Pets Mart

9.3.2010

Last Friday my program took us to what they called the “bird and insect market.” What I had thought would be a tourist trap of sorts where foreigners go to sample unheard of delicacies like scorpions and sparrows actually turned out to be nothing more than an overgrown pet store.
The whole group left the International Village and traveled by subway to the center of Shanghai. When we arrived at the closest metro station it was a short walk to a concealed alley way. A long string of American students squeezed into the tight walk way. As we walked around most people snaped shots of miniature turtles and exotic birds.
It soon became obvious that insects and birds were not on the menu, they we to be pets and bets. As a matter of fact, most of the animals being sold were grasshoppers. Chinese people love to give them as gifts of good luck or train them to fight with other grasshoppers. They were definitely the most lethal grasshoppers I had ever seen, they were being specially bred to be big and strong.
After a couple of laps around the block sized market I headed out and followed my group to the nearby antique market. Even thought the antique market may have sounded like a good fined, it turns out that most of the stuff they have there is just faked to look old. I like looking at the mass produced posters of Mao and the various statues and figures you could buy. Given that anything cool enough to buy probably would not fit in my suitcase, I gave up trying to find stuff to buy and I left.
Going home I wanted to walk around Shanghai a little bit so I decided to take a different metro stop closer to the city center. What I thought would be a nice little detour actually turned into two and a half hours of lost. I wandered the streets for the better part of the afternoon searching for a subway station that didn’t appear until I landed at the tourist swamp of a destination known as Yuyuan Gardens (I posted about this place earlier and yeah its cool and all but it’s totally overrun with people). I mostly enjoyed by detour because I got to see the shops and small streets that hide themselves in the shadows of major skyscrapers, but by the time I wanted to go home I had to deal with the mayhem of the excretion of tour bus gridlock. I was happy to finally find my underground way home.
I had hoped to be back at the apartment in time to accompany Marx and Kevin to the market. We were planning to make dinner for our friends and Marx gave us the idea that we should have a chicken slaughtered for our feast. Marx and Kevin did in fact go to the chicken slaughtering market without me but I did get to see some pictures. It’s actually not as gruesome as it may sound, I won’t go into secondary details but all I can say is that the chicken was really fresh.
Once we had the chicken we made stir-fry and rice and people brought other dishes that we enjoyed as a group of about ten. It turned out to be a pretty good dinner party and we will hopefully be doing it once a week!