Chapter 19 - To Market to market to buy a fat....

Hello everyone!,
Well today i decided to go to the market. About a 30 min walk from my flat. Been told that i need to go here because you can find anything at this market. so this sparked my curiousity and sounded like a great journey! and oh boy it was!! well china little food markets have a smell to them. and i could start to smell that one of a kind smell! I think the smell comes from this mush they make with hot pepper and that mouth numbing spice. Like this stuff makes you hair nostrils curl and your eyes water! very strong smell!

well we started out in the produce section shown in the photo! Also i find it very funny, look at how nasty the floor is and also the dog in the market! now each lady had their own produce and their own setup.
So lady had spices, noddles, veggies, and other herbs. Now i continue to make my way to the the meat area. Now this was a total different experience. They had live animals...to dead animals. Fish, duck, chicken, rabbits, turtles & frogs. This was way more than i was expecting! And the smell of fish, old blood, and just a moist smell made it hard for me. I gagged a few times but was able to keep my lunch down. And of course everyone saw that we were taking pics and making sounds so people were like insisting that we see what they had to offer. Well we found the place where the live animals were being held. Okay so here is a list of the animals i saw. Ducks, chickens, doves, turtles(3 different types), pheasants, frogs, rabbits, a mole (yeah weird), snakes, dogs(for sale), goats(dead but still) and last and the most awkward a porcupine!! Well 2 of them actually! here is a pic to prove it!
it felt like a little zoo but in my mind i knew that they would be someone's dinner. Sort of sad but really cool to experience!
As we were leaving there was a mouse being chased by a dog. Right in the middle of the street. It is was weird but also kind of cool at the same time. yes the mouse did get away :-) A total different view on the food that people eat here in china. it's like they aren't afraid to show where the food comes from. Like in the States we are never really shown the butcher part of our food. Well if you are farmer or a hunter. But also the whole sanitation thing adds an effect. It is so nasty to see your food being prepared but a person with inch long finger nails and just a few inches off the dirtiest ground you can imagine. Totally different and it has really opened my eyes that is for sure!