Pass the Salt

I’ve just finished writing a travel feature on Shanghai. As usual, the hardest part is deciding what goes in and what stays out of the story; there’s too much good material and you can’t write about everything.

So, I didn’t write about knock-off handbags, I went light on the restaurants and I left out the bit where I come home with dysentery. It seemed unfair to leave readers with the bad taste of that one over-priced greasy dumpling which I’d foolishly bought from a tourist trap restaurant.

And I left out the gory bits. I didn’t want to put readers off with stuff that’s really offensive so I hinted a bit here and there and I saved the ghastly stuff for my blog.

Vegetarians, read no further.

The wet market on Taikang Rd was an off-the-itinerary discovery made while souvenir shopping in the former French Concession. I’d got lost in the maze of allleyways that is the Tai Kang Art Centre and, when I finally got back on the main street, I found myself right outside a really wonderful produce market. It wasn’t a big market but it had a great selection of shiny looking vegetables, all sorts of tofu, stinky hundred year old eggs, fresh noodles and lots of seafood, including tanks of live shellfish and turtles.

Taikang Rd Wet Market, Shanghai

Right at the back I saw a big poster showing free range hens dotted around an emerald green field. I hadn’t expected to find free-range hens in China so I fought my way to the back for a closer look. Directly underneath the happy hen picture was a double row of cages stuffed full of them.

Poultry Section, Taikang Rd Market

I had to laugh but the irony was lost on the man behind the counter. He was attending to a fussy female customer who insisted on feeling the birds’ breasts to assess their worth. The vendor was kept busy for some time, pulling hens out of cages until she was satisfied she had the most buxom bird of the lot.

Purchasing Poultry, Taikang Rd Market

The chosen one was weighed on the scales. A price was calculated and then the vendor stretched out the hen’s neck and slit its throat. Blood started spurting and he immediately threw it into a large plastic drum and closed the lid. The bird, still half alive, went ballistic. It thumped around, rocking the drum and presumably making a hell of a mess inside while the vendor and customer talked about this and that until the fuss died down. At that stage, the poor creature was pulled out and thrust into another drum of hot water to loosen its feathers. Finally it was gutted, plucked, packed into a plastic bag and handed to the woman in exchange for some money.

Why was it so shocking? I think it was the noise, the casual way in which it was done, and the fact the other hens were watching and listening from behind the bars of their cages. I’d seen animals killed for food before but something about this made me feel a bit sick so I turned my back on it and wandered over to look at the fish section, where someone else was buying a turtle.

Seafood at Taikang Rd Wet Market

Turtles are farmed in China, which I figure makes it alright to eat them. I got in a bit closer as one was lifted out of the tank and then I saw what I can hardly believe I saw – the fishmonger, with a pair of scissors, calmly snipping off the turtle’s shell while it was still alive, its short little legs waving helplessly in the most horrible way.

I’d photographed the hens in their cages but I couldn’t take pictures of this. I left the market feeling slightly stunned. There was no way this was going in my story. To be honest, it didn’t even make it into my notebook. I censored myself, because of all the things I saw in Shanghai the one thing I wish I hadn’t seen was this.

My Shanghai story will appear in the Sept/Oct issue of NZ Life & Leisure.