers, things I don't have a clue about) dishes and house wares, electric wires, fruit... so it goes the whole length of the block.
Added to this will be the illegal 'hawkers', those who can't afford a licensed stand of their own but load up their wares, usually fruit or veggies, sometimes ducks and chickens in bamboo woven baskets that they carry on a bamboo stick over their shoulder or a little wagon they pull, or the bicycle with the side cart (or the wagon on the back) These folks line the streets in front of the other shops and shout out their 'good prices'. They need to keep moving along the street to avoid blocking customers from accessing the other shops since the street is very narrow. And you must remember there are a few cars and many other bikes and these miserable motorcycles all wanting the same space that you happen to be standing in. There is danger involved.

Now in this stretch there is a covered area on one side that houses most of the seafood vendors, live fowl, tofu, in fact, I guess most everything. This might be my favorite part because it is all so new to me (and it's covered when it's raining or in cooking hot sun) Here's where you find a million different kind of water-related creatures. This is the wet, mucky, stinky area... to walk through here would explain why the Chinese never wear their street shoes in the house.
The tables in the seafood area, if there are any, are very low and the vendors sit on child-sized chairs with their wares in buckets and basins all around them. They all call to you as you pass by, ready to adjust their price for a sale.
Some of the buckets hold live catches, frequently leaping out at your feet and trying to follow you home, some already expired. The most fun are the bins of clams and shelled things that spit little streams of water at you as you pass by. Included in the price is the killing, gutting, scaling, deboning, whatever you want done. They either do it while you wait or you return after you finish your shopping to pick up your purchase. These folk are ankle deep in fish insides and scales from early morning on.
If you were wanting, say, fresh prawns, you must reach in to the writhing bin, with bare hands, and sort through, and chose the cutest ones. If I had to do this on my own, I'm sure I would be a vegetarian for sure.
I'm sayingthis job would not interest me, but the fresh seafood... priceless.