Where does your food come from?
| 15 July 2010
I have recently been able to pry away from the Pavilion for a few hours to pick up some custom tailored clothing and explore the neighborhood next to what is called the “Old City”. This was my true first trip to a complete and total Shanghai urban market. This small pocket neighborhood boasts tons of vendors, most with 125 sq. ft. store fronts with their small one bedroom apartments just above. The streets are covered with food vendors, men engaged in serious card games, counterfeit tobacco shops, antique dealers, motorbike part suppliers and random local markets. Yes, China, this rising country has sent out media messages to their people not to walk around in pajamas all day, clean up, and change their ways of hundreds of years. Shanghai is the New York of China- they have pushed the locals to embrace western ways, which to me is quite a shame. Of course I happen to seek out the real culture of Shanghai behind all the smoke and mirrors that Shanghai officials try to hide.
Grabbed a few photos at a local market- this market made any US Asian market smell like a bed of roses, pass health inspection with an A, and make you feel like you are in a 5 star resort! Unlike most Westerners I don’t look down on these practices, it’s just different…
Makes someone think twice about “where does your food come from”?
This guy is legendary, while rolling noodles with no shirt, a cigarette hanging from his mouth, flip flops, and his wife with no hair restraint pulling the noodles from the sheeter. He was happy to let me snap a few photos.
Live Frogs
Ducks, Ducks, Ducks… People are buying these birds, then in the matter of 10 minutes they are killed, skinned, and bagged for “take out”
Clean, yet room temperature…
Dry goods, pretty safe bet
More on the live water snakes in a future post...
