Sunday, June 29, 2008
Saturday evening I acted out of character and did something I wish I did more often, went to bed at about 9:30 PM. Not only did I feel great the next morning but I woke up at 5:50 on my own, rejuvenated and ready to start the day. Two things I realized because of waking up at 5:50 in the morning: one, the sunrise was already long gone and apparently rises at about 4:30 AM in China and two, I like the idea of waking up on my own and without the dreadful and monotonous ringing of an alarm which our ancestors have been able to do for over 4,000 years. I had my own Brandon time, was able to stretch and exercise some and read for a bit. At breakfast I was offered the options of going with Katrina and two friends shopping or shadowing Mr. Liu as he did some chores and small tasks around town; and although a large language barrier came with following Mr. Liu I chose to stick with him for my Sunday off.
We did a number of tasks including check out the furniture show rooms (as he is one of three presidents of a large furniture business here in Shenyang, take his computer to a computer shop where I taught everyone in the room numerous English words for computer parts, and carouse around a giant food market that I truly regret not having my camera for. Out of all the family members Mr. Liu has been the one whom I’ve learned the most from. He works 6-7 days a week and never once have I seen him complain or let drain any attention or enthusiasm he shows his family when he comes home. He is enthusiastically generous and compassionate to every single person he is around during the day whether it’s an old friend or total stranger. And he has never once allowed our inability to communicate more easily (or correctly pronounce my name “Bwanda”) from keeping some form of conversation going with me throughout the time I spend around him. He’s been a great 3 month substitution for what I’m spoiled with from my family back home. And funny thing is, I believe I will take more business knowledge and experience from him than I will from all that I have learned at my 6 days a week, 9 hours a day internship I have with a company he’s not involved in. If I actually had money, a house, an office, and a need for new furniture I would no doubt buy from him and recommend him to every person I knew.
Besides that, here is a little story from my fun experience at the food market. I will be as descriptive as possible in the next couple sentences but know already I can not do this place justice with mere words. Sounds, smells, textures, and so on took my 5 senses for a roller coaster in this place. From the outside this looks like a regular large 5 story building, about 15 years old, surrounded by pick-up trucks and food carts, secreting smells and liquids from drains that reek of sea sewage and week old leftovers that are now rotting after not being bought. We enter the first floor by first pushing through hanging plastic banners usually used in the doorway of a restaurant refrigerator to keep in cool air and out flies, both of which it failed to do here. The floor is a dark green panel slippery and stained from the moisture in the air and the hourly floor-wide hose downs in order to remove large chopped fish debris and other leftover matter. Suddenly we’re surrounded by hundreds of large but compact cubicles where vendors must crawl over their goods into a small one person space open in the center for just big enough for the seller to chop a still twitching eel’s head off before throwing in a plastic bag to be tossed then to the buyer. Tanks of bull frogs, turtles, eels, sting rays, minnows, baby sharks, giant catfish, tuna, spitting oysters, scrambling lobsters, flickering shrimp, 12 lb squid, squirming octopi, and human head sized jelly fish grab my attention at first. The seafood section has every type of creature that has ever touched a body of water from now back until the Jurassic period for sale at hard to beat prices. Sweaty and determined-to-bargain vendors shout at me, although I look lost in awe, in Chinese at a pace Genghis Khan couldn’t have cursed at. I pass by numerous vendors who are busy de-gutting the creatures they are about to sell who will toss any undesirable fish parts in the middle of the narrow walkways in hopes the steady stream of hose water will take it to a nearby drain. After getting lost in the action I quickly scan the aisles to find Mr. Liu again and catch up with him in the meat section. The meat section, like the seafood section offers an abundance of carnivorous meal options I never knew existed, let alone were edible. Large Mongolian men with proportionally large butcher knives hack and chop at slabs of cow, lamb, chicken, duck, dog, kitten (im just kidding, at least I don’t think I saw kitten), and other meat options to get the size each buyer desires. Cow lung, cow veins, cow tongue, cow hooves, cow stomach (4 different kinds), cow fat, cow heart, cow brain, and cow tails (the caramel filled candies) are all available as well. We continued on although I could easily sit and watch each vendor tend to their products for at least 20 minutes so as to see what I’ve truly been missing behind the glass windows at the meat section of Bi-Lo back home. Next is garden foods which of course includes insects you would find there too. I made the mistake of taking particular interest in the silk worms (of which I’ve already tried) and pointed them out to Mr. Liu because they were all squirming as if they knew they were on top of the batch and next to be chosen for human dinner. He thought I said “buy these” but really I was just commenting on how I had already eaten these and its interesting to see them alive. So he considered it a gift when he ordered a pound and a half of squirming silk worms that I would then carry until dinner time; dang it. (PS, I made a video of the little things still moving when we go to the house, I’ll post it as soon as possible). The rest of the market was just as interesting but a little more common to me as we saw hundreds of options of tea leaves, spices, homemade sauces, rice, noodles, breads, and so on that made my sense of smell go for a whirl. If I have the opportunity to go there again I won’t forget my camera that’s for sure because this was no state fair food market and I can’t describe it better otherwise. I’ll stop now considering it’s almost eleven and that’s way past my Chinese bed time. Thanks again for listening; Grace and Peace. Brandon.
