To Market, To Market

What a beautiful day for a stroll through Guangzhou's Qingping Market! The sun was shining and we had no plans for the day and didn't feel like working on our lessons for the week yet so we decided to go into town and do a little exploring.

This market is not for the squeamish, but it does offer a good look into 'real China'. Guangzhou is famous for its food - it's too bad I'm such a wimp, but I'm sure I will come around eventually. One Cantonese saying goes 'anything that walks, swims, crawls, or flies is edible'. Another saying is that the only four-legged things that Cantonese people won't eat are tables and chairs.  The vague line drawn between food market and pet store was more than a little disconcerting.  Now let's play a little game... dinner or domestic animal?

 Sea horses by the kilogram... dinner. Or light snack?

 Mmmm, dried snake!

DOMESTIC ANIMAL and nothing else. I think I'm in love. 

 Husky with the iciest blue eyes I've ever seen. Too beautiful to be dinner. 

 Birds, rabbits, turtles. This section was a little ambiguous. 

 Winner, winner, chicken dinner!

 This is where things got extra creepy. And crawly. Live baby scorpions just squirming around and live turtles just chilling, totally unaware of their fate: soup. 

Dinner, I'm assuming.

  Little Chinese kidlet and little puppies. Both too cute for dinner. 

 LEEEEEZARDS. I know you're smacking your lips! These guys look pretty tempting.

Not going to lie, I jumped a little when I saw this. Dinner. Never say never? How about never ever ever in a million years ever. 

Shortly after this sight, Emily and I realized we were hungry. We hopped on the subway back to our neighbourhood and dined (for the third time this week) at our beloved McDonald's. You can take a girl out of the Western world, but you can't feed her snake. Or scorpion. Or turtles.