Fish club
(Boy at night market looking at fish: Bangkok,Thailand)
Night markets seem to be a Thai phenomenon, though I’ve never been trotting about in areas where they might appear in China. We went to several during my time in Thailand with Pete, but this one was just a few minutes walk from his Bangkok home. I took this picture because of the boy’s expression but also because I’ve not seen such a blatant killing area before. He was certainly curious about the tray and it’s contents, though no doubt he had seen the fish fluttering in the shallow water minutes before.
Similarly, Ying’s mum and I were picking fish out of the ice trough at the supermarket back in China, but all of them were far too large, so when an assistant appeared and pointed out a smaller live one, “about this size?” she asked in mandarin. We indicated that the size was perfect, so Ying’s mum and I expected her to find one in the deep ice on the counter. To our surprise, she netted the live fish, showing it to us, pressed against net and glass. At this point, there wasn’t really any going back so she flipped the fish into the net and took it to the counter. Thankfully there was a barrier so we didn’t see all the details, but it was evident they had forced the flapping fish into a plastic bag in order to weigh it. It was ineffective for a few seconds as she had to keep returning the erratic fish to the scales as it refused to stay still.
Once that was over, she must have clubbed it with a similar implement to that displayed in this image, before slicing it open, ‘cleaning’ it (which until recently I thought meant, you know, just washing it a bit) and showing us the head, tail and middle section. From the look on Ying’s mum’s face, she was as surprised as I was that we had the freshest fish ever in our trolley within five minutes. The three pieces were bagged, priced and tossed into the trolley with the vegetables.
I went back with my mum last week. Same procedure of catching and gutting the fish and was handed a bloody carcass in a plastic bag. Put it in my basket and continued with shopping. Few minutes later, the fish (minus guts, mind you!) started thrashing about in the basket and I nearly shat myself.
Ahhhh, it’s ‘its’ not ‘it’s’!
that was confusing eh?