Fishy business
(A regular, run of the mill fish counter, Suzhou)
I like to feel connected to my food, and I have a (now not so) secret hankering to keep bees to harvest their honey. However, I’m not as keen on seeing my food swimming about before it is dropped into a thin plastic bag like a writhing mango, knotted and plunged on top of a trolley full of shopping. In Britain, any supermarket, market or person doing such a thing would have animal rights protesters crawling all over them and would likely have a pet loving public beating them with wooden placards. Even for the state of the poor beast in the bottom left tank, there would be protests to set it upright again. In this supermarket, they turn and push their trolley away with dinner still heaving in the bag.
It is a different way of treating food, to say the least. I just wanted you to see how huge the selection is there, but also to appreciate the scale of the tanks and even of their inhabitants. Some of these fish are two feet long and must weigh several kilos – the smaller shellfish are gathered up with a pick and mix scoop. It seems to be self service, which I didn’t realise until we watched someone feeling all the frogs bellies and another swishing a net round a tank of carp to get the desired morsel.
Can you spot the crab making a getaway out of the tank? He’s crawling up a white tube in the centre.
Fresssssh! I like!
Amazing shopping experience! But with regard to animal cruelty, think about all the things happening here, how bad the animals are treated, fed with GM food, etc… Not nice either. Really like your blog by the way, you should keep it going! Still confused if you’re actually back in Glasgow or still there?
If I could fit in every opinion I have into these pieces, you would all cry with boredom! This space has just sort of evolved into comments on China with pictures, so although I have issues with aspects of life in the UK, aside from occasional comparisons, I’m just keeping it Chinese! Feeding a vegetarian animal bits of other animals is also cruelty, but like I wrote here: http://china.analoguegirl.co.uk/animals-for-sale/ I can’t expand on everything – I’d be writing even more!
Thanks for all the compliments – I really love doing this and hope to keep it up as long as there’s interest.